Top Gun is on the History Channel?!

xp I'm discussing the sequel and comparing it to the original, which is only appropriate considering it is (occasionally a shot-for-shot) remake.

I haven't been condescending to you or anyone else here, I just don't agree with you. On the other hand, your suggestion that I don't post because I disagree with you is explicitly haughty.

it’s like looking for the culinary value in a hotdog, or eating one for the first time and
declsiming this has no value, there’s no good flavor, it’s just salt, it’s cheap and has no value etc

no newsflash. we recognize the experience but we enjoy those things it lacks. that’s what a hotdog is. it’s lack of culinary value is satisfying, scratches an itch. that it is cheap is also a value

top gun isn’t cinemaaaa. it’s just a movie.
lack of depth/value isn’t the headline. we all know what it is.
it’s a movie hotdog

Nothing personal, forks. But it’s not like you haven’t been laying the grumpy out kinda asking for it.

It’s a matter of taste. I’m just as aware of the structure as you are, but I appreciate the artistry of this kind of admittedly goofy thing more than you do. It’s well honed. Exceptionally so. Committee driven or not, it’s impeccably crafted.

If I sit in a theater at nearly 40 years old and physically feel an audience (and myself) electrified by, y’know, CINEMA… it’s a special thing.

Also do not agree that this is just a good hot dog.

i also agree with vegemite.

the original top gun is a very silly movie in many ways. however, i have gotten so much joy in my life by thinking of it. it's hard to describe what it means to have "danger zone" in my head for the vast majority of my life. it is a uniquely postmodern thing to perpetually have in the mind, i think (no one will ask me to explain what i mean by that, thank god)

not sure how i became the movie rockist in this scenario. I love all kinds of garbage and kitsch, mass produced and small scale.

this film isn't garbage and it's not a hot dog and it's not goofy. it's a carefully constructed device built by a team of specialists at a cost of over 200 million dollars, "impeccably crafted" with the obvious intention of re-engaging the movie public in the post covid era by preying on nostalgia for the eighties (a time, I'm sure you remember, of bleak conservatism, xenophobia and warmongering), that's comes freighted with sexism, cynicism and militarism. it's the second most popular film of the year in the united states (behind another that could also easily be described in all the same terms if you switch out 80's with aughties) and is being acclaimed as a masterpiece by the motion picture academy, the critical establishment, and the vox populi. It won!

I'm not being grumpy and i'm not being condescending or placing any kind of judgement on your enjoyment or acting like i'm telling you anything you all don't already know by pointing out its significant flaws on a thread where people are meant to discuss the film. I took the time to watch the first film after literal decades of avoiding it in preparation of giving this franchise a shot, which I daresay puts me in a pretty unique position to offer an appraisal. I thought that might be worthwhile but it sure feels like you all disagree. Anyways, I've seen two movies since and I'm fine moving on.

The Cruise will be with you always

Amen

forks you are correct about the film (it’s the first McQuarrie I’ve sorta hated) but I think most ppl itt who like it have made active, conscious decisions to not care about various of the things that annoy you, wrt to this piece of entertainment, so there’s not much to interrogate

plane go fast

the gravitas of a squinting skerritt

otm

i think

firstly

that coming into a movie deciding that you are going to analyse it through if not a primary lens of then certainly let's say with one of the lenses you have knowingly engaged being that of 2023 political hot points critique is something you should tbh question in yourself if that movie is top gun: maverick

the movie is a lot better than a hot dog but lets say for instance we're going with the hot dog analogy

you are not just critiquing the hot dog as if it ought to have been a fine dining experience, you have in fact shown up to a hot dog stand dressed in smart casual attire and demanded a table before complaining that all you have been offered is hot dog.

this is with reference to your criticisms of top gun: maverick only

to have attempted the same with top gun is to have turned up to where you are aware a hot dog stand was almost forty years ago, dressed in smart casual attire and demanded a table before complaining that the hot dog you have somehow thereby obtained is old.

the standard applied is a fucking nonsense, frankly and furtermore it not only adds nothing, the possibility that it might have added anything is plainly ridiculous- you are reviewing the ghost of a hotdog. aint nobody got time to read that no matter how they feel about that hotdog stand as it existed once, were they aware of it, nor indeed how they feel about hot dogs now.

