Top Gun: Maverick is one of the most predictable blockbusters in years and that might be exactly why it made a billion dollars. The hosts examine what restraint actually looks like in a franchise sequel, why the film didn't develop its supporting cast, and what the torch-passing problem tells you about when a property can survive its star and when it can't.
Top Gun: Maverick kept things simple in a franchise landscape that never does. The hosts break down the decisions behind that restraint and where the franchise can and can't go from here. In this episode:
Also discussed: Lock Every Door by Riley Sager, Reacher, The Grey Man, Bullet Train, The Lost City
welcome to Don't Encourage Us, the podcast where we talk about the big ideas and fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits. And make sure you stay away from those like and subscribe icons.
So today we're gonna talk about Top Gun Maverick.
Yes, the classic Tom Cruise film from 2022.
That's right, way back. By the time people are listening to it, they barely remember. So are we gonna-
Are we gonna spoil this this movie?
Probably.
Is it possible to spoil this movie? Is there enough that you wouldn't anticipate that you could actually consider it a spoiler?
This may be the most paint by numbers movie I've seen in a really, really long time. But I was highly entertained for some very odd reason. It's got everything.
It's simple.
Yeah.
What you'd expect.
It's a money making formula for sure. Before we dive into that, we should talk a little bit about whatever it is that we've been reading lately. Anything you've been reading or watching other than Top Gun Maverick?
Yes.
I just finished a book called Lock Every Door, which was kind of Hitchcockian. It's about a girl who answers the help wanted ad. She ends up moving into an apartment building, like a really fancy apartment building facing Central Park.
She's supposed to be apartment sitting, and they're paying her $4,000 a month to do it for three months.
Okay.
A lot of weird things start happening. The other apartment sitters who were there before, they've gone missing, so there's this big mystery going on. Then it goes into that formulaic plot where she's trying to figure out what's going on.
At first, she thinks it might be some cult that the people in the apartment are part of, maybe it's a serial killer, etc. But it turns out, lo and behold-
Spoilers.
Spoiler alert, in case you go on to read this book, that it's actually old. But the characters are very cookie cutter. But I give it a three out of five stars.
Overall, it's a thriller.
It sounds like a prequel to Get Out.
It's like a Get Out or Rosemary's Baby.
We're going to use your body.
Yeah. But once you know what's going on, it devolves very quickly into just she's going to escape. They end up tearing the building down at the end.
There's a big scandal, obviously. All these people were involved that were rich and famous at the end.
Oh, okay. Does she run up and down the stairs several times?
She does that a lot. She uses the elevator a lot during fires, which she's not supposed to do, but she does anyway.
Oh, no. Unacceptable.
Yeah. How about you?
A bunch of stuff. I watched the pilot episode of Reacher, the TV series. I think it might have been a series of books.
I didn't look it up. I think they were just your generic badass loner series of books, and Tom Cruise made two movies. The second one is probably the worst Tom Cruise movie that I've seen in a long time.
Really, really bad, like Borderline Unwatchable. I wouldn't even recommend it if you're curious how he could be in such a bad movie. But this pilot for the TV show was good.
It stars Alan Richson, who previously was on the TV show Titans, which I don't even know. HBO is the only place I know where it streams. But yes, so he's bulked up a little bit, and it's a lot of kickass action.
It's good. It's really good.
Nice. I like those kind of movies or shows. I saw The Grey Man on Netflix with Ryan Gosling.
What do you think?
Russo Brothers? Yeah.
Yeah, I liked it. I thought it was pretty good. I read the book and I really liked the book, and I thought the movie, I didn't think it was exactly like the book.
I thought the book was a lot better. But for an action movie, I liked it. I thought it was pretty cool.
Yeah, great.
I almost watched that. I'll have to check it out.
Yeah.
So I also watched Bullet Train.
I started reading that.
Oh, there's a book. Okay. There's a book.
Yeah. Well, you have to watch it, because it is a companion film to The Lost City.
Really?
Yeah. So The Lost City, which we talked about starring Brad Pitt and some other people. And then they made Bullet Train, also starring Brad Pitt and some other people.
We should put the podcast episode in the description if you missed it.
Yes.
There's a podcast episode around the topic.
We should put the link in there.
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so there's a lot of interesting connections. I don't want to spoil it since you haven't seen it, but it's worth checking out.
Yeah.
It wasn't my favorite movie.
I was a little disappointed. I thought the trailer looked great.
How's the book? I haven't gotten that far into the book yet. So far, so good.
Probably only 20 pages in, 25 pages in, so we'll see.
Yeah, I'd be curious to hear similarities or differences because often a book and a movie, they can be very, very different.
And this one had such a particular visual and storytelling style that was, one could say was a little disjointed at times, right?
It was a lot of time jumps and montages inserted into the action and some sort of weird, almost surreal or a lot actually very surreal elements. So I'd be very curious how the novel compared in those regards.
Yeah, I'll let you know for sure.
Yeah, but definitely you should watch the movie at some point because of the connections to The Lost City.
I will definitely watch it. Yeah, I think I'll read the novel and then watch the movie. I saw the movie was available.
I almost rented it because I was like, hey, I don't know. I could probably pick up another novel that's really similar to this one and not really lose too much. I like those kinds of books, though.
Those assassin books, the loner books, the lone assassin or the CIA guy or whatever. They're exciting.
Yeah, well, Reacher has some things in common with that, but the tone is very different. Reacher is very grounded.
It reminds me a lot of the TV show The Incredible Hulk from the 80s, because it's basically the same premise, like the Hulk goes to small towns and solves crimes.
And this is kind of the same deal, like every episode is a new crime or?
