Too close for missiles, I'm switching to guns.
Tom Cruise flies F-14 Tomcats and gives the
Russians North Koreans the finger while playing volleyball.
Okay, a bit more detail.
Top Gun was inspired by a magazine article on Navy pilots. The screenwriters and director Tony Scott (
Ridley's little brother) viewed it as "
Sports Movie meets jets". In it, a hotshot pilot named "Maverick" (Cruise) is sent to the TOPGUN training school, a five-week seminar where pilots learn how to really kick ass at
Old School Dogfighting. Here Maverick has to deal with competition from fellow pilots, and conquer his own demons.
The film had full cooperation from the Pentagon, and much of its aerial combat was shot "reel for real" using actual Navy hardware. It was an unanticipated success and caused an immediate boost in Navy enlistment figures, to the point that they started putting recruiting booths right there in the theatre. (One wonders how many of those candidates resigned once they heard about
nighttime carrier landings.)
Tropes contained therein:
- Anonymous Ringer (The nation whose air force the main characters fly against is never named. Speculation pegs it as South Yemen, a then Soviet client. IMDB suggests it was intended to be North Korea.)
- Award Bait Song / Ear Worm: Take my breath awaaaaaaaaay...
- Backed By The Pentagon
- Brain Bleach (Tom Cruise in tighty-whiteys.)
- Code Name (aviator callsigns, but here they're far cooler than RL examples. The credits demonstrate this)
- Coming In Hot (Cougar goes a bit crazy after a close encounter with some MiGs, and has to be talked down, despite there being nothing wrong with his plane itself).
- Cool Plane (the F-14 Tomcat)
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: If you were a teenager in the 80's, you know both "Danger Zone" and the "Top Gun Anthem" by heart.
- Crowd Song: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
" (a Crowning Moment Of Funny as well)
- Disappeared Dad (Maverick's father, who went down over 'Nam)
- Faceless Goons (With visors and masks, everyone is technically faceless in the fighting scenes, but the US pilots wear coloured helmets with their names on them and rarely use their visors, while the enemy pilots just have black always-visored helmets with a red star on)
- Fanservice (the volleyball scene, the shower scene(s))
- Follow The Leader (inspired several imitators, including Iron Eagle and the short-lived TV series Supercarrier, as well as multiple air-combat video games)
- Good Looking Privates (both genders, although only the men fly)
- Hey Its That Guy (Sort of. The MiG-28 pilot who gets the V-sign from Maverick and Goose was played by real-life USN pilot Robert F. Willard, the film's aerial coordinator, who is now a four-star Admiral and in charge of US Pacific Command)
- Maverick's final wingman is Tim Robbins!
- And Goose's wife is Meg Ryan!
- Ho Yay ("I'm gonna have somebody's butt for this!", the volleyball scene, "You can be my wingman any time...")
- Quentin Tarantino explains this at length in his cameo as Sid in the Romantic Comedy Sleep With Me. It's the only memorable bit of the movie.
- Val Kilmer himself is aware of this, referring to Iceman as the other gay character he's played besides Gay Perry in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
- Plus this nice little exchange; "This is giving me a hard-on." "Don't tease."
- The first time Tom Cruise's character acknowledges the female lead in a sexual capacity, she's dressed like one of his fellow pilots instead of her usual feminine attire. Word Of God states this is because this scene was one of the first to be filmed and her "look" wasn't totally established yet, but in light of other mounting evidence...
- Just Plane Wrong (very much so. The military pilots doing the flying pointed this out, but were reminded by the director that Rule Of Cool needed to take precedence—especially since real aerial combat would be boring if depicted onscreen.)
- Military Maverick (Call sign "Maverick", So Yeah)
- Movie Video Games Suck (The recently released iPhone game from Freeverse is an exception. It's a pretty good After Burner clone that wears the license well).
- Nintendo Hard (the NES video game, thanks to those aforementioned carrier landings)
- No Name Given (Goose's actual name is never stated onscreen. Everyone, even his wife, just calls him Goose. His real name was Nick Bradshaw.)
- Retroactive Recognition (This troper never would have guessed that Goose and Gilbert Lowell were the same person.)
- Running Gag (The Air Boss can't seem to keep his coffee in the cup when Maverick's around...)
- Second Place Is For Losers
- Shirtless Scene (beach volleyball)
- Star Making Role: Tom Cruise
- Take Off Every Zig
- The Generals Daughter (a high-speed pass over an admiral's daughter is mentioned)
- The Red Stapler (jackets and Ray-Bans had a peak in sales, and probably Navy conscriptions)
- Top Gunned (Trope Namer)
- Weapons Understudies (A-4s and F-5s for MiGs)
- Truth In Television. A-4s and F-5s were chosen by the actual TOPGUN training seminar for "Dissimilar Air Combat Training," which is military jargon for, "We can't get real MiGs, but these planes have similar flight characteristics to them, so they'll do." (They did actually have some in the Constant Peg programme, but their existence was classified at this point in time).
- Life Imitates Art: the F-5s "playing" the part of MiG-28s in flat black paint jobs were planes from the actual seminar. They kept the paint job after filming was done.
- You Fail Basic Training Forever - Check out those uniforms...
