Friday

There are perhaps too many things to say about Top Gun. I'll restrict myself to just one element that I noticed upon watching the film again recently. When I was a young lad, joyfully frolicking in the fields of Sussex, I remember loving especially the bit at the end of the film when the pilots finally go to war and fight the Russians. Yet, the other day, I found this was exactly the bit that could've been dropped from the movie entirely. To recap for you, Goose dies and Maverick loses his nerve. He doesn't feel like he wants to be a pilot anymore. However, his superior tells him he has enough credits to graduate from the academy anyway. The ceremony takes place the next day. Maverick isn't there, and everyone worries that he has given up. Suddenly, of course, he appears, receives his award (or whatever it was) and congratulates Iceman (his nemesis) on being the best pilot. Everything has been settled, there is no longer anything else to prove. I would've ended the film there, perhaps the movie would've been better, but less successful, if it had. However, the pilots are then called to war, Maverick once again loses his nerves briefly, but then recovers them. We're shown that he's learnt his lesson, but still keeps a bit of his personality that makes him the best. Perhaps we do need to see this, but perhaps we don't. I felt it was slightly unnecessary and gratuitous, pandering to the boy rather than the man, but then that is who this film was made for.