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Top Gun: Maverick -- fun stuff + minor thoughts

Fun Stuff

1. You know during the opening deck ops montage where they briefly show a bobblehead of Abraham Lincoln? I think that's a little Easter egg to tell the audience that the scenes were filmed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln!

2. When Cyclone steps out between two rows of jets looking for Maverick and his class on North Island right before the beach volleyball scene, the row of jets with red markings actually belongs to a Marine Corps unit stationed at MCAS Miramar, also in San Diego.

3. The beach volleyball scene was legitimately filmed at a beach on NAS North Island in San Diego. (They did a great job at filming at real locations-- the flying scenes were shot at places actually reserved for military training.)

4. Remember when they do a closeup of a skunk logo during an interior shot of the Darkstar that Maverick is testing? The skunk is for Skunk Works! They built a stealth bomber called the SR-71 Blackbird for the Air Force, then proposed another aircraft (the SR-72) that the Darkstar design is based on.

5. Cyclone has a ribbon that shows he was awarded the Good Conduct Medal. This is only awarded to enlisted sailors, not officers, implying that Cyclone first joined the Navy as an enlisted person and commissioned as an officer later.

6. At the time the original Top Gun took place in the 1980s, Phoenix would never have been allowed to fly fighter jets (or attend Top Gun) because combat aviation was only opened to women in the US military in the early 1990s.

Bonus: in some promotional material there was a vest or bag or something marked with the name of one of the squadrons whose jets were used in the original Top Gun. That squadron was deactivated years ago and no longer exists, so having their name used in promo shots for Top Gun: Maverick was a shout out to a long gone unit.

Small Thoughts

7. So Admiral Cain is an incredibly hard charger for unmanned systems and future tech but has anyone considered that on account of his age he probably really struggles with, like, the office Keurig? He probably spent a fat chunk of the early 2000s oversees, missed the release of the very first iPod, and has been falling increasingly technologically behind ever since. Only his aide understands the true extent of how bad it is cuz he/she's responsible for the Keurig now.

8. Hondo is an incredibly influential character behind the scenes and it's largely gone unrecognized. This man sticks by Maverick supporting him the entire film, but he's only able to do that through multiple job changes on extremely short notice which the Navy somehow approves and facilitates without question. I have no idea what his actual job is because he appears to just do, well, everything. Hondo is awesome.

9. I was kind of amused that Pheonix and BOB have to spend the night under observation at the hospital after ejecting over the training course, but Maverick can literally walk away from ejecting at Mach 10.

10. When Phoenix says "we're the best there is, who are they going to get to teach us?" I thought that was the wrong mindset. If you think like that, that you're the best there is so nobody else out there can teach you anything or possibly make you better, you're going to be overtaken/beaten by somebody who realizes that there is always more to learn and master. But like Phoenix and all the other lieutenants saw, Maverick did in fact have a lot to teach them (absolutely smoked them on their first ride) and pushed them to think beyond what they believed their limits were so they could reach the level of performance necessary to successfully execute the mission and return home.

11. I love how Iceman is implied to have advocated hard for Maverick throughout his entire career, keeping him in jobs where he can fly a jet instead of a desk as he advances in rank (and keeping him in the Navy to begin with.) If the other jobs are like the test pilot job, ideally they also prevent Maverick from butting horns with figures like Admiral Cain and Cyclone who have little to no tolerance for the shit he gets up to in classically Maverick ways. I don't think Maverick is cogniscent of this, but Iceman is doing this because he believes that Maverick's mindset and how he approaches flying/his job are something the Navy needs as an organization. You can see this play out as Cyclone, representing status-quo Navy, fails to ready and train the pilots to accomplish the mission and survive, while Maverick, representing a black sheep in the Navy, does accomplish that. Eventually Cyclone concedes and, like he says, opts to risk his career by supporting Maverick in the end.

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