Even Tom Cruise can’t save us from this Danger Zone
So the new Top Gun movie rumours have been confirmed, but who will play the enemy?
I don’t envy the screenwriters working on a Top Gun sequel.
In case you missed the big news, Tom Cruise, who starred in the 1986 blockbuster, was asked about “rumours” of a Part 2 on an Australian morning show this week.
The ageless actor broke into his patented grin maximus, a full-faced smile that is designed to disorient mere mortals with its inscrutable exuberance. Then he replied as if the TV hosts were hard of hearing or he was auditioning for the lead role in a Jacob TwoTwo production: “It’s true. Yeah, it’s true. Yes. Yes. It’s true. It’s true . . . It’s happening. It is definitely happening.”
Since nostalgia is the drug Hollywood loves to peddle these days, a return to a military base in Miramar, Calif., should come as no surprise. Top Gun is one of those films that, three decades later, still conjures fond memories of a simpler time in which Cold War intrigue could serve as the feel-good subtext with a known enemy (Russia) and a free world that could safely place its trust in young and cocky American naval pilots with killer bodies and emotional blind spots.
Just hearing the words “Top Gun” takes me back to the ’80s in supersonic speed. I am a teenager alone in my bedroom, practising volleyball spikes with a balled-up sock while blasting “Danger Zone.”
Meanwhile, my parents downstairs glance at the ceiling and wonder how any of this qualifies as giving their children a better life.
Improvised “dog tags” — a dyedgreen rabbit’s foot from the Science Centre gift shop — dangle around my pencil neck. Prescription RayBans idle on a nearby shelf, ready for air-to-air combat lessons with a gorgeous instructor or an impromptu motorcycle joyride to the outreaches of Mississauga that will never happen.
That night, I will cuddle my pillow and fall asleep humming “Take My Breath Away.” Now I ask: How can a new Top Gun possibly connect with a new generation?
The geopolitical battle lines today are as smudged as Meg Ryan’s makeup in the original after — spoiler alert — Goose dies. Back then, the Russians were the bad guys, mysterious antagonists depicted in silhou- ette in the cockpits of MiG fighter jets. They were so universally accepted as the villains, they didn’t even need exposition, back stories or speaking parts.
But when Cruise’s Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell suits up for the next chapter in these far more turbulent times, who is the enemy?
It can’t be Russia. If anything, the sequel will be more believable if Maverick is taking orders from Moscow during a joint operation that targets rebels in Syria or hippies in California.
The real enemy of democracy and civilization today is the wretched, subhuman, barbaric parasites who’ve pledged allegiance to Daesh and who blow up children at pop concerts. These lunatics are animals.
But within the aerial milieu of Top Gun, Daesh’s lack of an air force seems like a cinematic non-starter.
You can’t have Maverick scrambling to take out a field of heavily armed goats. No sense in blowing $10K per hour to rent F-35s to perform dazzling stunts over caves.
Similarly, North Korea presents a range of challenges for filmmakers, not the least of which is the threat of a massive hacking of Scientology headquarters if the movie even attempts to make light of Kim Jong Un. A fictional storyline in which the Korean Peninsula serves as a theatre of war could very easily lead to real world consequences until “Great Balls of Fire” takes on a new meaning.
Besides, how would such a tale reconcile Maverick’s love of karaoke?
I suppose China could serve as the new enemy. On Friday, CNN reported that two Chinese Su-30 fighter jets had recently “intercepted a US Air Force radiation detection plane over the East China Sea,” with one of the foreign jets “flying inverted, or upside down, directly above the American plane.”
That is literally a scene from the original Top Gun! Only now the Chinese are stealing Maverick’s bold moves. And since the Chinese box office is now crucial to Hollywood success, it’s doubtful Beijing will be cast in the role of international foe.
Cruise says filming will start next year. By then, America’s place in the world is anyone’s guess. Maybe the movie can take place over the Mexican border. Maybe the movie will embrace changes in technology and Cruise will spend two hours operating drones by remote joystick while hitting on nubile recruits. Or maybe the new Top Gun can have a domestic plot. Maybe Cruise can lead a rescue mission of a powerful damsel in distress who is desperate to escape her captor and keeps giving signals to the world — a First Lady, for example, prone to stone cold staring and public hand swatting.
But what the new Top Gun will not do is capture the magic of the original.
I’m afraid we’ve lost that loving feeling. vmenon@thestar.ca