“Top Gun” is a classic Hollywood action flick and everything a summer movie should be, and it’ll be showing July 15 and 18 as part of Silverspot’s Flashback Cinema series here in Chapel Hill. If you’re planning to see it, be prepared for a heavy dose of nostalgia and — of course — speed.
Somewhere between the end of the Vietnam War and the start of the conflict in the Gulf, one fictional Navy pilot felt the need… the need for speed. The year was 1986, and audiences were delighted by the drama and the machismo of a few men with callsigns like Maverick, Iceman and Goose.
F-14A Tomcats of Fighter Squadrons VF-51 “Screaming Eagles” and VF-111 “Sundowners”, and F-5E/F Tiger IIs of the Navy Fighter Weapons School
In this summer classic, Tom Cruise played Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. If you haven’t see the film, Cruise takes on the role of a gung-ho fighter pilot with a clouded legacy. His hot-shot nature and raw skill lands him a spot in the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (SFTI), also known as TOPGUN. While Mitchell’s story is Hollywood fiction, the fighter school — then located at former Naval Air Station Miramar, north of San Diego — is entirely real.
“Top Gun” was directed by Tony Scott and produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. You may know Bruckheimer as the big-ticket name associated with “Black Hawk Down,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Bad Boys,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” or even the recent “12 Strong,” a film about Special Forces in Afghanistan after 9/11. Tony Scott also directed “Crimson Tide,” another film that brought him together with Bruckheimer.
“Top Gun” may take a slightly lighter approach to the military than “12 Strong” because of where we were in our history as a nation. It was the ‘80s. We weren’t engaged in an overarching military campaign and the Russians were still the bad guys, in so far as they were the ones supplying the Iranians with MiG-28s Maverick engaged in flight.
“Top Gun” was a blockbuster that took a lighter approach to military movies, and a true product of its time. The main conflict portrayed is between Russian-backed Iranian MiG-28s and American fighters, and is more a matter of territory dispute than out-and-out warfare. The intense aerial scenarios in this film belie the fact that it was synth-heavy songs like “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away” — and one iconic game of volleyball –that made this movie truly epic. The film was even awarded an Oscar for original music, specifically for the tune “Take My Breath Away.”
“Top Gun” ranked number one at the box office during its opening weekend, according to boxofficemojo.com, taking in well over $300 million. The movie was partly financed by the United States military in an effort to boost recruitment — a common practice in military-focused cinema. It’s a win-win: the movie gains additional insight and opportunities for accuracy through locations, advisers and equipment, and the military reaches an audience that’s already interested while also somewhat controlling how it is portrayed.
Success at the box office and a winner as a recruitment tool may explain why a sequel has long been discussed. After being stuck in development hell for years, the sequel — titled “Top Gun: Maverick” is now officially slated to buzz towers in one year’s time on July 12, 2019. Tom Cruise will be reprising his role from the original, alongside Val Kilmer returning to the role of “Iceman.”
I never knew those were supposed to be Iranians. Did they ever explicitly call that out in the movie?
Who the hostiles are in Top Gun is never explicitly stated, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out who they are.
In 1981, F-14s with American pilots shot down two Libyan SU-22s. Since Top Gun was released in 1986, it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that this conflict inspired parts of the movie. All the same elements are there: aircraft carrier presence as a deterrent close to – but not crossing into! – hostile waters and airspace, small scale conflict to determine territory boundaries, etc etc.
It’s also of interest that the “MiG-28” is a fictional aircraft. MiG fighter numbering jumped from 27 to 29 in 1970 and 1977. The MiG-27 was designed as a ground-attack plane with the bones of the MiG-23 and the MiG-29 was a twin-engine muiltirole air superiority fighter.
Anyway.
Since the country of origin isn’t mentioned in “Top Gun,” we’ve got to make some inferences. What is mentioned is that the carrier group Maverick & Co. are stationed on is operating in the Indian Ocean. That means that Iran, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan are all within striking distance. Most of those countries were flying Russian-supplied MiGs, but their levels of hostility at the time varied. Though there was the Libyan conflict in ’81, Iran was one of the more popular “threatening powers” used as proxies for Russia in action films throughout the ‘80s, along with Afghanistan, because of goings-on at the time.
What really puts the case for Iran being the hostiles in “Top Gun,” for me at least, is the statement that enemy aircraft are equipped with “Exocet anti-ship missiles.” No Soviet force ever carried these, but a number of countries backed by Russia did. Like Iran.
Relations between the U.S. and Iran were deteriorating rapidly at the time of Top Gun’s release. The Iraq-Iran War had been dragging on since 1980, and when the USS Stark was hit by Exocet missiles fired from an Iraqi aircraft in 1987 President Reagan said “We’ve never considered them [Iraq’s military] hostile at all”, and “the villain in the piece is Iran.” The incident with the USS Stark is pretty interesting for a lot of reasons.
I’m getting off track here because the entire situation in the ‘80s was a mess. Lots of things still are. To summarize: based on the weapons mentioned, the location of Maverick’s carrier group, and the general atmosphere at the time… my money is on Iranian fictional MiGs being the hostiles in “Top Gun.” You can even spin it up into an entire scenario: Iran acquired some fictional cutting-edge MiGs, uses that air power to flex muscle and rattle sabers in the Persian Gulf, extending their territory to international waters. An American naval vessel accidentally ends up in their newly-claimed territory, and hotshot American fighter jocks fresh out of advanced air combat flight school are sent to defeat them using the power of the F-14 and Kenny Loggins.