Top Gun: Maverick’s Plot Must Follow John Carpenter’s Advice
The creators of the original Top Gun were wise to take John Carpenter’s advice and abandon a controversial element of the movie, something that Top Gun: Maverick needs torepeat. Hollywood movies can easily get mixed up in messy geopolitics and age badly as a result. Fortunately, the makers of 1986’s Top Gun opted to ensure that the military drama wasn’t rooted in any real-life conflict. The original Top Gun is so silly and over-the-top because the screenwriters invented pilot trophies and rankings to give what could have been an austere portrayal of military service a playful, goofy sports movie atmosphere. Now, the creators of Top Gun: Maverick must do the same, which they can achieve by again following Carpenter's input.
When he rejected the opportunity to direct Top Gun, the legendary filmmaker behind Halloween and The Thing apparently did so by knocking the project with a pithy dismissal of the movie’s finale. Years later, John Carpenter said of Top Gun and his decision to decline the movie: “They fight the Russians in the third act? Come on. There’d be World War III. Stop that.” But Top Gun is ultimately concerned with Iceman and Maverick’s rivalry, not the Cold War between the U.S. and the then Soviet Union, so what movie is Carpenter talking about? Well, the finished version of Top Gun cut any explicit references to which country the enemy MiG-28 fighter jets originated from to avoid the movie becoming too bogged down in real-life politics.
Related: Why Jon Hamm’s Comments Are Good News For Top Gun 2
Given the active Russia/Ukraine conflict, Top Gun: Maverick needs to do the same and avoid all mention of America’s current overseas enemies — in the interest of both good taste and longevity for the film. While it
Read more on screenrant.com