It seems like they're going to do the more modern version of that, which is like a season is a crime. I think that's what they're going to do.
But the big difference between this one and the Incredible Hulk is that the guy who plays Jack Reacher, Alan Richson, is much, much bigger than the Incredible Hulk. So that would be the key difference.
A little juiced up probably.
Yeah. I mean, I don't think the Hulk had the kind of muscle that this Jack Reacher has to throw at a problem.
Or pharmaceuticals.
I mean, I don't know how he does that. That guy's in his 40s. Maybe he lives in an apartment building where they harvest adrenal glands.
Yeah, exactly.
Testicles.
And plant them.
He's got his neighbor's testicles. That's how he does it. Has anyone seen The Rock lately?
He's probably getting some surgery.
Testicle implants, getting a sixth set. And maybe The Rock will throw us a reaction video. You know, big giant eyebrow.
With a thumbs up.
This whole podcast explodes. You get a million subscribers. Now we got to do another episode.
I don't know if we get a thumbs up.
Great. All right. So should we dive into Top Gun Maverick?
Sure.
All right.
So this was your choice. What made you pick this movie?
I wanted to see just an escapist type of action movie that was a throwback to those 80s movies. And I'd heard such great things about it. So I figured it's definitely something to check out.
Because I really did like Top Gun when I watched it. I haven't seen it in a long, long time. So there were some things in the movie that I was like, oh yeah, I had forgotten that part.
You know, like the piano playing. And then when they did the flashback, I was like, okay, I see. It's like, why was he playing that song?
You know, it's such a weird song to be playing that everybody knows. But I had forgotten that that was a throwback. But yeah, I'd heard really good things that the action scenes were amazing.
That the way they shot the planes was super realistic. So I had to see it because I really liked those types of escapist type movies when they're done well.
And what'd you think? What's the verdict?
Thumbs up. I enjoyed it. At first, I thought, you know, this is gonna kind of drag on for a little bit.
I can see where this is going. But even the fact that I knew where it was going didn't really matter, you know? Yeah.
The fact that everything kind of just lined up perfectly in the movie. Like every single sequence was, all right, I pretty much know what's gonna happen next, you know? It's like the...
I kind of thought about it like those cop movies, where like, oh, the bad boy cop, he blew up 20 cop cars and destroyed half the city. Give us your badge.
And now we're going to give it back a couple scenes later so you can come back and save the day. It was like that with a little bit of Star Wars mixed in.
A little bit.
Yeah.
Good. So you're satisfied?
Yeah. I honestly don't think I'd watch it again. I talked to a friend of mine.
He's like, I've already seen it twice. I loved it. I saw it in the theaters and I watched it on TV.
But I don't know. I think at that point, it's just so predictable that it's not worth watching. Would you watch it again?
So as you know, I watch it on my projector.
So it's a big giant image that fills an entire wall. And I got new speakers that have a little more bass. So it's visually really amazing.
And so the action sequences weren't really burned into my brain so much that I don't think I would enjoy them again. And the story, the romance and the character development, it was fairly spread out and quick. It's just a lot of Tom Cruise smiling.
And it was Jennifer Connelly. A lot of close ups of her still gorgeous face.
So I think if I gave it a few months, six months or a year or two years or something like that, I think I could come back and just re-experience it, having not thought about it really much since the last time I watched it.
I think I could just put it on and it would just be a fun kind of adventure and maybe I'd notice more details about what it was like to really fly in the planes, you know, things like that.
So I think I could watch it again, but I think I'd give it a little bit of a break.
Yeah. I think those action scenes were really, really well done though. I don't know how they actually shot some of those scenes, right, where the planes are flipping upside down, one on top of the other.
Do you know anything about the way they actually did the effects for that? Was it all practical effects or was there a lot of green screen that they used or computer generated?
I think it was mostly just footage from the last film, right?
Then they threw it in there, especially the end. Spoiler alert, with the F-14. That was just ready to go, fully fueled, just sitting there.
What else are you going to do with the museum piece?
If you have fifth generation fighters, whatever that means, then you want to make sure you have some. Some first generation fighters.
Is that the daily driver? Do they just pick up the pilots with that plane, drive them to the runway, and then they get into those fifth generation planes? Is that what that thing is?
Maybe they feed the old ones to the new ones every so often.
Just push it into the hanger and let it eat it.
Where they just walk out onto the runway? One of my favorite scenes. Don't mind us.
Okay, we're running.
Yeah.
We're headed to work. What did you think of the relationship between Rooster and Maverick?
I thought it was good. I was thinking a lot about when we pitch or when I guess when I pitch, speaking for myself, ideas for this podcast.
We talk about building a concept or building a story that you would film, and it would be a movie or a TV show or whatever. I often underdevelop heart. I don't always think about as much about those relationships.
I always assume... I think of it as something that develops as you dive into the details of the story.
You have a general sense of a relationship between characters, and then as you're writing dialogue and you're writing scenes and you're getting a sense of the characters, then the complexities and the heart of their relationship really manifest.
But I think a lot of successful producers, writers, directors, they really... It's not fair to say start with that, but that is an important part of their initial elevator pitch.
They come in really strong with, and here's why it matters to them, not because it's cool or interesting and plays off of other things.
It matters because these two characters need to have this cliché relationship, and this is going to resonate with Johnny Moviegoer on Friday, date night or whatever.
What you're talking about, the relation between Maverick and Brewster, was the core of the pitch for this. I think it's what probably hooked a lot of the key players involved, and I think it was fine. They certainly didn't overdevelop it.
I think that's the fairest way to put it.
Yeah. It was just enough tension to have them both fulfill their role.
