Top Gun is on the History Channel?!

BUT then unfortunately you decided to score these movies along a “suck / do not suck” axis which is the wrong way to think about them imo

This absolutely belongs in a different thread but something I've been thinking about while flipping through the "how old is ILX" thread and writing in two dozen others: i'm eying middle age with a fairly well-rounded life to show for it. Most of you don't actually know me but I am, by literally anyone's standards, a remarkably well-culturally travelled, overeducated, curious, thoughtful guy. That's not to toot my own horn or act like I'm any better than whoever you are; those are just statements of fact. Yay me!

Separately, I've been posting on ilx about almost everything I've been thinking about for over two decades. I'm surely capable of casual online dumbfuckery and jackanapes galore but, with embarrassing exceptions, mostly confined to the first decade of the millennium, I've made a heartfelt effort to not forget that there are humans on the other side of the screen and to be kind and patient first. Being treated as if I'm a dolt isn't something I would put up with in any other place on the internet but this forum and the reason I choose to make that exception has become incredibly difficult for me to clarify or put words to. On the rare occasions that anyone's tried that shit with me in real life, I've quit jobs and voided contracts and broken up friendships.

On post-COVID ILX, I am getting the sense of being treated like a dolt and seeing other people treat each other as if they're dolts far more often than usual. Perhaps it feels more noticeable because there are increasingly fewer of us. Sometimes that behavior stems from more hot blooded issues like politics and gender and culture shift and sometimes it boils over in conversations about (checks notes) how fast a top ten list is produced or fucking "Top Gun II".

I'm not mad about it exactly (in a corncob kinda way) and I'm certainly well aware that ILX was violently mean spirited in its youth. But seriously, almost all of us here are now at least in our thirties and the majority of us are well past 40. Aren't we finally over shit stirring and ad hominem and snark and unfocused aggression and derision and bad faith readings of one another's jotted off texts? Is that all there is? In the one digital space where quite a few of us have devoted more time than any other on the internet, couldn't we make it a rule to give each other the benefit of the doubt and approach conversations as something other than batting practice? I'm aware everybody has history with one another and there are various feelings, hard and otherwise. But couldn't the expectation reasonably be that, moving forward and until proven otherwise, people that you've known even glancingly in common fellowship for over a decade will be expected to approach the table with good will? Or is "lol nothing matters" and demanding that you're right on opinion-based conversation in this space, in what has got to be the least complicated of relationships, going to be a lifetime ethos?

Just typing all this out is probably a sign it's time for me to direct more of my attention to more productive obsessions. Or maybe it's just February.

i'm willing to bet that Maverick is a great movie if you're 11. Turning Red is also a great movie if you're 11. The latter was a far more enjoyable and believable work for me and it was a cartoon about a girl who turns into a panda.

If you'd like me to loop that all together, I'd suggest that the hyper-prevalency of discourse-as-jousting, the social acceptability of brusque dismissal because "you're right", associating your emotional life with junkfood culture, and allowing communication via postcard to be our primary method of friendly conversation all feed into one another. but that's chapter 7 and i don't wanna get ahead of myself.

not to underline my "its all love" post above any further forks i hope that my long entry itt can as a post be read as such without anyone seeing any serious rancour in it

but

i have to point out explicitly that imo your takedown of the two movies does in many ways suggest that anyone who watches them while leaving aside the elements you havent are remiss in doing so

the discussion as to what can and cannot be left behind in analysis of anything is ofc a fraught and personal one and furthermore the intent and pitch of the creators doesnt absolve all sins but again i have to invite you to consider whether top gun and top gun maverick are movies which fail so utterly on the elements that they promise and are obviously prioritising such that a primary analysis of them based on the elements you have instead chosen has much merit

i can only repeat, it doesnt!

its entirely possible to watch movies wrong. any thread on a movie on ilx demonstrates this

for my part thats in no way a personal attack, youve just watched these two wrong and in watching them wrong and bringing it here in such high brio (no bad thing imo) youve raised a defence of watching them right, sorry if that feels like an asskicking for my part its not meant to

not to underline my "its all love" post above any further forks i hope that my long entry itt can as a post be read as such without anyone seeing any serious rancour in it

i have to point out explicitly that imo your takedown of the two movies does in many ways suggest that anyone who watches them while leaving aside the elements you havent are remiss in doing so

Beyond that, I can tell you definitively that you've misunderstood me, either because of poor writing on my part or your own presumptions: I'm not attempting to hector or be instructive by pointing out (for instance) that Cruise in both films is an unlikeable social miscreant who evokes no sympathy or interest; that just seemed obvious on the face of it. You don't have to see it the same way and I surely wouldn't mind if you didn't and christ on a cracker i feel like I've said that eighteen times already.

its entirely possible to watch movies wrong. any thread on a movie on ilx demonstrates this

for my part thats in no way a personal attack, youve just watched these two wrong

