{"id":3545,"date":"2022-06-08T10:50:36","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T10:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3545"},"modified":"2022-07-22T10:54:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T10:54:08","slug":"what-the-fuck-was-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3545","title":{"rendered":"What the fuck was THAT?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Watching Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, for New Scientist, 8 June 2022<\/a><\/p>\n

Near the climax of Joseph Kosinski\u2019s delirious sequel to 1986 hit Top Gun, a fifth-generation fighter engages Pete \u201cMaverick\u201d Mitchell\u2019s F\/A-18 in a dogfight around vertiginous snow-capped mountains. Suddenly this huge, hulking, superpowered wonderplane banks, stalls and turns, hanging over Mav (Tom Cruise, even more steely-eyed than usual) and his wingman Rooster (Miles Teller) as though it\u2019s painted itself on the sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the ____ was THAT?\u201d Rooster cries, though an actual graduate of TOPGUN (official name, the Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program) would probably know a Herbst manoeuvre when they saw one.<\/p>\n

The Herbst (also known as a J-turn) is the kind of acrobatic manoeuvre you can pull only if you\u2019re flying one of a handful of very expensive fighters designed and built since 2010. The Russian Sukhoi Su-57 is one such; China has the Chengdu J-20.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not told which aircraft — or indeed, what well-provisioned rogue state — Mav is up against here, but he is in trouble: his F\/A-18 multirole combat jet is no slouch, but, being a child of the 1990s, it is neither super-stealthy nor supermanoeuvrable.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifth-gens\u201d are not the only nemesis Mav must confront. He\u2019s also holding out against progress, personified by a rear admiral nicknamed the Drone Ranger who (in a splendidly sour cameo by Ed Harris) declares that drones are the future, and that carrier-based fighter pilots like Mav are dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

Most of the time, however, Maverick steers clear of ideas, and devotes itself wholly to 1980s nostalgia, as Tom Cruise\u2019s Pete Mitchell (now a test pilot) sets about making his peace with the orphaned son of his old wingman Nick “Goose” Bradshaw. This is a well-told tale of misunderstanding and redemption, interspersed throughout with one-liners and easter eggs for fans of the earlier film. In one touching and funny scene, Mav gets to thank Ice (now, God help us all, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet) for keeping him in fighter planes and out of promotion. Of Kelly McGillis\u2019s Charlie, Mav\u2019s love interest in the first movie, there is no mention — but not every storyline can look back, and in this film, Mav\u2019s old flame Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly) proves no pushover.<\/p>\n

This is a peculiar project: part war film (as our heroes steal a plane from under the noses of the enemy), part techno-thriller (as Mav the test-pilot breaks all speed records and reaches an insane 3.5km a second), and part sports movie (as Mav welds his brilliant TOPGUN pupils into a world-peace-saving team; by that measure, mind you, you could argue that all Hollywood blockbusters are sports movies at heart).<\/p>\n

Films can be good fun-fair rides quite as much as they can be good dramas, and it would be silly to criticise this thrilling display of real-world aeronautical stunt work for its lack of narrative realism. The presence of real planes and real pilots (and, after three months\u2019 training, real airborne cast-members) makes this, in a profound sense, about as realistic a film as it is possible to get.<\/p>\n

What we might look forward to eventually, though, is a film that looks for excitement, peril and heroism in a more contemporary theatre, featuring aerial combat that\u2019s truly fifth-generation: super-stealthy, super-manoeuvreable, and drone-enhanced.<\/p>\n

Until someone makes that imaginative leap (and, crucially, can take a huge global audience along for the ride), we can expect armed-forces movies to draw more and more on science fiction for their plots. Why is the pilot dog-fighting with Mav and Rooster dressed like an Imperial TIE-fighter pilot from Star Wars? Why is the illegal uranium enrichment plant that\u2019s the target of Mav\u2019s raid equipped with a two-metre wide exhaust vent lifted from Star Wars\u2019s Death Star? Because this is what science fiction is, much of the time: a filler, a place-holder, a hoarding that reads, \u201cComing soon: the future\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, for New Scientist, 8 June 2022 Near the climax of Joseph Kosinski\u2019s delirious sequel to 1986 hit Top Gun, a fifth-generation fighter engages Pete \u201cMaverick\u201d Mitchell\u2019s F\/A-18 in a dogfight around vertiginous snow-capped mountains. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,620],"tags":[1007,1008,232,1009],"class_list":["post-3545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews-and-opinion","category-screen","tag-armed-forces","tag-fighter-planes","tag-new-scientist","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3546,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3545\/revisions\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}