Westside Steve Posted June 16, 2022 Report Share Posted June 16, 2022 Top gun Maverick 2 Top Gun Maverick Paramount PG-13. 137 min First of all, I don't care what anybody says I really like Tom Cruise. I might not cast him in every role but the ones that he does well he does as well as or better than anybody in the business. In this issue we talked about FIRESTARTER the movie getting an actual reboot after a few decades but TOP GUN is actually a sequel. Still in either case a lot of today's moviegoers weren't even born when the originals came out so there's that. Fortunately for TOP GUN the returning Stars of the original film, Cruise and Jennifer Connelly, still look great, sadly not so much for Val Kilmer who is in bad health, suffering from throat cancer and a laryngectomy, but God bless the guy for appearing. Nearly 40 years since the first movie Captain Pete Maverick Mitchell is still a captain to everyone's surprise except his. He knows what he does best and is happy to be doing it, that is flying jets. As you recall he's never been a guy to kiss ass or play by the book much to the chagrin of his superior officers, some of which don't even want him in the Navy anymore. But wait... there is an extremely dangerous mission in which the bad guys have a substantial uranium-enrichment facility hidden deep inside a canyon and guarded by fighter planes and surface-to-air missiles. This mission demands a team of the best and brightest pilots in the Top Gun program. Maverick is elated when he finds out his old pal Admiral Kazanski better known as Iceman (Kilmer) has recommended him for the job. That happiness quickly fades when he finds out that the job he's being asked to do is to train and select the team rather than to fly himself. Through a series of surprisingly exciting flight simulations (a buddy with much more military knowledge than I have tells me they are pretty authentic) it becomes apparent that the only way this mission will be successful is to push everything well beyond the safe limit. Ironically that's been Maverick’s trademark for all these years. All this is set against a pallet of friction and camaraderie among the trainees out of course of course the love story between Maverick and Penny (Connelly). Eventually Mavericks non-traditional methods cause naysaying Admiral Simpson (Jon Hamm) who doesn't like him anyway to drop him from his teaching position and to dumb down the mission personally. Even the Admiral knows this is a potential recipe for disaster either way. Caught between a rock and a hard place the general grudgingly brings Maverick Mitchell back and appoints him team leader. I'll be honest with you, I didn't love the first TOP GUN, this one I, on the other hand I did. Not necessarily so much with the authenticity of the flight training and execution but more because it was put together just right; think of Sylvester Stallone and ROCKY or Jan De Bont and SPEED. Make a list of action movie buttons and push every one. Keep the emotional parts to the point cover all of the natural hooks, keep the exciting parts exciting, reconcile any friction between the characters, avoid heartbreaking OLD YELLER moments and then go with a quick twist ending that never slows down. No surprises and I'm sorry if you were expecting one but that's why you love the first one and that's why I love this one. And while it isn't Shakespeare Cruises delivery, facial expression’s reaction shots and all around acting are exactly perfect. A WSS Plus I think that it's extra cool of Tom Cruise to hold the release of this Blockbuster for two years until the covid scam was over and it could be shown on the big screen as it needs to be. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairHooker11 Posted June 16, 2022 Report Share Posted June 16, 2022 agree with yours and Tex's from the other thread - this is a good movie BETTER on emax imax what have you... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DieHardBrownsFan1 Posted June 16, 2022 Report Share Posted June 16, 2022 Can stand Cruise and his Scientology religion. He's a strange dude. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TexasAg1969 Posted June 17, 2022 Report Share Posted June 17, 2022 And keep in mind what my cream of the crop graduated 1st in his Weapons (AF Top Gun) School AF Fighter pilot friend said, that there is no made up doctoring of what it is actually like to run these planes through canyons, mountains, etc. I asked him what name he had been given when he was a squadron commander and he replied, "My squadron tried to call me Duck, because I told them if they embarrassed the squadron I’d be in them like a duck in a June bug. But, after I lopped off a couple heads it seemed to go away. Otherwise, I never had one." As you can see he was pretty demanding of perfection from the pilots under his command. Like Maverick he wanted them all to be as good as he was, a near impossible task. And here are some scenes from all the trailers put together in youtube. It gives nothing away, but will make you want to see this movie if you have not already. I now plan to go to Austin to see it in IMAX. It's that good now that I know all the filming was realistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calfoxwc Posted June 17, 2022 Report Share Posted June 17, 2022 Steve and tex are right, I think - I have to go see it on IMAX if I can find one showing it........ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calfoxwc Posted June 28, 2022 Report Share Posted June 28, 2022 So, yesterday - we went with a close friend - (her husband died of covid a year and a half ago) - we were playing cards and decided we'd go to the indoor theater and see this movie. Nice super comfortable lean back chairs - with motorized footrests. Not like the old days. lol. This movie is spectacular. 2 hrs went by in about oh, 45 minutes. What a WILD ride. What impressed me outside of the dramatic flights - was the human interest stories all over the movie - never a boring second, not even in a quiet moment. And there were some great funny parts. One was when Maverick flew a test run that the commander considered impossible (after kicking him out and becoming the mission teacher), he succeeded! and the po'd commander just stood there, and one of the staff running a monitor yelled out something smartass to the commander, something like, "I guess he showed you".... and realized too late what he just did. I cracked up at that one. There were beautiful moments, really funny moments, different emotional moments - a lot of them - and the action was fascinating. After the movie was over, everybody jumped up and headed for the bathrooms - nobody wanted to miss a minute of the movie, it was that great. Ten years in the making - wow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westside Steve Posted June 28, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 28, 2022 Tinseltown or Cinemark bistro? I like the bistro but the food is not that good and way overpriced. WSS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calfoxwc Posted June 29, 2022 Report Share Posted June 29, 2022 7 hours ago, Westside Steve said: Tinseltown or Cinemark bistro? I like the bistro but the food is not that good and way overpriced. WSS Tinseltown. Maybe later we'll go see the Jurassic movie. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westside Steve Posted June 29, 2022 Author Report Share Posted June 29, 2022 5 hours ago, calfoxwc said: Tinseltown. Maybe later we'll go see the Jurassic movie. That one's pretty weak, not terrible but blah. I like the Cinemarks. WSS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TexasAg1969 Posted July 2, 2022 Report Share Posted July 2, 2022 On 6/28/2022 at 2:23 PM, calfoxwc said: So, yesterday - we went with a close friend - (her husband died of covid a year and a half ago) - we were playing cards and decided we'd go to the indoor theater and see this movie. Nice super comfortable lean back chairs - with motorized footrests. Not like the old days. lol. This movie is spectacular. 2 hrs went by in about oh, 45 minutes. What a WILD ride. What impressed me outside of the dramatic flights - was the human interest stories all over the movie - never a boring second, not even in a quiet moment. And there were some great funny parts. One was when Maverick flew a test run that the commander considered impossible (after kicking him out and becoming the mission teacher), he succeeded! and the po'd commander just stood there, and one of the staff running a monitor yelled out something smartass to the commander, something like, "I guess he showed you".... and realized too late what he just did. I cracked up at that one. There were beautiful moments, really funny moments, different emotional moments - a lot of them - and the action was fascinating. After the movie was over, everybody jumped up and headed for the bathrooms - nobody wanted to miss a minute of the movie, it was that great. Ten years in the making - wow. I took one of my kids and all my grandkids to see it in 4D which is really just the same movie except you get wind and sometimes mist in your face and the chairs flip side to side, tilt and untilt and back an forth with the movements of the airplane inside riding scenes. And you "jump" off the carrier with that scene too. They all really loved seeing it that way. The IMAX version was only running late at night, so we went to the 4D instead. I enjoyed it even more than seeing it the first time in regular mode. And listening to grandkids talking about it all the way home was also quite entertaining.😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axe Posted July 6, 2022 Report Share Posted July 6, 2022 Saw it today with the wife. Excellent flick! That will be hard to top tho the next gen is now in place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westside Steve Posted July 6, 2022 Author Report Share Posted July 6, 2022 9 hours ago, Axe said: Saw it today with the wife. Excellent flick! That will be hard to top tho the next gen is now in place. Good luck with that. I'm thinking the star power of Tom Cruise is a necessary element. I didn't see that on any of the newcomers. WSS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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