Top Gun: Maverick

[hendrb01]

Wow! After all the excitement and anticipation surrounding this movie, I cannot believe that I am actually posting anything but a stellar remove of this movie. However here I am saying I did not really like this film. Which is doubly surprising for me since I usually love anything with an airplane in it. So why did I not like it? Several reasons.

1) While most people lauded the opening scene as a tribute to the original Top Gun by Tony Scott, I felt like it really served no purpose in this film. In the original the entire opening scene takes place over the ocean with Maverick/Goose and Cougar/Merlin being launched from the carrier. In Top Gun: Maverick, we go from the scenes aboard the carrier to the Mojave desert. There is no continually here. One of the key lessons in photography is, "If it does not add to your story, it detracts from it.". The opening scenes did nothing to add to the story, and were in fact distracting.

2) Glaring inaccuracy: While it was great seeing my home city of San Diego, with the majority of the film shot on North Island Naval Air Station. The real Top Gun is located at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. While I am sure this was done for esthetics, and again a nod to the original film. For those who know... This is a hard one to get over.

3) In the original film, we see actually training take place, and we get to see the main characters actually make mistakes, learn from them and improve. In Top Gun Maverick, we see the characters fail at the mission practices, and never actually get it right until the actual mission where it is executed perfectly. Well with the exception of Maverick and Rooster, but why spoil that party in case you are reading this and have not seen the movie yet.

4) So a 2 star admiral would not launch a rescue mission for Maverick because he did not want any of the other pilots to die on the mission? The pilots already put themselves into harms way going on what was originally supposed to be a suicide mission. Everyone onboard that carrier, knows there is risks performing their duty. So by refusing to even attempt to rescue Maverick, this seemed to be more from the Admirals personal dislike of Maverick, than by any feelings of not risking the lives of the other pilots, or the crew of a rescue helicopter.

I really was hoping to like and enjoy this film, and I was excited that there were people who said it was better than the original, however I could just not get into it. I tried.. I really did.