It is one of the most famous lines in 1980s movies. “I feel the need…” bellows an impossibly young Tom Cruise as he marches across the runway to a waiting F14-A Tomcat fighter jet, “…the need for speed!”
And there have been plenty of Top Gun fans who’ve felt a similar desire to experience the heady rush of combat aircraft roaring across cinema screens one more time.
So the news that Cruise is finally ready to put Maverick’s helmet back on and take off into a suitably dramatic/romantic sunset, has caused excitement at something approaching Mach 2 levels.
The obvious question is why has it taken so long?
Anyone who grew up with a fixation for Val Kilmer’s perfect hair and Ray-Ban aviators, will be appalled to learn Top Gun is 30 years old next year. Original director Tony Scott first spoke of the possibility of Top Gun 2 in 2010, but his plans for what it might look like inadvertently struck at the heart of the delay. He mentioned that it would involve Tom Cruise playing Maverick, but the story would be centred on the kids of today’s Air Force operating drones from darkened rooms.
The problem is, as a blockbusting cinematic proposition, drone warfare is somewhat inert dramatically (for proof, see this year’s Good Kill, starring Ethan Hawke).
Add the fact that since 1986, there’s barely been an occasion where US fighter jets have been involved in thrilling airborne dogfights with an enemy – it’s all laser-guided bombing from a position of total air supremacy these days – and it’s fair to say the Cold War world of the original film is now unrecognisable.
Scott’s death in 2012 was another obstacle to Top Gun 2, but original producer Jerry Bruckheimer hasn’t given up on the project – nor, somewhat worryingly, the idea of a plot involving drone warfare. Variety suggested a month ago that Justin Marks’ new screenplay involved “the end of the era of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today”.
Forget the slightly concerning news that Marks – whose single big-action-film credit Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li, was awful – is involved. There is still so much potential here. Top Gun definitely has a sense of humour, and there’s obvious comic mileage in grizzled veteran Cruise battling to make sense of the kids of today and their newfangled technology. Surely, too, there will be some sort of storyline for “son of Goose”. If we are honestly going to plot-spoil a massively successful 29-year-old blockbuster for you, look away now – but the little boy sitting on the piano as his daddy (Anthony Edwards) and mommy (Meg Ryan) somewhat weirdly suggest getting it on is now old enough to honour his dead father in some militaristic/sentimental fashion.
As for Maverick himself, one of the very last lines in Top Gun has Cruise somewhat weirdly trumpeting that after becoming one of the youngest and best combat pilots, what he’d really like to do is return to a boring training base in Fightertown and teach other pilots. Yeah, right. This guy would have spent his life seeking out real, actual danger.
But maybe that will be his later-life, desk-bound role in Top Gun 2 – although Cruise did warn that he wouldn’t do the sequel unless it had real stunts with real planes, not computer-generated ones, which suggests some level of hair-raising action.
Meanwhile, Kilmer’s relatively strait-laced character Iceman – Cruise’s seemingly mean adversary in 1986 but a character who, on second viewing, seems eminently sensible – could obviously play some sort of general of the Air Force, who is still at loggerheads with Cruise’s methods.
Let’s speculate that some sort of stereotyped militants have hacked the drones, and Cruise and Goose Jr have to take an actual plane out one last time to hunt them down. General Iceman is cursing them, but secretly accepting that it’s the only way to save civilisation.
While all this happens, if anyone can soundtrack the action with a ballad half as good as Take My Breath Away, we’ll be impressed. No pressure, guys …