Yeah. Maverick is very much the star of this film, and Brewster, I hate to say this, but feels a little tacked on in places. Obviously not in the spotlight for a lot of the movie.
If I was approaching this film, I think I would have made the mistake of trying to beef up that role, and give that character more nuance, and it would have come across as an attempt to pass the torch, and keep doing Top Gun sequels with Brewster as
the main character. But that would have been a mistake. This version is much better just keeping Brewster as, I don't want to say two-dimensional, he's borderline two-dimensional.
That bit about he's too hesitant, he doesn't react, and coincidentally, that's exactly Maverick's deal from the previous film, is like, if you think, you're dead.
Having that be Brewster's one fault, other than he's upset about his parents dying, and he's got some misplaced anger, I guess, but it's not truly misplaced, but it's also not fair to the main character who we all sympathize with, so he has two
things to overcome by the end of the film, and that's it. It doesn't feel like a human being to me, but again, I would have made the mistake of trying to develop that character more.
Really beef it up.
Yep, absolutely, and that would have been wrong.
It's tough with an ensemble piece like this, I think, because you've got to introduce so many characters so quickly and you have to have the audience latch on to all of them or at least put them in their specific box.
So by the time the action culminates.
Okay. If you believe this is an ensemble piece, name characters for me.
Bob. Okay, good. Penny.
You got Bob.
Okay. A-back.
But you know why I know these names? Because at the end of the movie, the credits where they showed me their names again. So you got me.
Maybe it's not an ensemble piece, but maybe it's a movie with a lot of different characters in it. Okay? And they're not very important.
And Maverick is clearly the most important character in the whole thing. But my point was really that each one has to have their own, even small thing that you can kind of say, oh, that guy's kind of rebellious.
Like the main guy, hangman or whatever. What did that guy really do? Right?
He's kind of cocky. That's about it. Yeah.
Yeah.
He's good with a toothpick.
Yeah. Really good with a toothpick and whatever. They're all good at playing that beach football or whatever.
Right? But yeah, I think in a movie like this, it's hard, I think, to balance those action sequences that everyone wants to see with an actual plot that people can actually hold on to. So it just gets really watered down.
Yeah.
100%. Right? Like I get your point.
And I don't want to come across as criticizing this film a lot because that's totally unfair. They made a lot of choices. They had limited time.
And I think they largely made the right choices. So, you know, none of this is a criticism, but just an observation. The fighter pilots, the younger generation, were very much like, there are three or four of them and the rest.
Exactly how it ended up at the end.
Right. If you were to look at the movie from that perspective, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I know who's going to get chosen. Can you imagine Rooster is not chosen?
He's like on the runway. It's like, yeah, go, go Maverick, go.
Good luck, Maverick and Titan.
And Titan Payback and Lady Gaga. And go get them.
And market segments.
And I understand why you left me behind. Don't worry about it. All right, see you.
It's like five pilots or what?
Yeah. Five other pilots that you hadn't seen up to that point, except they were in the back rows.
Everyone in the front can step away now and they all clear out. It's like six, six completely new or five completely new characters. This is Ace.
This is one of the ones from what is that show called? American Gladiators? Whatever that laser.
They all come back.
Laser. You go laser. Oh, that's so funny.
That's amazing.
I was wondering what happened to those guys. Can you imagine they just put like flight suits on them and they're like, they're ready. They haven't been here training for the mission, but they got the gist of it.
We just showed them a highlight reel. They're really good at jumping off high pedestals and hitting people with rubber mallets and jowls.
Yeah, I really thought the movie would make a mistake and show a close-up, not like a super close-up, but like nice face shots of all the people recruited for this program, all the former Top Guns.
But at no point do I recall them even really giving you a good look at about half of the people in that space. I know they were in frame on occasion, but it was almost like their faces were fuzzed out. There was always somebody else doing something.
There wasn't even like they're all just writing notes, like a panning shot that I recall. It was as if they don't exist.
If you were an actor in that movie who played that role, where you were one of the Top Guns that they recruited back and you're in the classroom, then I think it would probably shock you that literally no one would recognize you. That's true.
Biggest movie of the year and no one could pick you out of a crowd.
Yeah, because it would go like Tom Cruise to Miles Teller, to that hangman guy, and then whatever the conflict was, that was it. You're right. The rest was just filler seats.
Almost like they were there, but not really there. At the end, when they chose everyone for the mission, I remember at one point I was like, wait, who's that guy again?
Oh yeah, he's the guy they mentioned when they all have their mass on their oxygen mass in the planes.
Like they're yelling for that guy, but I don't know who that guy really is until right now, which is kind of funny because they're the elite five that are chosen for this mission. Yeah. I see exactly what you're saying.
It's really weird. I like how they did the, I guess, the simulator tracking in the classroom and cutting out to the actual shots of where he was in real time or where they were in real time. I thought that was really well done.
Instead of just simplifying it where they just put them in the plane, it gave you a perspective, how far along are they in the mission time-wise, and also along that course.
After a while, once you understood what they had to do, fly low, go up, dip down, do the missile strike, and then take off out of that valley, that you really understood that sequence, and it became more and more, I think, exciting as they showed it,
as they got better at it. I thought that was really well done.
That was excellent.
They actually mounted five, I believe, IMAX cameras on the jets, and had the actors have to, they had to act without really any communication with the director or the rest of the crew for these scenes, because they had cameras pointed at them, there
were cameras pointed ahead, there were cameras mounted on the wings, et cetera, et cetera. So it was difficult to shoot, and it was very technically, I think, complicated.
And they probably shot a ton of footage that they couldn't use, but they were committed to it, and they did it. And it really looks amazing. I'm sure it was expensive as hell, but it worked.