I lived through the 80's in America. I owned the (very bad) NES Top Gun cartridge. I slow danced to "Take My Breath Away" in junior high. I've seen literally hundreds of popcorn movies in the theaters and on video and at drive ins and on television and etc et al. I know how to both watch this movie in the sense that it's asking me to watch it, how to read it within multiple contexts, how to take it on face value and how to listen internally to how I'm responding to it and then stay true to that response. I know the right way to watch motherfucking Top Gun. Being told that I don't is as offensive to me as it would be to you if I informed you that you don't know how to properly read The Chronicles of Narnia. You're not applying an asskicking, you're just being rude and entirely incorrect and you should probably be aware of that.

you're also now reading my posts wrong :-*

nb you watch top gun with your heart not yr eyes man

my heart found this pap rancid and rejected it as the soulless cash grab/tom cruise midlife crisis it was. maybe your heart needs glasses.

speaking of reading a post wrong, you may have missed "i know... how to listen internally to how I'm responding and then stay true to that response."

i get that there are elements of these fast plane go fast go bang films that are speaking to you on a gut level. i understand why they are speaking to you at a gut level. they do not speak to me and, presuming you don't think I'm putting you on or you're not just fucking with me, it would go a long way for me that you can voice they are not a truth universally acknowledged.

otherwise, i'm coming back in to the Banshees of Inisherin thread and OH the opinions I'll have

you're doing the thing you say deems is doing

"fast plane go fast go bang"
"soulless cash grab"

etc - these are all such snooty condescending ways to describe something other people love

it doesn't mean those things aren't true for you, in your gut, but read what you said again about civility!

ive addressed all of that forks and tbh we are discussing this on different levels of anger and commitment to the bit (not that i wish my inputs here to be painted as insincere) which im not sure either of us are enjoying as we ought talking about movies on ilx

ive no issue with thoughts on banshees going into a banshees thread!

again perhaps i'm being overly dry. Though honestly at this point, the snarl of what this franchise represented to me as a kid and as an adult, disliking the tone of the conversation, feeling like my buttons have been too pushed, and being frustrated by not being able to be clearly heard given how hard I'm trying are all adding up to logorrhea and fixation in a way that's scooting into the chemical. And I genuinely don't care much about the films one way or the other, except that I think they're probably not good for the soul of the country. I do care about the community though, so probably time to punch out.

(Banshees is not very good, which I said already, but for totally different reasons and I dunno that it’s worth much more consideration)

are you people still here?!

Now I will probably need to catch the remake. Maybe even the original.

Only thing I thought was good was that baseline from Take my Breath Away. But there's more.

I am cultured and smart btw.

that’s just like, your opinion, man

It is nothing but it is MY nothing!

i don’t know if anyone on ilx knows my real life but i’m smart, i have all these things that i know and i’ve done that prove i’m smart, and that means i can’t ever be wrong, and if you’re telling me i’m wrong or that i’m approaching something incorrectly that’s being condescending and i’m going to write several endless posts about it

i know poptimism doesn’t graft directly onto movies but being baffled that ppl would respond to and want to defend their enjoyment of the most popular movie in the country doesn’t strike me as different from enjoying and defending [pop star]. i’m aware tom cruise is evil tho

for the record i am a huge idiot and i approach all media as a huge idiot

QED

Or maybe it's just February.


this ain't nothing when you live in a northern city

I’m hearing this is the thread for the real culture appreciators. May I perhaps opine here?

Forks ftw for reals

(Even more so for the Banshees takes)

The notion that Banshees is unduly praised on here does not remotely match with the reality of the thread. That thread is always accepting haters!

I wouldn't know, I unbookmarked it pretty much the day after I saw it

Eric, you've got to stop thinking of yourself as one of the hundred neediest cases.

During a break in the filming of the hangar scene a group of Navy officers being used as extras approached Tony Scott and complained about the unrealistic collection of patches on the flight suits of the actors. He replied, paraphrasing, "We're not making this movie for Navy fighter pilots, we're making it for Kansas wheat farmers who don't know the difference."

fwiw i was once acquainted with a navy pilot who was an extra on top gun and can absolutely see him doing this. he also said that kelly mcgillis was a huge bitch, which made me like her a little bit better

lol, yeah that all tracks

I'm gonna talk about why I think they suck. You're gonna talk about why you think they don't. That's all fine!

yeah that’s not how a conversation works. if you don’t like something, you can say your bit about why you didn’t think it worked, etc.
if you stick around, then either: a.) you’re willing to see someone else’s point of view and be convinced that you like it or b.) you really think other people are wrong and they should come around to your point of view

let me assure you: I read what you wrote, forks, and you have definitely been heard. I don’t get what the end game is here — we’re all swayed and we think Top Gun and the sequel suck? it’s wild to me that you made the point you carved out a significant amount of time in your life to watch both movies. like, dude, there’s like four hours of movie if I’m doing my math right. are you factoring in the number of minutes you spent torrenting them and the time spent arguing on a message board?

