Posted by Man seeks promotion after over 30 years in the job.
It’s 5.14am. On a Sunday morning. I went to sleep at midnight, woke up at 4am, and haven’t been able to go back to sleep since. I can’t even blame the OddDaughter. She’s been knocked out cold since 8pm last night.
May as well use this time to catch up on a couple of reviews I haven’t written. If you think my writing is usually bad, strap yourself in because this shit is about to get real. Or something. I dunno. I may as well crack open a bottle of whisky and see where it takes me. No, that would be ridiculous, I would never start on whisky before 7am. What was I saying? Oh yeah, something about doing a review. I’ve seen both Top Gun: Maverick, and Jurassic World Dominion recently, but I’ll try to go in order of which I saw first. Try? What the hell do I mean “try”? As if my brain is going to start writing a review for Top Gun and I’ll get confused halfway through and end up going on about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs flying in fighter jets. Now there’s a movie I can get onboard with. With Tom Cruise’s teeth there may even be a link to dinosaurs there. There’s something about his teeth, right? Does anyone know what I mean? Yep, it’s going to be one of those reviews.
I wasn’t all that interested in a sequel to Top Gun. I enjoyed the first movie back when I was younger, but I was never all that bothered about watching it again. I’m pretty sure I have it on dvd somewhere. I thought I was buying Hot Shots at the time and was wondering why I wasn’t finding it as funny as others had. I’m a special breed.
The original Top Gun was a bit strange for one particular reason for me. And that was – how did Maverick and Iceman just become friends at the end of that movie? Like wasn’t Iceman indirectly responsible for the death of Goose? It’s been a long time since I’ve watched that movie so maybe I remember it all wrong. But there’s a little bit of insight for you about how the OddFather makes himself believe what may be untrue and then holds onto resentment for the rest of his life based on something that did or didn’t happen.
So, 36 years later, they decide to make a sequel. They bring back Cruise – or he brought himself back I should say – and got rid of his love interest in that movie, played by Kelly McGillis, because she’s become old and gained weight. Hey, I’m not the one making the decisions – blame the studio or Cruise or Scientology or whoever for that. Maverick is still a maverick after all these years. But at the request of his good old buddy, Iceman, is given another job opportunity that he probably doesn’t deserve. Soon enough, he bonds with his students – including Goose’s son, Rooster – and get’s involved in a mission that’s pretty much suicidal. For anyone that hasn’t seen Top Gun, they probably think I’ve gone bananas talking about geese and roosters. I can’t be arsed to explain in any more detail – read the movie summaries on Wikipedia if you understandably can’t make sense of what I’m saying here.
The 80s soundtrack is back. And despite not seeing the original Top Gun for a long time, I was inserted back into the world of Top Gun almost immediately through the soundtrack alone. It’s weird – I didn’t feel like I missed it until I heard it. And now I have it going through my head again. Which is the last thing you need at 5ish in the morning. But this is the world I’m living in now.
I have to say – I’m not a fan of Tom Cruise. Is it the teeth? Probably the stories about how crazily involved in Scientology he is. I mean, I apologise if that’s your “religion” – I just heard how aggressive Cruise was in recruiting people and how he went ape-shit at someone when they didn’t reach their quota of recruitments or something. Is that story even real? Did I just make it up? I don’t know, but I’m running with it now so it’s official. However, despite my feelings towards him, Cruise is a proper action movie star. Like, the stunts he does when other “sane” people would use a stunt double. And the action in Top Gun: Maverick is fantastic.
It’s all very tense. Edge of your seat stuff. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone, and let’s face it – this is more ramblings than review anyway – but I spent almost all the second half of the movie with my fists clenched because I just didn’t know what was going to happen, who was going to die etc etc. It didn’t feel very predictable. All I remember is they killed Goose in the original so anyone can go kaboom at any moment.
I haven’t really done much “reviewing” in this supposed review, but I have to say this movie was awesome. I was invested in the characters almost straight away, and the action is proper old school amazing without the need for much green/blue/red/pink screen – whatever they use these days.
That’s enough for my sleepy-but-not-sleepy-enough ramblings. If you want a review of Top Gun: Maverick, I point you in the direction of the OddFella’s REAL review.
Verdict
This review may have been more disjointed than usual, but let that not take away from how great a movie Top Gun: Maverick is. It honestly is one of the best movies of 2022 already.
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