Top Gun: 40th Anniversary

Straighter Than Ever!

Recently saw Top Gun on the big screen now that it’s playing in select theaters as the movie celebrates its 40th year since it debuted in US theaters in May 16, 1986.

There’s a lot to like in this Tony Scott directed action epic. Top Gun shows the movie magic that can be created when all the elements of filmmaking fuse into the alchemy that turns into a crowd pleasing, fist pumping, fuck yeah good time that you’re happy to have paid money for a ticket to see. These elements all compliment and enhance each other:

• A movie star on the rise with limited range, but throwing his full screen presence into the role

• A director who is getting started in his career who loves action and male bonding (not gay)

• Two producers (Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson) who have found a winning formula for movies and are going bigger in scale with it (a formula that Don Simpson began developing in the 1970s, and tested successfully with Flashdance, and Beverly Hills Cop, as I outlines in the note below)

Top Gun is just a great time at the movies, in a way that few modern movies are.

So when I read all this nonsense about the gay subtext of Top Gun, I feel I have to speak out about this nonsense.

The scapegoats to justify this gay subtext are the shower scene after Maverick gets chastised by his teammates after his daredevil flying caused him to lose his Top Gun standing. (Because the school has a running contest for the best pilot through their intensive training.)

You guys, just because they’re standing around, either wearing a towel or in their underwear, all wet because either it’s very hot or they just stepped off the shower and haven’t dried themselves, doesn’t make the scene gay. That’s just the heat of the situation. The Top Gun prize is on the line.And the shot composition is high art. Tony Scott was inspired by classic paintings when he composed his shots.

Shower scene in Top Gun vs Caravaggio Dinner and Gossip. Looks at this careful shot composition. Are you now gonna say Caravaggio was gay!?

Then there’s the beach volleyball scene. Do I really have to explain the obvious here? Do I really have to point out that this is just the boys letting off steam from the high pressure cooker that is the Top Gun combat academy? There is nothing gay about this hot, sweaty, sticky action of shirtless dudes playing volleyball while being filmed in homoerotic slow motion to Kenny Loggins’ Playing With The Boys.

And Tony Scott was just celebrating the classical male proportions of statues in the lingering shots of their bodies.

When you’re lacking inspiration, go to classic sculpture for ideas. That’s all Tony Scott did. Not gay at all.

So stop it with these weird flexes about how sharp your gaydar is. (When did that become something to brag about?)

Just go and enjoy Top Gun because it’s entertaining and captures a snapshot in American culture that is now buried under an ideology that labels the actions of the protagonist as toxic.