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Top Gun 2

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Thought that occurred to me today: whether they meant to or not, they really did set Ed Harris's character up as a traitor to aviatorhood through one subtle detail. When he showed up to shut Mav's program down, he wasn't wearing his leather jacket with his khakis. He was wearing an Ike jacket with them like a fucking shoe.
 

Random8145

Registered User
To me it suffered from the same phenomenon as Creed in that the main character who we should be caring about (Adonis Creed in Creed and Rooster in Top Gun: Maverick) wasn't the star. Not only that, they were cast as no-name, relatively bad actors. Maverick's story is already told and there's really nowhere else to go for his character development as someone over 50 years old in the twilight of his career, thus focusing on him in the sequel leads to bland writing. His role should have been similar in scope to Viper's in the original.

So then after that we're left with lots of pew pew and swish swish, without the 'it's so bad it's good' bar scenes with cheesy pickup lines and homoerotic locker room scenes. And the 80s/90s were generally better at building tension and story arcs with action scenes than movies in the 21st century that just focus on sensory overload.
Some people I have read say they are glad that they didn't go the route of making it where he was a secondary character where the younger characters took over as the stars. Personally I agree in that I prefer Maverick being the star.
 

Random8145

Registered User
You guys talking about realism need to remember the original Top Gun was not meant to be realistic. The whole idea was marketed to the Navy to create a film that would be a fantasy portrayal of being a Navy pilot. So it isn't surprising the sequel was similar in this regard. Some of you are saying the flying wasn't realistic, well they had Mav in an old beat-up F-14A take out TWO 5th Gen fighters :)
 

Random8145

Registered User
Forgetting (and forgiving) the ridiculousness of the overall plot for a moment, it seems the weakest part of the script was actually pointed out by Jon Hamm. Maverick spent 2 weeks (and a lot of screen time) showing his students that they couldn't do the mission. Yes, the scene where Maverick then goes out and shows everyone it can be done is meant to address his weakness as an instructor, but that was lazy writing and in the end, he didn't actually have them go do it as a team until the actual mission. It was kind of a "what was the point of that?" moment for me.
Maybe I am misremembering, but wasn't he kind of supposed to be teaching them that the key to piloting (in the film) is not to think while doing it?
 
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