Top Gun is on the History Channel?!

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?

to clarify, I don't think there was any threadshitting in this thread

you have to stay very continent while in the Top Gun thread or things get real bad when you do that 180 degree inversion after bombing the undisclosed enemy country

it seemed weird to me that they were bombing Norway in that film

i hope you'll stay, forks. i hope i didn't add to the bad feelings with what i said upthread - i was just trying to be funny.

i don't understand pop culture or really criticism in general, even after 20 years on this board, so i try to stay out of the serious discussions about it. if i were the millionth person to talk shit on something like the MCU (the massive popularity of which alienates me as a human being) it would be a complete train wreck. similarly, i am completely incapable of talking about something like top gun. i enjoy reading everyone else's takes though

(and even then, now i re-read what i posted and am afraid that it will be misunderstood and people will hate me for it. i am not sitting on a throne judging MCU and pop culture; i am a bird that just flew into a window, again)

The Oscar for Best Sound goes to...'Top Gun: Maverick' #Oscars #Oscars95 pic.twitter.com/zog6ZAvNjf

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 13, 2023

Finally watched Maverick last nite... it was seriously one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen!! If I were a screenwriter, I feel like I would have been embarrassed to even pitch most of the plot points; let alone write them down; let alone put them in the actual movie!

FWIW, I don't even like the first Top Gun that much (re-watched that one recently, as well) – but this made it look like The f'in Godfather!

Even the best aspects (IMO) of the first movie – terrific aerial photography; making air combat feel "exciting" – weren't really present here, because it felt so totally unrealistic (I don't know how "realistic" Top Gun actually was, but it at least feels that way). Once the actual dogfighting finally happens in Maverick, the movie has long since entered the realm of pure fantasy. (Also, with regard to the actual mission itself – do they think no one remembers Star Wars??)

Anyway, kind of shocked this was so widely loved – I feel like I have a good tolerance for "dumb fun," but this wasn't really "fun" (beyond laughing at it)!

I can't stand the first one, even the flying sequences.

the empire lost in star wars

which was also, come to think of it, pure fantasy!

Yeah, it was good fantasy!

well i wont be disagreeing with a word of that pan obv

obv