the other general criticisms arent invalid insofar as they are in some places correct but they come from a position of holding yourself above the material (and crucially everything the material promised to be) which is a cardinal sin if the point of the movie is immersion.

i dont as a rule post on ilx anymore ofc but even before that id stopped posting mean things about shite that had 100% advertised they would be shite unless people insisted they were not shite outside of threads dedicated to the shite in question

but the critique offered of top gun original is dreadfully boring as well as 100% wrong- it's a technically superb hugely entertaining ridiculous and knowingly so macho homo warthrobbing planefest

it might be that people took the politics, it might even be that some people took the character of maverick- there is btw a subtle hint in the name that i believe you may have missed throughout, ask if stuck - seriously. i believe wholeheartedly that those people are watching the movie incorrectly and if your main beef about it is that none of it makes sense or that the sexual politics- disregarding the incredible charisma of the fictional character maverick played by the famous sex symbol of the time tom cruise, for context, remember- are less than you find personally credible or laudable remember you are critiquing the movie incorrectly not just because nobody is going to disagree but really because nobody has thought about top gun as an important primer for sexual nor international relations since the day it was released at least certainly not in a manner that in any way demanded a review somehow based around that aspect in february the year of our forks 2023

now so much for the ghost of hot dog. on to hot dog: maverick

its just a brilliant film. even if you were bent towards criticising a movie based on what it wasnt- speaking of traits that render a criticism invalid- youd be straight up wrong that this movie wasnt smart, almost uncanny in how it handles itself as a sequence of nostalgic touchpoints for a film that you couldnt make today and not be subject to a million reviews of the kind you dropped in with about the original above.

it vibes man. it vibes cheesy it vibes fun it vibes knowingly it vibes like you really didnt believe it could after so long it transports all but the least willing to a state of viewing where even your few valid criticisms (for a movie released now) are subject to the massive caveat that this is top gun island where topless ass smack volleyball sessions never went away where dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun slow motion pans let you know you're about to see some real shit baby where maverick has kept not only his liberty and his hairline but his ability to fly jets crash jets steal jets and shoot jets where jennifer connolly runs a bar just to keep herself in yacht and classic porsche money while awaiting the arrival of a cheshire cat cosplaying richard gere for forty odd years and theres no real need to think about any of that because you bought the ticket to top gun island having been there only a week ago and hating it and you sat there fuming that you still hate it but everyone around you has grins just like that same cheshire cat and each of them is totally immersed thinking

son of a bitch i think theyre gonna try to pull it off those crazy bastards they are gonna try to pull it off holy shit they might actually pull it off OH MY GOD THEYVE PULLED IT OFF

and this same cycle of incredulous disbelief occurs im going to say at least six times maybe ten during the movie with a crescendo mission that genuinely ranks up there with anything an action movie has put on screen in decades in terms of im moving in my seat ducking rocks here and i havent breathed in going on two minutes.

and that is the correct way to watch these movies.

dont call it a comeback

<3 u deems

Booming post. Post of the year.

The original still sucks :). I sat google-eyed and enraptured during the new one, which couldn't exist without the original.

hi darraghmac! i know you don't post much here anymore but it's mighty good to see you

The only analogy I could think of was Beau Travail.

Ok I truly don’t know ILX at all anymore

hi deems I’m not posting in this thread and I haven’t watched either of these movies I’m just saying hi

Ok I truly don’t know ILX at all anymore

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.),

Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pit?

but if I’m going to try to contribute basically as Tim says you sometimes have to put on your good time hat and if you are going to make the structural critique of the proverbial hot dog instead of wearing your good time hat as well you might as is your privilege it pays to be aware that everyone with the good time hat on knows the structural critique a lot of the time and could ably make it themselves so ultimately the structural critique addresses not the movie but the existence of the good time hat

since art does not remonstrate with us cf “what art is like” Tamen Harvard UP 2012 at some level of meta-critique the critic’s critique is always critique of the critic herself and an accounting for what happened to her when she ate that hot dog

which is to say and I say this a lot that a lot of time and frequently on this and other message boards someone will say “my arm hurts” and my instantaneous and sometimes angry impulse will be to say “what are you talking about my arm doesn’t hurt” and that’s the most important thing I’ve learned about myself from posting on the internet

i couldn't be more over this back and forth at this point but deems:

1) you've confused my actual means of thinking about things with "2023 political hot points critique"; i posted my genuine response on watching this which is that i find it offensive and stupid. sorry if that puts me in an ecosystem you consider underexamined but i get by alright.