You were pointing out the representation of people's progress on the training course and in the actual mission.
I think that was a wonderful visual addition that really did suck you in, and it was cool to see Jon Hamm react to Maverick running the course last time to prove it could be done.
That's so much more engaging than if he's looking out a window with binoculars.
Then he flies by and that's it.
Right, and somebody's sitting there going, 30 seconds, 33 seconds, that's a new record. You're like, oh, I guess that's good.
I think, yeah, it gave it a lot of context, and the way they used that timer and that visuals, it was simple in a way. It's just like a representation of the plane and the timer, but it worked so well.
I also liked the scene that I really liked, it was really quick, was in the beginning to show how fast those planes were. When he's about to do his Mach 10 or whatever, he does that flyover and he like blows, literally blows the roof off that shed.
That was such a cool, well-framed shot that just kind of showed you how fast these planes are in relation to everything in the ground, from that perspective, it was cool.
Yeah, that was a one take.
Oh wow.
Yeah, they didn't intend for the shed roof to come off.
Really?
So they did it in one and they wrecked the set. So they just took it, ran with it.
That's really cool. They were able to do that. Yeah, there were a lot of things about this movie that were, I mean, it's not a short movie.
What is it? It's over two hours long? I think so.
I think it might be 210.
Two hours, 10 minutes.
Yeah.
Your internal clock is on it.
Amazing, right? It went by so quickly, which is always a good thing in that type of movie. You were never really bored, you know?
No, moved along. You knew what's going to happen at the end. But actually, the end was kind of surprising.
That whole him getting shot down into enemy territory and that helicopter showing up. That was kind of cool because they never talked about helicopters at all. I just always assumed it was these fighter jets.
And once he was down on the ground, maybe they'd stop chasing him for a moment or whatever. But when that helicopter showed up, that was really good.
Yeah. I mean, there was so much in this film. In my mind, it's almost a bad choice for a podcast episode.
I think so.
But for us, it's great to do it and we should talk about it.
And I think it's great that we chose it. But it's challenging when I was trying to prepare because there's a lot where it's like, hey, remember that thing that happened? Yeah, that was pretty cool.
There's a lot of that.
That's it.
You don't want to start tearing it a new one, which is unfair because I could be like, oh, you remember the part when they're doing the Canyon run for the final mission and then Obi-Wan Kenobi says, use the force.
Right.
But that's not fair. It's not like they invented it. I can point out that Rogue Squadron, the Patty Jenkins movie, got shut down, I think on the heels of realizing they can't really top this film.
That's going to be the comparison, right? Rogue Squadron is supposed to be about X-Wing and Y-Wing, like Star Wars pilots. So what are you going to make?
Real X-Wings? How are you going to even remotely compare to this film? No, they shut it down.
They already did Star Wars better than Star Wars or as well as Star Wars depending on how you want to look at the 40 year difference or whatever it is. So it's difficult to get into this film.
I mean, there's so many things about it that I went into it like not wanting to like, for example, not identifying the enemy. I thought, well, that's going to annoy me the whole time.
They're going to keep saying like the bad guys, when the enemy does this and they're going to show like nondescript uniforms, and you're never going to be able to tell anybody's ethnicity or anything at all, like the terrain is going to be generic.
And I figured I'd be sitting there going, this is dumb. Like, this is so unrealistic. But I got to be honest, it was the right choice.
It would have been a distraction. It would have dated the film. It would have alienated some people.
It would have created backlash that you don't need to create. It really honestly would have shifted away from where we very tightly stay the whole time, which is this group of pilots, you know, and Maverick specifically is the sun in that universe.
So it's not even more broadly about the US military or anything else at all. It's just the most generic take on the whole bad guy thing, which I didn't think I would like. But in the end, you know, like I said, good choice.
I mean, to be honest, for all the little things that I'd be tempted to nitpick, this movie is a real triumph of Scientology.
Nice. Yeah, I...
What else can you say? I'm convinced.
This is a tough one. Actually, when I chose this movie, I thought maybe we're not going to have much to talk about if it's really good or we really enjoy it.
But then I thought, what are the chances that I'm actually going to enjoy it this much and that I'm not going to be able to tear it apart in some way.
But I'm having a really hard time having this conversation thinking like, that was so stupid the way that this happened. Yeah, because the whole thing is like a series of cliches, but in a good way.
But it's a sequel to a film that it fits perfectly. It's what you should do.
Right. What else was he going to be doing? Right.
It was like his character, where else would he be? Well, he would probably be doing the same shit. He's responsible with his personal life.
He's always pushing the limits. I mean, this movie would be really boring.
Gone to the wind or something? Yeah.
He's in a Mach 10. Now he's older, so he's like, guys, you know, I can't do Mach 10. I can do Mach 7.
They're like, oh, the Top Gun program is over. All right. See you later.
Roll credits. He's back on his motorcycle, and then you see his speedometer. It's like 55.
It says 65 on the speed limit.
Then he pulls into Maverick's lawnmowers, his business.
That's my old life. I'm not like that anymore. He keeps telling people.
He's really not like that anymore. He's got three kids.
Yeah.
He's got his lawnmower business, and he's happy with that. It would be like a short film. What are they going to do?
It would be a really fun one. Yeah.
Exactly. There's just no, what do you send them to space? Okay, well, we need someone for the Mars mission, but the flight's going to be too difficult.
Who do we get?
You know, this is the only way to really do it.
Not the only way. That's ridiculous. This is the simplest way to emphasize the point of the original film, recreate it, and just make another naval recruiting tool.
Yeah.
A really good one at that. I got to give them credit.
Yeah, of course.
That Val Kilmer scene was really good, I thought.
