# Why is the movie Top Gun only rated 2 stars? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 4, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351 "2006-05-04T04:07:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/41 "2006-05-05T02:14:25Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > Because Top Gun is really a gay porn film at heart, only without cum shots. No, that’d be _Lawrence of Arabia_, which I loved to death for this very reason. Sorry, it was more like gay _erotica_, actually. Top Gun was just painful. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/42 "2006-05-05T02:28:17Z")
jackelope writes: \> Top Gun was ruined forever in my eyes by Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant \> monologue in Sleep With Me. Alas, this is the only part of Sleep With Me that \> was even passably watchable. Here’s a link to that speech (which I never previously heard of): > **[Quotes from "Sleep with Me"](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111218/quotes)** > > Sid: You want subversion on a massive level. You know what one of the greatest fucking scripts ever written in the history of Hollywood is? Top Gun. Incidentally, although it’s Tarantino’s character who gives the speech, it was written by Roger Avary, Tarantino’s occasional writing partner. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/43 "2006-05-05T02:58:39Z")
2 stars out of how many? 2 out of 5? 2 out of 3? A lot of people eat at McDonald’s but what rating would McDonald’s get as a restaurant? ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/44 "2006-05-05T03:05:18Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > …not a single surprise in the plot. There is one… you know when he’s in the bar at the end, and someone turns on that song on the jukebox, and Tom Crusie walks from room 1 to adjoining room 2, and looks around everywhere, and then stares at the jukebox, and suddenly Charlie or whatever her name is shows up in the doorway to room 1…? Where the hell is she coming from? If Maverick is blind, he really shouldn’t be flying those planes! 😃 (sorry, this has bothered me for years!) ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/45 "2006-05-05T05:32:51Z")
Eek. Top Gun is as cheeseball, pedestrian, TV-movie-esq, forgettable as you can get. Although I haven’t seen it since the theater 20 years ago, even in my youth I was not impressed. At all. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy loses best friend. Boy becomes man. Man gets back girl blah blah blah… Excuse my while I puke… Even the flying stuff was unimpressive. The flame-out sequence was ok but the canopy-to-canopy bit in the begining looked totally fake. And the big climatic dog fight at the end looked fake. Sitting in the theater I paraphrased Terry Gilliam in Holy Grail, “Its only a model…” The acting, or as Dr Evil would say, the _“acting”_, the plot, the dialog, everything, were as standard movie boilerplate as you can get. Kelly McGillis could have been Karen Allen or Debra Winger or Rebecca De Mornay or Daryl Hannah or Jamie Lee Curtis and Tom Cruise Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford or Sylvester Stallone or Kevin Costner etc. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/46 "2006-05-05T07:27:14Z")
I think a better comparison than **Die Hard** (which is a very good movie) would be the ‘blockbuster’ movies like **Armageddon** and **Independence Day**. Strip away the cool effects and gorgeous photography and high production values, and you’ve got a lame plot and horrible dialog. It’s a movie that has not aged well. It was very cool when it first came out, because it touched a lot of cultural ‘in’ things at the time. The hair, Tom Cruise, the whole macho thing. But like ‘Miami Vice’, it’s dated so badly that it’s now almost a parody of itself. It had a couple of redeeming features. Among them, excellent supporting roles by Anthony Edwards, Meg Ryan, Tom Skerritt, and the guy who played the cigar chomping captain of the aircraft carrier. It had some good flying scenes. For all that, I’d give it two and a half stars. But I’m still annoyed by ‘Charlie’. Since when does a Ph.D in physics or whatever she had qualify you to tell fighter pilots how to manoever? She isn’t even a pilot. Man, that annoyed the hell out of me then, and it still does now. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/47 "2006-05-05T07:35:50Z")
_Top Gun_ is an adolescent boy’s idea of machismo and military. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2006, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351/48 "2006-05-05T09:15:39Z")
Hah. You think that’s bad? According to [Leonard Maltin,](http://mst3k.booyaka.com/episodes/guides/references/706.shtml) _Laserblast_ was just as good a movie as _Amadeus._ Or _Sophie’s Choice_. Or _Harry and the Hendersons._ And _better_ than _The Name of the Rose_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-movie-top-gun-only-rated-2-stars/355351.md?page=2)