2) your suggestion that there is "a right way to watch a movie" can fuck off and suggests that you are the one approaching this work with an agenda, not me.

3) your presumption that i am some sort of conceptual strawman interacting with the film on the eighth dimension while i pick my teeth with old issues of the paris review is a super weird projection. i watch and listen to and engage with 8 metric fucktons of media on a weekly basis and i come to all of it with presuppositions and yet i'm constantly surprised and caught off guard virtually daily. i expected this to suck and it did but that hardly caps my inability to engage with it in any way. Neither film entertained me or excited me and it's not because i was shut off to them or because they weren't Cocteau or because I can't enjoy boneheaded propaganda or because i can't recognize the things it does correct. It's because they are both bad films and because i didn't watch the first one when i was 12. if i have a thesis worth defending wrt to the sequel it's that it is nothing without nostalgia and i'm proof thereof. that's an interesting optical illusion as far as i can see, looked at with one eye slightly askant and you can see all the holes in it.

4) there is nothing "brilliant" about following the pattern of an earlier film to evoke nostalgiac response and there is nothing "brilliant" about the points they chose. it's paint by numbers simple and effective only insofar as you are enjoying the process of watching someone painting by numbers, which you seem to, so great? Weird that you get so much exhilaration out of it, but you do you.

6) all this metaphoric obfuscation of the film as hot dog or vibe or anything other than commodity is so much bullshit. i could have just said "hey these movies suck. i watched them and they're empty nonsense". I think I will: These movies suck. I watched them and they're empty nonsense. They evoked no emotional, adrenal or intellectual response out of me and that's because they are both bad, both on their own or in tandem. They did not entertain me or excite me and it's not because i was shut off to them or because they weren't Cocteau or because I can't enjoy boneheaded work or because I can't understand the time they're a part of or what they represent or their simplistic metaphors. It's because they are both bad films.

7) please enjoy watching your bad film your correct way as it seems to be bringing you joy but please browbeat somebody else next time as it's not appreciated. it's one thing to bring your own ideas to the table and it's another to fling them directly at other people's head as if you have sovereign right to defend THE SECOND MOST POPULAR FILM IN THE UNITED STATES as if it that championing serves anybody other than your sense that you have deep insight into the plane goes up high movie.

silby making good points but i'm pretty sure UP came out in 2009, not 2012

Darraghmac divebombing into this thread with an epically long post to rescue it from banality kinda reminds me of the way Glen Powell as Lieutenant Jake "Hangman" Seresin swoops dramatically into the climactic final action sequence of the 2022 American action movie "Top Gun: Maverick."

Unfortunately Darraghmac is lacking a badass fighter-pilot nickname; please remedy this forthwith.

"Pedant"

Not bad! Solid choice.

I confess I was trying to work up some kind of Kenny Loggins riff but wasn't getting far. "Highway to the Darraghzone" is too long. Dangermac?

my top gun handle would be "pipsqueak"

*pipsqueak's plane is the very first to go down in battle*

"goddammit pipsqueak! you little...you little...ya shrimp. ya pipsqueak, i loved ya, i did. you little tiny asshole rookie. ya beanpole. ya thin mint, i hated you so much, you small man. ya lil guy. ya lil pipsqueak i'm so sorry"

darraghmac otm

forks your original post was just 'this movie sucks' as far as I'm concerned no matter how much you long-windedly complain that it wasn't.

forks its all love

but im right

really i just wanted to work in frankly/furtermore

frankly my dear

fwiw i enjoyed your first post about cruise being a sex pest, forks, it’s not something people usually bring up and it’s true (and yes you can be a sex pest while also being v good looking and charismatic) .. i have a soft spot for this sort of beatdown cf my own “takedown” of aragorn as a fraud in the fellowship of the ring 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

i have not seen maverick btw but my 11yo son did with some friends (having never seen top gun; til now i haven’t been letting him anywhere near those venetian blinds with berlin playing over the top) and he loved it. same as he loved stranger things without having seen ET etc

ienjoyhotdogs wrote this on thread scientology & celebrities on board I Love Everything on 19-Aug-2014

realnaming not cool

― duff paddy (darraghmac), Tuesday, August 19, 2014 1:01 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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.