Yeah. I actually did want to talk about that a little bit. I started watching the Val documentary about a year ago, I want to say.
It came out in 2021, so it probably was a year ago. Popped up on Amazon as a we think you'd like this or whatever recommendation. I was like, well, I'll watch a couple of minutes because I like Val Kilmer, I like a lot of the stuff he's done.
Tombstone, obviously one of the greatest Westerns ever made. He was Batman, that was a disaster. I was curious about that.
He did the original Top Gun. And there were a lot of notorious moments or stories or rumors about the relationship between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer during that film. And a lot of the other actors got pulled into that and stuff like that.
So I was like, I'll watch a couple of minutes and see what it's all about. And I ended up watching the entire thing. I just got sucked in and I was really interested.
It was really well done. His son narrates a lot of it. Jack Kilmer, I believe his name is.
And it was just an interesting, you know, fairly candid history and update on like what it's like to be Val Kilmer, you know? And it was sad in some ways. It was hopeful in some ways.
So then I assumed that his work in the new Top Gun had already been shot because I think they wrapped on that film in like 2020 or 2021, depending on who you ask in the current lawsuit.
But I'm assuming that was some of the prompt for this documentary or maybe they just coincidentally started it and wrapped it around the same time. I don't know, but it's worth watching. It's really engaging in a lot of ways.
If you're at all interested about the life of celebrities and some of the behind the scenes for these films.
Did he mention this Top Gun?
No, I don't believe so. If he did, it was brief, but I don't recall it at all. But it was pre the launch of the hype for this film.
Maverick's been done forever. They could have launched it during the pandemic, but Tom Cruise uncharacteristically developed an ego. And now I think he thought, how do I put this fairly?
He wanted it to be a cinematic experience. I think he knew that it was a good product and he wanted to place it for success. He's a little bit old school now, Hollywood, which if you consider 80s and 90s old school.
But I think he's still holding on to that cinema experience idea. And I think probably most of the audience would consider that argument validated.
At the time, again, another reason I went into this movie, maybe not totally open minded, is because I thought during the pandemic, there was a lot of content. There was a lot of gaps.
There was a lot of content that was done or nearly done that could have been released as a way to help people cope with the pandemic. It's like, hey, Hollywood, we're all about entertainment.
We're going to step up and we're going to put some stuff out. But instead, I felt like they greedily held on to a lot of things.
And again, I understand people still would have had to work and that would have put some people at risk and there's arguments on both sides.
But it still felt like it was largely motivated by a lot of executives being afraid to be the one who was wrong. And so they just erred on the side of, to me, what seemed like selfish choices and Top Gun, in my mind, could have been released, right?
But I think Tom Cruise's point in part would have been, this film is not ideal for a streaming release. We're not dragging people back to theaters. So we'll just sit on it.
So anyway, I think that was probably the right choice again.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a very cinematic movie.
That's pretty...
It's loud. It's invigorating. I think some theaters did this thing where they had like a mini screen on the side to kind of create the illusion that you were in the plane or like moving.
Yeah.
It was some feature that I heard about.
I think it was pretty rare, but I think a friend of mine said he saw the movie in a theater like that. So a lot of really visual, intense sequences intended to kind of grab you by the guts and jerk you around a little bit.
Well, they shot the third act largely in the Cascade Mountains. There's a Top Gun course there, training course there, and they shot a lot of the film in that where they were going.
It was sort of the snowy peaks and the river kind of weaving through the canyon. That was shot in the Cascades, so that was kind of cool. The Dark Star, oh, sorry, go ahead.
So a lot of it were actual jets that they were filming live as they were flying.
I think minus a couple shots where something got blown up, like a jet got ripped in half or something like that.
I think a few of those were CGI, but minus that, I think it was almost all or entirely real jets doing real flying.
So were the actors in some type of studio though?
No, they were in planes.
So were they getting flown around?
I would assume, yeah. I think a lot of these shots where it looks like they're in the front, they're probably in the back, and it's just been altered to look like a one-seater.
And then other times, probably some of it was shot on the ground or, you know, I know the, I'm assuming the actors, from what I understand, did not learn how to fly all these planes, right?
And I know Tom Cruise only flew the last plane, the one, he actually owns that one with Jennifer Connelly, like that's one of his planes, which, you know, I'm sure was a nightmare for the insurance underwriters.
Oh, I can't even imagine. Yeah.
Tom Cruise, are you kidding me? Oh my God. So yeah, so I think a lot of it was done, almost all of it was done as practically as you possibly could, which was very challenging, no doubt.
It looked a lot like a Michael Bay film in a lot of ways.
Or maybe I should say...
That is mean. That is mean.
I mean, I don't know. I'm not such a hater on Michael Bay, as I think a lot of people, I think he's really good at what he does. Again, if you like that popcorn type of everything, blowing up action movie, that's your guy.
The original director for this is who? Ridley Scott? Or was it his brother Tony Scott, right?
Yeah.
He started production on a sequel to Top Gun, and I think it was 2013 or something like that. No, I can't remember. He's like 2010s, around then, early 2010s, he or 20 teens, I guess, whatever.
He started production on another Top Gun, and then he committed suicide.
Yeah. Sad. But this guy seemed to have kept the look and feel of the original in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
He previously did Oblivion with, is that right? With Tom Cruise?
Okay.
So yeah, I don't know what prompted him to grab hold of this particular property, but maybe it's because he's worked with Tom Cruise and he just saw an opportunity.
Yeah. Maybe Tom Cruise just approached him. He's like, I like your visual style or whatever.
I had this project.
I'm sure a lot of people think they know. I also imagine we'll never really know. Because as much as the film itself, there's a lore, there are legends, there are stories that evolve around a film, and it's part of the film.
