It feels like one of many ironies that Top Gun was ultimately the product of an Israel-born Jewish man. For in writing an article for California Magazine in 1983, Ehud Yonay would create one of the most beloved-by-the-goyim films of all-time. His “protagonists,” detailing real-life fighter pilots with the call signs Yogi and Possum, become Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards), the “stick” and the “backseater,” respectively (just one of many gay innuendos the story provides). Like quite a few 80s movies, a thoroughly-researched “slice of life” article was so often the basis for the script (see also: Urban Cowboy). And Yonay already laid the groundwork for movie potential by referring to casting in his description, “Yogi… is twenty-six years old and has the gangly good looks of a John Travolta [there’s that Urban Cowboy connection again]… Possum… is twenty-five and more the Ryan O’Neal type, with brown hair and mustache.” It’s also Possum who says, as Goose might, “You wish you could do it over again… but in the real world you’re not going to get a second chance.” This alluding to any mistakes made while engaging in drills and simulated combat throughout the training course.
But even before Yonay was researching his comprehensive article about an institution established in 1969 (a year that’s in keeping with the jock-ish “humor” of Yonay’s subjects), Cruise was already starting to build his own reputation in Hollywood. Indeed, perhaps getting his first noticeable role in 1981’s Taps was an inevitable precursor to something like Top Gun, which shifted from the military to naval aviation in subject matter. The buildup to Top Gun was seemingly made all the more inevitable by Cruise starring in a film directed by Ridley Scott, called Legend, the year before. Possibly hoping that the other Scott brother might give him better luck at the box office, Cruise went with Tony for Top Gun.
But it was Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson (before the drug addiction that totaled $60,000 a month took his life) who first saw potential in developing a story out of Yonay’s evocative prose. One that didn’t come across as quite so Republican in iconography (otherwise, a Berkeley-based publication wouldn’t have printed it) until brought to life onscreen. Of course, when one delves into anything related to matters of U.S. defense, they’re bound to broach the topic of conservatism. For who doesn’t love spending money on “defense” more than Republicans? Themselves accusatory of liberals being pinko peaceniks who will cause us all to die because of how vulnerable they leave us to attack when they’re in charge of government. In the 80s, at the height of Reagan-backed conservative politics, it was only natural that a movie like Top Gun should do well at the box office. The fact that it has repeated its success in 2022 doesn’t bode well for the party that’s slated to take hold of the presidency next (for this continued interest in the “storyline” smacks of both “Goldwater Republicans” and Trump loyalists showing up to see it and flex their own spending power to reveal what sort of “representation” they want in the mainstream).
While one might have also hoped for a better effort at modernizing what was originally an extremely chauvinistic script, the only thing done to mitigate the non-political correctness of the original was to add in a female fighter (Monica Barbaro), a Black fighter (Jay Ellis) and a Hispanic fighter (Danny Ramirez). Other than that, Top Gun: Maverick does its best to stay “relevant” merely by shying away from the brutish dialogue that made it so popular among yuppies and jocks in the first place. In the original screenplay, for example, an A7 pilot at the bar asks Goose foreshadowingly, “You know the fighter pilot’s motto? It’s better to be dead than to look bad.” Giving us some of the homophobia of the day (apparently to mask the homoeroticism), Goose replies, “I don’t know, Frank, anybody gets off on bombing the shit out of dirt has got to be queer.” His next interaction at the bar is with Slider (Rick Rossovich), who mockingly asks whose ass he had to kiss to get into Top Gun. Goose returns, “The list is long, but distinguished.” Slider quips, “So’s my Johnson.” Hardy-har-har. But that’s “just the tip” of the iceberg on dick jokes in Top Gun, including ample talk of getting a hard-on whenever something exciting happens (“Don’t tease me,” one of the fighters responds to that announcement from one of his peers). Again, the homoeroticism of it all.
And obviously, the coup de grâce for exemplifying that is the volleyball scene during which Kenny Loggins’ “Playing With the Boys” “swells” without any sense of irony in the background to really drive home the “underlying” (read: glaring) point that this is all very homo, complete with constantly sweating bodies and the sexual tension of locked eyes throughout the movie. In fact, Maverick gets so “lost in the game” (a.k.a. the sculpted, exposed physiques of his brethren) that he ends up being late to his dinner with Charlie (Kelly McGillis). Oh well, she’s just a dumb bitch who will forgive him, right? Like Evelyn forgiving Patrick Bateman (who might have been just as easily played by Cruise as he was by Christian Bale).
