Before Top Gun Maverick starring HRSTCMIV starts, there is a trailer for some kind of new Mission: Impossible series also starring HRSTCMIV. I am confused as to why the world might need another Mission: Impossible movie, let alone a series. I’m excited, though, about Top Gun Maverick starring HRSTCMIV because I love particularly the soundtrack of the first one and I have done the following things in preparation: put on my own mirrored aviators, put on a brown leather flight-esque jacket that I own, questioned why I own a brown flight-esque leather jacket, listened to the Top Gun theme on repeat, listened to a podcast about how TopGun differs from Top Gun, apart from the lack of space between the words. Actual TopGun the experts say, was set up "because the kill ratios in the navy were pretty lacklustre" and in order to sort out American pilots’ "poor air-to-air performance" which I think is military marketing speak for we want them to be able to kill more people. The enemy in Top Gun Maverick starring HRSTCMIV are faceless and undefined. But that’s fine because they’re the enemy so they’re nobody really. And this is entertainment.
I start listening to another podcast about Top Gun and the True Conspiracy Behind It. On which a man tells me that the men from the Challenger spaceship are Actually Alive and also that the original Top Gun has Gay Rites and Male Phallus Worship. And Ice Man is Lucifer. I stop listening.
Metaphor does not live in Top Gun Maverick. In Top Gun Maverick, HRSTCMIV literally gets thrown out of a bar and is literally left in the cold. People have call signs and HRSTCMIV is of course called Maverick. There is also Rooster and maybe Payback and Dickwad and also there is one woman pilot called Phoenix and she rises again but Top Gun Maverick starring HRSTCMIV does not pass the Bechdel-Wallace test because there is no point at which one woman talks to another woman about anything that would further the plot. Surprise.
Top Gun Maverick starring HRSTCMIV has some excellent moustaches, singlets, mandatory beach volleyball training sequences and shirts covered in palm trees and HRSTCMIV spends a lot of time putting on and taking off clean white and clean black muscle tops around other men and that one woman. The screen goes misty when HRSTCMIV doesn’t even properly pash Jennifer Connelly (what were you thinking, Jennifer Connelly?) and I have suspicions that it might be OK to show faceless enemies get shot dead on American screens, and HRSTCMIV riding a motorbike fast without a helmet, but nothing more than hetero chaste misty kisses because don’t you know what that can do to your mind?
HRSTCMIV smiles his white shiny smile. HRSTCMIV smiles his white shiny smile. HRSTCMIV smiles his white shiny smile. HRSTCMIV frowns and a lot of the skin on his face stays still. HRSTCMIV gets teary eyed because HRSTCMIV is a good man at heart. Someone whose call sign I don’t remember, it’s definitely not Bob, call sign Bob, who I love because he’s the only one who keeps his shirt on during beach volleyball, and who has glasses that are just like mine when I’m not wearing aviators, says to HRSTCMIV as he’s about to fly on a mission, "I don’t like that face, Captain", and HRSTCMIV smiles and says "it’s the only one I’ve got".