It's part of marketing the film. It's part of the celebrity status of everyone involved. As you create these stories that are part of a larger narrative.
Maybe it was Tom Cruise, maybe he was dead set against it. Maybe it was the director, maybe someone else was involved.
It was just a studio, right? It was like, yeah, we have this property. We're going to get some screenwriters to write a sequel.
That's good.
Yeah, they've been bugging Tom Cruise every year for 30 years to make another one. And this is the one that hit.
Right. Yeah. But it doesn't make for such an interesting story, right?
I had free time. That's why I decided to do it. Yeah.
It's here's the interesting story.
Whenever a movie makes a lot of money, the actors get harassed to make a sequel until they die. So this is another example of that.
They called me so many times. I was just like, all right, fine. What is this movie again?
Oh, Top Gun. Okay. I'll do that.
Yeah, exactly.
It's not risky business too, which is probably going to come out soon.
Yeah.
Tom Cruise bought a cruise line, Tom Cruise Cruise Line. Oh, Tom Cruise's. He pulled his motorcycle 55 miles an hour and pulled it into Tom Cruise's.
Then he wanted that to be the actual movie, like the Top Gun sequel.
It's all about his cruise line so he could tie it in with his real business.
But my point was it fell through and he needed money. So we got Top Gun Maverick.
He needed money.
I don't know. Maybe Scientology wants to form a country.
I'm down to my last 100 million, guys. Come on.
Seriously, all the lawsuits and best PR, they're like, look Tom, here's what we need you to do.
I've given half a billion dollars in the past five years. What do you need me to do now? We need you to do Top Gun Maverick.
That's what we need you to do. Forget about the cruise line in the lawnmower shop. You've been trying to open for the past three years.
We know you love lawnmowers. Can we do Top Gun on lawnmowers?
They've got to file. Every time they have a PR disaster, it's like, all right, let's look through. Okay, risky business too.
Here now, 60 years old, your parents are away.
What do you do?
Oh, man. Hooray for Scientology.
Yes. That'll be an upcoming episode, our Scientology episode, which every great podcast has to have.
One of the many things that will get us canceled.
Yes. Or personally erased. I was just joking Scientology.
It's all a joke.
He wasn't though.
We'll edit that out. Don't worry. For our own safety.
So yeah.
What else do you need to squeeze out of this film? Would you recommend it? Should people go see it?
I think people should go see this one.
I think they should leave their expectations at the door, not overthink it.
Totally.
And just enjoy it for the ride that it is.
Get some popcorn. Just sit there. Enjoy it.
It's fun. It's exciting. Oh, I was going to mention the Dark Star.
I thought, man, that looks like a real plane. Is that a real plane? I'm sure it doesn't go mock a thousand or whatever stupid thing.
But I was like, maybe that's it looks like, like I'm declassified or some sort of prototype or something. No, it's not. It's not a real plane.
It was made up, but it was made up by people who make real planes.
So Lockheed Martin actually put together a design, and the emblem for the group that makes the design is on the plane, you know, that weird looking skunk that seems kind of random on the back of the plane.
I didn't notice it.
It's got a Pepe Le Pew on the rear fin. That's their emblem, I guess. So they make all these stealth-ish aircrafts or these black airplanes going back to, it looked like the SR-71 when I Googled it.
So anyway, so they designed this. They just, I guess, threw it together. And then it was mocked up.
It's not a real plane, obviously, but they just made a cardboard one or something. And used it for the film. And it looked totally believable.
I was like, is that a real plane? So that was kind of cool. So, you know, a lot of cool stuff.
This was a quality production. No real problems with it. Jennifer Connelly is amazing.
She looks great in it, but her character wasn't exactly like multi-layered. She's not going to win an Oscar for this. Not her fault, obviously, but not that much to work with.
There's just a lot of closeups and facial expressions and, you know, like Jon Hamm was very good, but, you know, I guess he was acting in as much as that's not his real personality.
Right.
But it wasn't exactly a real show off of his talent. I'm looking forward to seeing his Fletch movie, which I'm sure probably won't be amazing, but I really like the original Fletch, actually both of them.
And I'm curious to see what they do to kind of resurrect that. And Jon Hamm has been funny in some roles, so we'll see.
Yeah, he's pretty good. Could be. He's a great actor, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, I think he does some things very, very well. And that's more than I can say about a lot of actors. Not that I'm a great actor or anything like that, but I think some actors just sort of do a good job not distracting you with their acting.
But I think Jon Hamm actually can bring a lot to a role and can be really engaging and fun and interesting and carry scenes. And that's great.
And it was interesting that he's not, I don't know if it's a conscious choice or not, but it doesn't seem like he's had a lot of leads. I don't know if he kind of blew it or it was the pandemic or he had other things going on in his life.
But it was interesting to me to see him in a supporting role in this film, especially one that's not, you would almost think like a character actor would, would go in that role more so than a lead.
But I guess that just speaks to the quality of this production.
Yeah, and all the actors I think held their own in this. There was no one distracting, no one knew, oh my God, this person's horrible.
None of that.
It was really well done. The editing I thought was excellent.
Pretty tight.
The sound design was great.
Killed it. Visuals killed it.
Great work, Top Gun.
Top notch. You don't make a sequel? Tom Cruise's.
Tom Cruise.
It's set up for one, isn't it?
Well, better question. If this IP landed in your lap, let's say you worked your way up in Scientology. They were like, all right, look, this is your big chance.
We want to see that you can handle celebrities. Maybe you and Tom have developed a kinship over your shared love of almost killing yourselves. And so they're like, all right, you're our guy.