Another notable scene (that also occurs in the aforementioned bar) of homoeroticism is reimagined from Yonay’s description, “It is the Wednesday night happy hour, and the small, noisy room is packed with pumped-up fighter jocks. There is a lively trade at the bar, mostly in light beer, but out of this crowd of fifty or so men no more than three are looking at the nearly nude dancers. With raw sex waving right in front of their eyes, these supremely healthy young males are standing around in twos and threes and talking about the hop. You don’t even have to listen to catch on—just watch their hands tracing loops and rolls and aerial ambushes with the grace of a ballerina’s.” Here, too, Yonay underscores the gay vibe of these men, who are more enraptured with talking to each other about “yanking” and “hard decks” than focusing on women. Alas, that wouldn’t make for a very successful Hollywood propaganda movie. And so, writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. added the character of Charlie Blackwood, an astrophysicist Maverick initially encounters at the bar. In real life, a San Diego haunt called Kansas City Barbecue that got put on the map afterward, branding itself with the nickname “Top Gun Bar” in the wake of the film’s success.
What ensues between Maverick and Charlie is commenced with a cringey scene that more than borders on harassment as Maverick tries to pick her up by offering his own karaoke rendition of The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (made cringier by the fact that Phil Spector wrote it). When she doesn’t take the “bait,” Maverick opts to get creepier by following her into the bathroom and continuing to try talking her into a dalliance. All part of that Repub male belief that “she wants it bad” even if she’s just “playing it coy.” All you have to do is “lay it on thick” and she’ll “give in” eventually. Which Charlie does, as it’s all part of the male-geared fantasy of how things “naturally function” that Top Gun helps to furnish and perpetuate.
Tom Cruise plays into that perpetuation as the last of a generational crop of what can now be looked upon at the new “Old Hollywood.” Starting in the 80s with the rise of actors such as himself, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Robert Downey Jr., it’s clear with hindsight that such levels of stardom—once shrouded in mystery and glamor as they were—is not the stuff of the present, dominated instead by “transparency” and “influencer” culture. But no one was more influencing than Cruise after Top Gun, which might have been part of what led him to re-team with Tony Scott for 1990’s Days of Thunder, where he met and married his second (and longest-running) wife, Nicole Kidman. This marriage marked a new era and persona in the Cruise timeline as he started to veer away from the more jock/meathead roles that had elevated him to success in the 80s. Nonetheless, the Top Gun damage had been done.
And that “meatheadedness” that the Republican male so relishes is established immediately in the introductory title card, when someone chose to spell what should have been “ensure” as “insure.” But at Top Gun, it’s not how hard you think, it’s how hard you don’t. Indeed, one of the lines reiterated over and over again in the sequel to Goose’s son, Rooster (Miles Teller) is, “Don’t think, just do.” That might as well be the Republican mantra (in addition to “Don’t Tread On Me”). And that’s a message received loud and clear in an atmosphere of “good ol’ boys” who have been told for so long that they’re “the best.” Which is how someone with as much hauteur as Maverick can come to be.
At the same time, the dichotomy is that those who “just obey” are the most likely to succeed in an organization built upon such conservative values. Ones reiterated and “defended” with the constant presence of a “loud and proud” American flag (ubiquitous in Top Gun), the banner under which acts of war and violence can be “justified” in the eyes of the U.S. Department of Defense. And in the 80s, as is the case once again, there was no greater threat to the “red, white and blue” and its so-called “ideals” (namely, capitalism) than the Soviet Union. Therefore, Hollywood execs seizing upon any chance to portray members of the U.S. Armed Forces as men defending “honor” and “democracy” by way of, in this case, playing “little games in the sky” with millions of taxpayer dollars. Oh, and also showing plenty of masculinity via Tom Cruise’s signature jeans and leather jacket outfitted with patches galore (including the flags of China and Taiwan, obviously rattling the former country).
Maverick’s arrogance reaches a peak when Charlie refuses to show him preferential treatment or compliment his flying in any way during class, giving the audience a chance to see what a wounded ego can wreak upon the rest of us (long before fellow 80s staple Donald Trump became the prime illustration of that). Her ostensibly cold shoulder results in him stalking off toward his motorcycle and revving it obnoxiously as she tries to talk to him and explain why she’s acting aloof. “I can’t hear you!” he insists before driving off. It’s a spot-on visual representation of trying to get one’s voice heard to any man, let alone a conservative one. And yes, it’s safe to assume that Maverick votes Republican. “Roguish” or not in his flying, there’s no doubt he reveals his “cautious” views on life when it comes to the ballot. Views characterized by the misogyny, bigotry and combativeness of the Republican party. Where it’s not so much “a need for speed,” but a need for greed, putting one’s own personal interests above all else.
Incidentally, Yonay died in Israel in 2012 of brain cancer. You know, what most Republicans possess already by non-virtue of their “beliefs” parading as “good policy.”
