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Reviews
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Heroic Fantasy of a Dying Man
In all honesty I was never a fan of the original Top Gun mainly due to its over the top cliché ridden plot and is quasi homoerotic theme, but I did enjoy this sequel because the screenwriters were clearly channeling two classic films: Star Wars and Point Blank. Of the first, the reference to Lucas's film are clear, "trust your feelings" and the bombing/fighter sequences which even have the enemy as duplicates of the TIE fighter pilots. But to me more interesting is the use of the death motif from the later Lee Marvin / John Boorman film, where the obviously dead protagonist, whom against all odds, not only survives but returns to seek the revenge owed to him. In Maverick this fantasy plays out as the dead Pete Mitchell seeks redemption for killing Goose, finding a meaningful relationship with a woman and the possibility a family, and finally, making peace with Iceman.
At the beginning of the film we see Pete Mitchell's life, living in a trailer located inside an airplane hanger and waking up everyday to see the photos of the man, Goose, and the family he destroyed through his pride and arrogance. We also see Goose's son Rooster, in a photo of a twenty year old navy cadet (more on this later). All Maverick has in his life is his job as a 60 year old test pilot and who is quickly reaching the end of his usefulness. At work he is informed of the cancellation of the project to break the existing speed record but he nevertheless pushes the team for their, and his, "last run". So against orders he not only reaches Mach 10 (a feat never accomplished in real life, the best ever has been Mach 9.4) and with fatalistic glee pushes his ship to it's literal breaking point. The result is expected, the aircraft explodes and the last we see of it is it's disintegration as it plummets to earth in a fiery meteor-type ball, no parachute in sight.
Fade to Black (BTW the only Fade to Black in the film)
But what's this? A lone man wandering a country highway, helmet still in hand, enters a diner and takes a glass of water and drinks it completely. But he does say "Hey I just crashed my plane" or "Can I use your phone", no. He s asks, "Where am I?"
Why?
Because he really doesn't know where he is, physically or metaphysically.
He is in fact dead.
Or rather in Purgatory.
Yes, Purgatory, that way-station between Heaven and Earth where the soul goes to purify itself before entering heaven.
The next thing we see is Maverick in front of a dried up cadaver-looking like creature played by Ed Harris (Hades' crypt-keeper) who while wanting to drag him off to Hell, informs Maverick that for whatever reason "God and his Guardian Angel" have intervene to send him back into his past to Top Gun school. Once there he re-lives many of his past memories. He reconnects with a lover who just happens to be beautiful, single, rich and owns a bar (talk about a male fantasy) and Rooster, who not only looks like his father but actually acts, sings and plays the same tune on the piano. When he leaves the bar he has several flashbacks of his sins and regrets.
Maverick's assignment is to train a group of youngsters for a mysterious MacGuffin mission against an unknown and never named adversary. Why the Navy doesn't use more experienced fliers is never explained, but this freshman lot includes such appropriate named cadets as Phoenix (the mythical reborn bird) and Payback (The name of the remade film of Point Blank). The key players though are the aforementioned Rooster, and a cocksure Maverick clone, Hangman. These two represent the ying and yang of Maverick, the cautious and the crazy, the civilized man and the animal, and of course they are antagonists to each other. Their names say it all.
What is your first thought of a rooster? A wake up call.
What is your first thought of a hangman? Death's executioner
So herein lays the struggle for Maverick's soul.
On Rooster it should be pointed out, in the original film he is a 4 year old, which would after 36 years, now make him pushing 40. But in this death dream, Maverick is the narrator, so Rooster is still the 20 year old from the photo in his hanger.
For that matter, throughout the film, Maverick has his balls pulled out of the fire by either his Guardian Angel represented by Iceman (his multiple insubordinate acts, his destruction of expensive and irreplaceable government property, his reinstatement to the team after stealing an aircraft) or a deus ex machina intercedence (a successful mission preformed with 30 year old technology, evading missiles and later a gating gun equipped helicopter, destroying superior aircraft, stumbling across and escaping in an enemy held F-15 with no security but gassed/armed up and ready to fly). One of the most obvious divine interventions is when Maverick and Rooster having exhausted all methods of evading the enemy in the final dogfight, unable to eject and facing certain death, are saved by Hangman. And what are the first words Hangman says? "I'm your Savior"
Yes, praise Jesus, Hangman, you are.
In the end, Maverick and Rooster arrive back at the carrier and are welcomed as heroes, like Vikings entering Valhalla. But the curtain has yet to fall until we're back at Mavericks hanger, where he works hand and hand with Rooster (all sins forgiven) and meets up with his new love and her daughter (the family he always wanted). Together they take off into the sunset which in this case is a representation of the light at the end of the tunnel and his final passage to Top Gun Heaven.
Unfortunately, the proper coda is missing from this film, and an add-on by the director would be simple. A fade to black after the credits, followed by the image of the burning remains of the hyper-sonic aircraft from the beginning of the film, with a slow close-up to a partially melted helmet with the name Maverick emblazoned across the front.
Meltdown: Three Mile Island (2022)
My experience with Three Mile Island
A few years after the meltdown, I was working for Air Products and Chemicals, an industrial gas company as a sales rep out of York, PA. TMI was my account and I went up there to do a cylinder count as they were paying thousands a month in rental charges for 5000 cylinders that had been on the island for 10 or more years. After my walk through I found only 200 cylinders. Big mystery until I talked to an old timer at the plant. Seems at the time of the meltdown and thereafter, employees would take full cylinders with 3000 psi, over to an embankment overlooking the Susquehanna River, lay them across two railroad ties and then knock the heads off the cylinders with a sledgehammer shooting them out over the the river a few hundred feet. These were the people running the plant.
Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)
Watchable but neither a comedy nor romance
I checked this out since I'm a McQueen and Wood fan. Weak script and odd casting make this "do the right thing" film a breezy but vapid experience. There's no real chemistry between these two and the dialogue is abysmal. The subject is abortion but it seems more like a McGuffin to get these two together. A time waste if nothing else is on.