Top Gun soars into a whole new dimension

I am about to write something that a lot of people may find sacrilegious: Top Gun is not the classic people think it is. There, said it, sorry. I haven’t seen Top Gun since its original release in 1986. I was still in my 20s then and the amazing aerial footage was enough for me to say that the movie was pretty awesome.

Looking at the movie today … it still has that terrific footage of fighter jets doing what they do best, and knowing that these are (for the most part) real planes or models and not CGI creations only makes the footage even more amazing. But between all that cool fighter jet film, there is a problem called a plot. And then there’s that whole “homosexual subtext” thing that came, jokingly, from Quentin Tarantino that you can’t help but look for now. Except it’s really a stretch to find any of that.

If you haven’t seen Top Gun, it’s a simple tale of a bunch of hot shot fighter pilots competing to see who’s the best of the best during a competition called Top Gun. Yes, they play volleyball shirtless and spend a lot of time hanging out in towels in the locker room, and occasionally look lovingly into each others’ eyes, but there’s nothing gay about it. You kind of expect that behavior when it’s just a bunch of guys trying to prove which one is more masculine.

And then there’s the creaky love story between Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Kelly McGillis’ Charlie. It’s just one cliché after another as they meet cute, can’t get involved because of their jobs, sneak around, break up, and get back together again. The bigger love story is between Maverick and his buddy Goose (Anthony Edwards), which has a more emotional impact. Okay, so maybe there is something to Tarantino’s theory after all.

Subtext or not, the film’s story really has not aged well at all. But, to make it pop (literally) for a new generation, director Tony Scott (before his untimely passing) and Paramount decided to re-engineer the film for 3D, and the result is pretty spectacular. There’s not a lot of in-your-face effect, but the depth given to the image, particularly during those flight scenes and on the deck of the aircraft carrier, is pretty breath-taking (and vertigo-inducing). The recently released Blu-ray 3D package shows off the new process to its best advantage, even if the film itself is a mixed bag of quality. While the brightly lit flying scenes look magnificent, some of the dark scenes have an inordinate amount of grain that could have been cleaned up a bit. Regardless of that, the new HD 3D presentation is pretty solid, and the audio will rattle your walls.

It’s also fun to spot some well-known faces making their first or earliest screen appearances (even if the face today doesn’t look remotely look like it did then, Meg Ryan) like Tim Robbins and Adrian Pasdar, and also playing the “whatever happened to” game with the likes of Barry Tubb, John Stockwell, Whip Hubley and Rick Rossovich. The only “new-comers” to really benefit from the success of Top Gun were Cruise, Andrews and McGillis.

The new Blu-ray 3D package also contains the standard Blu-ray release that has been previously available with all of the same extras, including an audio commentary from filmmakers and military experts, as well as an exhaustive making of feature that’s actually longer than the film. So is this release worth the purchase? If you have a 3D TV, then absolutely. For a 2D-to-3D conversion, the result is pretty pleasing. If you plan to upgrade at some point, then it’s worth getting it now and you’ll still have the 2D version to tide you over. Top Gun may not be as great a film as its legend suggests, but the flying footage alone is worth adding it to your library.