You're the new Scientology head producer. What do you got? It's this or Risky Business 2.
And you say, I'm going to go with Top Gun 3. What are you going to do with it? Where are you going to go with this?
What's your pitch? What's your direction?
The most obvious one would be to follow Rooster and see where he ends up. Okay.
So Top Gun Rooster, are you going to put Tom Cruise in this one? Or is he going to take a back seat? Or is he going to be flying planes?
It's a really good question.
Because if you wanted to really dial up the characterizations and the actual drama, you might want to do it as him turning into one of the only the instructor, and he doesn't end up flying.
And there's some kind of tension around that, even more so than this movie, where he can't fly.
You're going to put Tom Cruise in a Top Gun movie, and he's not going to be flying the final mission. Is that what you're pitching?
Yeah, but it's not going to fly. No studio can do it. This is the one that doesn't get me.
What year are you making this film?
I don't know.
It's been 36 years since the original, so it might be 2065.
Well, if Tom Cruise can stand up, I'm pretty sure he's not going to be in the film. Yeah, you're going to have to use like some footage to kill him in the first opener.
Why don't we just do Tom Top Gun drones? How about that? It's just drones.
They're all in a room. And they're flying drones.
They have apps on their phones.
Yeah. And they're just flying drones on there. And it's just cutting between them.
And tilting back and forth.
And it's all grainy drone footage.
It's all black and white. So those are the scenes.
Grainy drone footage.
And them just talking to each other.
Like muted audio, like crackling noises. And they have like sodas and beers next to them while they're working. Like pause to take a drink and the drone like dips down.
Exactly.
The future, right? Didn't they say that in this movie? That was the future.
You have highway to the danger zone with the like elevator music version, like playing in the room that they're in during the final mission.
In the final missions, the drone flying for like 13 hours over the Middle East, just in the clouds.
Just doing a big circle, big reconnaissance circle.
The beginning starts off with him hitting autopilot and then just sitting back, having a couple beers and then he's talking about the other Top Guns.
Oh, remember that part in Top Gun Maverick?
It's an elderly Tom Cruise playing the Top Gun video game. I got to beat this level. I can do it.
Okay, honey.
But that's a big twist at the end during the whole thing. You think he's actually doing this stuff, but no, he's in the basement.
Oh, man.
I think that's it. I didn't really think about a sequel. I know they opened up for it, but I mean, what are they going to do now?
Did they really though?
I feel like they learned their lesson or Tom Cruise learned his lesson or whatever somebody did not to make these movies and try to set up a sequel. I think they learned that lesson. They tried it with Mission Impossible.
God help me here. What was the one where they tried to make Jeremy Renner? Was it Four?
Where they tried to pass the torch?
Oh, yeah. I saw that one. What?
Ghost Protocol or something? There's another one. I don't know.
Let's get the name of it.
Sure. But they've tried that multiple times with these, I don't want to call them fraudulent sequels, but these time gap enhanced sequels where they've tried to bring back the main actor and then pass the torch, and it doesn't work.
I'm sure it's worked once, but I can't think of a single example of when that's worked. So I think they've learned, just cut that stuff. Don't have a final scene where Tom's like, hey, maybe someday you're ready.
Maybe someday you'll be the instructor, you'll teach the kids a thing or two, and then it's a cut to Rooster and it ends. They don't even do that much. It's like if the lead actor dies, the property dies unless somebody comes up with a better idea.
Indiana Jones, great example. How many times have they tried to pass the torch? I think it's a classic example of don't do this.
They're going to wheel Indy out. There's another Indiana Jones movie coming out, and it may as well be Weekend at Bernie's 4.
Didn't he get injured or something? They had to stop production forever.
You're going to have to be more specific. He's been injured on every film that they brought. Not every.
Star Wars, this, I'm sure. Because he's not an action hero, but they wheel him onto the set, and they drag him around Weekend Bernie style, and now they're using CGI to de-age and all that.
Because I hate for this to be on record because I'm sure I'm going to eat these words. But Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford. He's not the only one.
But without Harrison Ford, I really don't think you can sell Indiana Jones. Not in the ways they're trying. It's not as easy as just throwing another actor into that role.
It's much, much more complicated.
It's iconic. Right.
Or more time has to pass. The actor has to be so far long gone that you can't even pretend like their corpse is cracking a whip.
If that's the case, if the audience believes, even incorrectly, that that actor could play that role, then that's what they want.
Yeah, I see your point.
They don't care. So I think trying to do Top Gun Rooster, I think it's a dead end.
Yeah, it may very well be.
Until the actor is, until Tom Cruise is completely retired and elderly, and this actor somehow who played Rooster has done some more films and he's, if he's well loved and he has his own reputation, not based on this film or not only based on this,
and he's done some really great stuff, then you could bring him back like 20, 30 years down the road and maybe do something with it. But if you want to make a sequel, you know, anytime soon, I don't think, I think it has to be, it's got to be like
And what would the plot be?
I mean, would it be?
Well, those bad guys are back, I'll tell you that much.
They rebuilt the plant, done.
No, no, no, it has to be something different, right? So we, you've got most of this film, it's a short pitch, right? Tom Cruise is back, number one, second sentence is, and the enemy is at it again.
The third sentence has to involve the phrase Top Gun School. And then the fourth sentence is, but what really makes it matter is fill in the blank relationship slash heart.
Mad lids.
And that's your pitch, right?
Like, you know, having lost his best friend years ago, and then his new best friend in the last film, Tom Cruise's Maverick has to decide if he's going to make it work with Jennifer Connelly or go back one last time to say-
The highway to the dangerous. His new best friend or his best friend's kid or the son of Iceman or whatever, right?