imo top gun: maverick doesn’t subvert or refute the tom cruise successful hero formula in that he always saves the day, but unlike some other AAA action stars, he’s willing to have his characters wear their flaws on their sleeves (in the first act, he’s always triumphant and redeemed in the final act)

tg: maverick is, if anything else, about a middle-aged man who has failed to progress beyond his greatest loss and triumph, which were always sides of the same coin. the ending of the first movie leads us to believe he’s redeemed himself, that he’s no longer going to carry the death of his friend. he can grow up, move on, and progress through life.

this seems to be the case on the surface when the sequel begins, but then you realize — he’s a test pilot because his self-image hasn’t progressed one bit. he’s got no wife, he’s avoiding his peers, people repeatedly question why he’s still a low-ranking pilot instead of an admiral or mentor. it was bizarre to me when they showed him repeatedly posting on a message board about how he knows all kinds of things about all kinds of planes, has flown more types of planes than anyone else, and definitely isn’t posting his way through a mid-life crisis before he managed to be the first guy to hit mach ten in that new prototype but this might have just flown over my head, much like the fifth generation fighters in the movie’s conclusion

tl;dr sometimes you have to recognize there’s more to life than getting the girl, being the fastest pilot, and owning a cool motorcycle. but at the end it looks like maybe this time he keeps the girl, becomes a mentor/father figure, reconciles with his best friend/rival, and finally figures out how to age with dignity. pretty decent plot imo

Tom Cruise is 60 years old. He's been in approximately 53 movies.

So.

If this is his "midlife crisis" he's going to die when he's 120, and he'll probably be in at least another 50 or so movies.

Strap in, it's gonna b e a bumpy ride.

tom cruise plays a man of indeterminate age in most things these days

Apologies if I've said this before but: in the year 1983, my (Unitarian Universalist) Sunday school class got to vote on what movie we would see as our end-of-year treat. There were nine (9) votes for "Risky Business" and one (1) vote for "Terms of Endearment."

So yes, I first viewed the breasts of Rebecca de Mornay in the company of my church youth group. This was a formative experience and nothing before or since will ever rise to those heights of absurdity.

One of these days I am going to find out who voted for "Terms of Endearment." It has become my life's mission.

Eric, you've got to stop thinking of yourself as one of the hundred neediest cases

There isn't enough to keep me as busy as I should be, really

This absolutely belongs in a different thread but something I've been thinking about while flipping through the "how old is ILX" thread and writing in two dozen others: i'm eying middle age with a fairly well-rounded life to show for it. Most of you don't actually know me but I am, by literally anyone's standards, a remarkably well-culturally travelled, overeducated, curious, thoughtful guy. That's not to toot my own horn or act like I'm any better than whoever you are; those are just statements of fact. Yay me!

this is the funniest thing that has been posted on ilx in years

otm

if anyone thinks I’m a dolt (a word no one uses imo!) they’re keeping it from me. but I don’t think the reaction here was without precedent when people were talking about how a tv show hit them in personal, close to home ways and forks bombed in to shit on it without reading the recent posts (Bad Sisters iirc) without context gives that precedent. forks, you have maybe inadvertently been threadshitting for a while

I feel like things are pretty honest these days in these parts and internet communication is still messy but has a lot of prior work to contemplate.

the initial premise here was weirdly flawed. I was too young to watch Top Gun as a kid, but it was culturally omnipresent. I held myself as above the Bruckheimer school and perceived imperialist war machine crap for years, and also only watched the original in full a week before watching the sequel. I guess I’m a unicorn! But I seldom am, so it’s probably millions of us.

if anything, the past couple years have taught me you can do things guilt-free outside of the perception of imaginary cultural arbitrators. you can watch a dumb thing that makes you feel nice before bed. you can realize having the perfect playlist is dogshit compared to just sitting in a park or quietly making pottery.

there are no points to be traded in when you die, no one is going to squeak out their last gasp saying they wish they’d watched that obscure but acclaimed in small circles movie

This disagreement over the 2022 Top Gun Sequel has striking parallels with another disagreement over an Anglo-Irish Treaty

is there significant space between forks being wrong about a movie and "threadshitting"

yes

is engaging with him strongly on the former good

yes

is just flinging out the latter ok

no

is the point of the whole exercise to be able to disagree and entertain ourselves- id have said so

perhaps im wrong

honestly I think I could have diffused this situation had I pointed out "furtermore" soon as I read it but was too in my cups/beside myself at the time, anyways thank you for that

have not seen either top guns but I suspect everyone is otm in their own special way, I do think it is bullshit that kelly mcgillis wasn't involved on account of the crime of...being an old lady, we can't all look like jennifer connolly, or tom cruise who is older than my dad yet looks younger than me, somehow

He eats placenta for breakfast.

is just flinging out the latter ok

no

Watch that much TV

if you dont care about the hot dog sequel you are wrong

I had a hot dog the other day for the first time in about 16 years, it was fine

Aren't we finally over shit stirring and ad hominem and snark and unfocused aggression and derision and bad faith readings of one another's jotted off texts?