Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full
I just found out from a friend about this. He’s a Marine who was stationed at Miramar. I’m taking da wife and we’ll see it in about an hour.
Top Gun was released on 1986-05-16 (to the US; on 1996-05-12 in NYC), per wiki.
Date night! (Uhh, no — date AFTERNOON)
We’re going in about an hour. Anyone else going to this?
Looks like I can see it in IMAX, I’m definitely going!
I attended many showings of this movie as a teen. I do not say that I watched it, but I absorbed it in time. 
Poor backward NYC; always a decade behind the times. 
It’d be fun for me to take GF to see it now, but I don’t see her having time anytime soon.
At the time of the initial release I was flying fast jets at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. Awhile later a bunch of the squadron guys, including me, took a bunch of our women, including my then-GF, to the movie at a local drive-in. Which was sparsely attended; this wasn’t close to Opening Day. So we sort of set up a picnic on the pavement in the middle of circle of protective cars and craziness ensued. Good times.
The first few minutes are some wonderful scenes of Naval aviation. But then Tom Cruise speaks.
This is one of those movies that makes me feel like I’m losing IQ points as I watch. I’ve never been in the military, though I’ve flown with many former military pilots. Every one of them says a guy like Maverick would get weeded out long before he ever got near an airplane in the military. All the former fighter jocks I’ve known are very serious rules followers, which is probably why they’re still alive.
Then there was the recent sequel, which didn’t disappoint in the IQ draining department either. I especially enjoyed the scene in which Tom Cruise explains the basic concept of G-forces to a group of the best fighter pilots in the world. And they wrote down notes.
Another movie like this and I’ll be even more of a drooling dufus than I am now.
Yeah. Oops! Bad typo, and good catch. I meant, of course, 1986.
The 80s! I had some wild-and crazy in me back then. Still do today. But back in the 80s it was known then as Young and Dumb.
These days I’m just Old and Dumb.
Spoken like someone who has never been in a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28.
Desertroomie loves it so of course we attended. After the opening credits I nudged her and said, “Okay, we can go now.”
A few years ago Legal Eagle had a guest ex-JAG who listed all the military laws TG broke. And a year later, Top Gun - Maverick.
What did real fighter pilots think of the movie? Most of the flying scenes strike me as laughably bad.
It’s also worth remembering Art Scholl, a pilot who was killed during the filming. I saw him a few times at airshows and he was excellent.
Nope–out of principle. I have a few co-workers that fawn over the F-14 like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have serious differences of opinion on this: no Tomcat ever pulled CAS for me!
Tripler
A-10s are way uglier and way cooler.
But they do not transform into mecha…
I actually HAVE flown a MiG-15 inverted. It’s possible Top Gun jokes were made.
The reaction was sorta two-fold.
While the people-oriented scenes were on, the wives / GFs stopped yakking to watch attentively. When the airplanes came on, they went back to their circle of yak.
OTOH …
While the actual flying and some of the flying adjacent scenes were on, the pilots all watched. And hooted derisively the whole time. But it was nice aerial photography worthy of respect as aerobatics, if not as combat.
When the people-oriented scenes came on, we went back to drinking and yakking.
With the occasional stop to ogle whenever Kelly McGillis was struttin’ her stuff.
I may be growing (rapidly) older, but I damned sure ain’t gonna grow up. I figure that if it was ever gonna happen it would have already.
OK, since we got pilots here…
can someone explain exactly what happened, and what Maverick was supposed to have done wrong, in the flat spin sequence? I’ve watched this film too many times, and it is never clear.
So he’s flying ridiculously close, won’t get out of the way of Ice, and then…dual engine flameout? Ok, why (I know F14s didn’t have the most reliable engines, but this seemed extra special failure)? And then why does that lead to an immediate unrecoverable flat spin? And does the spin have anything to do with the canopy head bimp, or is that just more happy hooey piling on to Maverick?
We’ll ignore the question of how the landed in the water instead of the desert. (you can clearly see brown behind the planes)
That’s a good way to put it. Thank you.
There’s one thing in this movie that always kinda drives me nuts, and no one ever seems to comment on. On Maverick’s first flight at Top Gun, he’s in a dogfight with Jester. It starts very low to the ground, flying around rock formations out in the desert. Then Jester climbs (“he’s going ballistic!”), the fight continues, and Jester heads down again. Then there’s the whole bit about following Jester below the “hard deck”, and the trouble Maverick gets into. The fight started only a couple hundred feet off the ground; no one seemed to be worried about the hard deck then. Also, wouldn’t Jester be in as much trouble as Maverick?
Especially the filmmakers. The flight hard deck was 10K feet, and we see planes below and between the mountains. Well, it looked pretty.
Also they shouldn’t have used the same plane (F-5) for both the mysterious Mig-28 and the aggressors. You’d think even a casual viewer could see they are the same plane. Spend a little money! Rent a Viggen! That plane looks both “foreign” and exotic.
At least Iron Eagle used IAI Kfir’s, those looked foreign (no need to mention Iron Eagle 2’s F-4 and modified M113)
They didn’t. The aggressor planes at the Top Gun school were A-4s.
Gotta love the way the real enemy (whoever it was) painted their planes glossy black. That means they’re evil.