Yahoo Finance No film will ever be sweatier than Top Gun - but can the sequel soar to the same heights of machismo?
A quarter of a century after its release, when you think of Top Gun, what is it that springs to mind? Perhaps it's those thrilling aerial dogfights. Maybe it's the costumes, which convinced a million misguided men that they too would look great in aviators and leather bomber jackets.
It could be Kenny Loggins's mournful, near-incessant saxophone wails, or the gossamer-thin plot. It might be the fact that Tom Cruise, in the role that boosted him to the big boys' table of action stars, clearly needed either stacked Cuban heels, a motorbike or to be lying flat in order to be anywhere near the appropriate height to kiss Kelly McGillis. Or maybe it's just the sheer homoerotic splendour of it all.
For me it's the sweat. No film will ever be sweatier than Top Gun. A recent re-watch confirmed it: apart from the immaculately dry Charlie, played by McGillis, everybody, in almost every scene, regardless of situation or attire, is sopping.
It's why, when I joined millions of others in watching the trailer for the long-awaited - and long-delayed, and probably just long - upcoming sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, I didn't scan every frame for sight of Val Kilmer or Meg Ryan or any of the other original cast members (alas, only Cruise and Kilmer are back), I waited patiently for someone fully clothed to look as if they were taking a shower.
The early moments weren't promising. Cruise, returning as Maverick, appeared as perspiration-free as Prince Andrew after an American Hot. Some other bloke looked on the dry side of dewy, too. But then, 50 seconds in, there it was: Miles Teller, playing the son of the original's Goose, positively drenched sitting in a briefing. All was well, I thought. The sequel might not be such a disappointment after all.
It seems only right that Top Gun's legacy involves something so skin-deep as sweat. It is, after all, a film that was conceived not with a story in mind, but an image. Don Simpson, who co-produced the original with Jerry Bruckheimer, briefed his writer, the ludicrously named Chip Proser, with nothing more than a photograph. "It was two guys in leather jackets and sunglasses standing in front of the biggest, fastest f-ing airplane you ever saw in your life," Proser remembered. "This is it," Simpson told him, "this is the concept."
But what a concept. Tony Scott, the original director, who died in 2012 (the sequel is helmed by Oblivion's Joseph Kosinski), was hired for the film on the strength of an ad he'd directed for the Saab 900. And when you think about it, Top Gun's plot is about as empty and nonsensical as a car advert: it is about little more than a wildly thoughtless pilot called Pete (sorry, 'Maverick'), whose small-man syndrome and anxieties about nepotism manifest through dangerous flying, alienating his peers, ignoring basic safety procedures and HR guidelines, killing his best friend, following a woman into a pub loo, embarking on a student-teacher relationship, abandoning a topless volleyball game just when all the players were ready to kiss, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, wearing shades indoors, and then redeeming himself via two minutes of heroism, which is rewarded by instant retirement to life as an instructor.
And yet it worked. Not only was the film a commercial success - it grossed more than $300 million from a production budget of $15 million, none of which I imagine was spent on deodorant, and that's aside from the 2013 Imax 3D re-release - and an Oscar winner for American new-wave band Berlin's insufferable Take My Breath Away, but in 2015 the US Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry, declaring it 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'.
The aesthetics were certainly significant. Ray-Ban sales reportedly rose by 40 per cent after the film was released; bomber jackets also took off, and remain airborne - you can still buy the Official Signature Series jacket, patches and all, from topgunstore.com for £425 (the real one worn by Cruise went for £40,000 at auction in December). And if you doubt people are still buying those things, you could look to the bomber jackets Gucci, Saint Laurent and Kanye West's Yeezy have produced in recent seasons, or just to President Biden, a man who has never seen military service but whose dressed-down look has been aviators-and-bomber since, well, probably May 1986.
Then there are spin-off products, ranging from cheap T-shirts bearing slogans such as you can be my wingman anytime or top mum, to Swiss luxury watchmaker IWC's Top Gun collection. IWC ambassador Tom Brady, the seemingly immortal NFL star, recently wore one to celebrate winning another Super Bowl. It is, the brand says, a watch developed for 'the elite among the US Navy's jet pilots'.
But others decided they wanted the whole lifestyle, as well as the look. After a run of relentless and necessarily bleak Hollywood films about the mess of the Vietnam War, Top Gun - a film whose script was overseen by the US Navy - became a military recruitment tool. The Navy reported that the number of young men applying to be naval aviators rose by as much as 500 per cent after its release.
And that is just the quantifiable metric: God only knows how many viewers absorbed the film's broader messages about patriotism ('America! F- yeah!' as it was lampooned in Team America: World Police), or masculinity (never address your issues, and be as rubbish as you like to men, women and best friends, so long as you are talented at what you do), or wilfully ignored the fact that the film's nominal antagonist, Kilmer's by-the-book Iceman, was entirely in the right throughout.
Will the sequel have a similar impact? Perhaps. Being released so soon after the death of the Trump administration's America First platform, and during the latter stages of a horrific pandemic, may work against its chest-thumping tone. The fact that Tom Cruise has morphed over 25 years from captivatingly grinning action hero to unsettlingly grinning action weirdo could dent its chances, too. But this, remember, is Top Gun. And Cruise is Maverick. They never did care about the rules, only about showing off. We will see. One thing's certain, though: things are about to get very sweaty.
Top Gun: Maverick is in cinemas from 20 July
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