He's got to go back one more time because he's been taken hostage, you know, not Tom Cruise, but whoever it is is taken hostage or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, it's got to be, it's paint by numbers.
So like Tom Cruise behind enemy lines because his, like, friend's kid got shot down and now he's being held prisoner.
Yeah.
I mean, it's got to be something like, oh man, like Iceman's kid has been taken hostage. He's a Marine or a Marine probably, and you know, or she whatever, been taken hostage behind enemy lines.
And Tom Cruise gets involved again using the status that he's gained after this last mission. And he finds out that their plan is to send drones in.
But Tom believes that the drones are going to kill, you know, it's going to, it's not going to work and it's going to end up with the death of whatever.
So he sets off to prove that it can be done with, you know, some kick-ass plane, you know, the latest whatever the Navy has flying these days, whenever this one finally comes out and he has to earn his way back into the cockpit just to prove
whatever. And some of the characters from this film are back in supporting roles to play key, you know, key part in his journey back to whatever. And then ultimately, nope, he's, he doesn't succeed.
He's just going to be on the aircraft carrier while they launch the drones, but then a surprise attack by the enemy disables the drones.
And Tom has to take off from a short runway and you know, his final mission and everybody's sure that he's going to die because he's old and it's impossible.
And he doesn't even have a wing man because the one wing man is too far away or has to engage in a dogfight and that's Rooster or whatever.
And it's just him.
Cruise alone and you know, he's going to die. But oh my God, he, you know, the explosion, he pulls out of it right at the end and he doesn't die.
And then, oh, nope, there's a twist and it looks like he's going to die, but actually just the jet gets destroyed. And in a move that harkens back to the original Top Gun, he survives somehow and he's back on board.
That's the only face I got. That's it. That was the end.
Well, you don't have to keep saying that. You're good with that. You're talking about your emotions, Tom.
I don't get, I don't get the nuance. It's the only face I got.
They're trying to be empathetic and connect with you. They're trying to offer support. It's been an honor knowing you because clearly you cannot connect as a human being.
So I'm just, I'm not gonna mess with you.
What are these sounds coming out of those mouths? Weird. All right.
Let me put my helmet back on. That was weird.
I don't have feelings because I've gotten rid of my thetans. Stop trying to engage with me.
No one needs feelings, but I like that plot. It brings in the drones. It brings in Tom.
It brings in the solo mission that he can only do, right?
Yep.
The twists and turns. Everyone's worried about. It's a nail-biter.
Everyone's against it. He has to steal the plane, of course, because someone leaves the keys in the plane.
He's like, oh, to prove it earlier. Yeah. No, I think there should be a scene where they pull the cover off of a fighter and they have to blow the dust off of it, and then the dust lands on Tom Cruise, and then they have to blow the dust off of it.
But they don't think it's Tom Cruise because he stands perfectly still, and they think it's like a mummy or like a museum piece, and then he moves and then he shakes off the dust and then he's back in the cockpit.
Yeah.
Okay. I think another interesting question, what are the odds that they're going to make a sequel? Obviously, this movie has made a ton of money.
It'll keep making money. But I don't know. I think it depends on how much trouble Scientology gets into.
What do you think? Do you think they'll make another one?
I don't know. I don't know how this works in terms of like who owns that property. Is it the studio that owns the property, the rights to Top Gun, or is it like an individual producer?
I guess that's a big question.
Yeah. There's a lawsuit right now. Some dude wrote an article about the Top Gun school.
I guess Paramount, whoever it was, bought the rights to that article and made the movie, the original. And then I believe those rights reverted back to him. And there's a lawsuit where he's suing.
He said, well, you didn't finish the new film until after the rights reverted back to me, so you should have paid me for that.
But I guess at this point, regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit, that guy who wrote that article technically owns the rights or part of the rights, so they'd have to write him a big check. But I mean, when's that been an obstacle, right?
Right.
I mean, I guess as soon as Disney buys Paramount or whatever, then the next thing they're going to do is get the rights to Top Gun and create an animated series or something.
Yeah, something.
But yeah, so it's doable, no doubt. There's enough money.
I'm surprised that it's not a series now, or that it has never been made into a series about Top Gun school.
It's ridiculously expensive. It's just going to be a lot of muscley people pushing each other around and locker rooms and stuff.
You know, the drama of their personal life. Like, you know, they do it with firefighter shows or like the police precinct or whatever. The same concept.
You know what I mean?
I get what you mean. I get what you mean.
ER, but this is at the flight school. So every episode has the flying aspect to it, but it's mostly about their personal lives.
Right. But you don't mean as part of this universe or as a reference to these films, you mean just the naval aviator school, correct? Yeah.
Okay. I agree. Yeah.
Actually, I wonder if they ran into a rights issue, because it is weird that they... You know what? Maybe it is at the expense.
Yeah.
Because they're like, yeah, a bunch of CGI planes and we'd have to every week, there'd have to be some sort of...
You have to put them in the air.
There's got to be something. Yeah.
Cost prohibitive, maybe.
Yeah. That's probably why. Otherwise, it makes perfect sense that they do it.
It's a slam dunk.
Yeah, for sure. Interesting. All right.
So again, you picked it. Final words, any thoughts about this you didn't cover?
Final words is that it's really a great popcorn flick. So if you're into action movies with a lot of things blowing up and you suspend disbelief about some of the silliness that happens, it's a great ride.
Yeah. If you want your kids to become fighter pilots or enter the military, you probably want to drag them to this film.
Yeah. As most parents do.
This one, put this one to rest for another 35 years.
Until Thomas Cruise's Cruises comes out.
All right. Thanks a lot.
All right. Take care.