Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirly You Can't
Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 3: My name is James D.
Speaker 2: Spittake Graves and I'm here with Jason Pebbles Calvin, and
we are here to enter into the Maverick Zone, the
Maverick Zone, the Maverick Zone.
Speaker 3: Hey, those call signs are real. We got to at
least explain what call signs we've given ourselves.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, we both have had a heck of a
week and I don't need to get into my week,
but just prayers for Caleb, my son who you've heard
about at a major head injury.
Speaker 3: We spent a week in the hospital.
Speaker 2: Jason had to go to the hospital for a little bit,
but it was an entirely different experience.
Speaker 3: Good news is Caleb's doing just fine. Yeah, he's on
the road road to recovery. Yes, I have had not one,
but two kidney stones since we recorded Top Gun episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you hit the brakes and fly alright by
switching the guns.
Speaker 3: On this one. So that's why Jason's name is Pebbles.
Now you gotta tell them my mind. Yeah, okay, So
if you guys will go back and listen to our
Saturday Night Fever versus Dirty Dancing Movies comparison Part one.
At the very end of that, you'll hear an outtake
of somebody hacking and spitting up something really gross. D
took a huge bite out of some green jerky that
was covered with furry mold. He didn't look what he
was eating. He just popped his mouth chewed it up.
Speaker 2: Next thing I know, I have never seen so much
nasty and moldy fungus scum in my life.
Speaker 3: It was and I put it in my mouth. It
was in and it was chewing. Oh my gosh, that
was terrible, terrible, fuzzy.
Speaker 2: Okay, love about us. Let's jump into Top Gun, Maverick.
Speaker 3: This is a movie that we have been waiting for
three years for this to come out. Three years. We've
been waiting thirty six years for this. That is true.
That is true.
Speaker 2: If you saw the movie back in nineteen eighty six,
you wanted nothing more than another Top Gun, and they
made us wait three and a half decades to do it.
But this movie was originally supposed to come out in
July of twenty nineteen. It got postponed, It got postponed
again in twenty twenty because of COVID, it got postponed
again in twenty twenty one because we are still feeling
the effects of COVID, And finally this year, twenty twenty two,
we have got our Top Gun sequel.
Speaker 3: You and I have tickets this Tuesday night. For those
of you listening out there, we have not seen this yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, at the beginning of this episode, we will
not have seen it. Then we're going to tell you, Hey,
we're gonna go watch the movie. Then we'll say, all right,
get ready for spoilers, folks, because we're going to tell
you about our moviegoing experience. So the second half of
this episode you will get to hear what we think
after having seen the movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we will let you know when we are
entering the spoiler zone. That way you can pull the
ingestion handle get out of there before any spoilers drop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make sure you wait until the cap goes completely off,
otherwise serious injury or death may result.
Speaker 3: That's right, Watch out for the jet wash.
Speaker 2: Okay, before we jump full on into this one, there
a couple of like kind of tragic stories that go
along with this. And I hate to be a downer,
So let's just cover those real quick. We've got a
new director on this one. We've got Joseph Kazinski who
is the director on this and that is because almost
ten years ago Tony Scott, who went on to become
an incredible blockbuster director. A couple of my favorites are
main on Fire and True Romance, which I think we
should cover True Romance at some point, written by Quentin Tarantino.
Maybe that one versus Natural Born Killers. It sounds good, right, Okay,
So anyway, Tony Scott made some amazing movies.
Speaker 3: And then away. Crimson Tide is one of my favorites.
Oh yeah, that is a good one. Hey.
Speaker 2: He did Days of Thunder, which we talked about our
last episode. Was not the best collaboration between him and
Tom Cruise, but both of those guys met.
Speaker 3: Their new wives there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Tony Scott had twin boys with that wife.
But then, after all these amazing movies, after all this
amazing success, on August nineteenth, twenty twelve, witnesses see him
drive his car onto the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles, stops,
gets out, climbs over, and jumps off. Amazing, shocking tragedy
that no one can explain. Literally, Ridley Scott's words were inexplicable. Now,
there was some talk about whether he might have been
dealing with cancer or not. I don't have a firm
answer on that. Ridley Scott said that he was, but
other sources say that he wasn't. But it's just, you know,
you never know what demon somebody is dealing with, and
it's just a big tragedy. If you have any thoughts
like that, please go get help, because it's there are
ways to avoid those thoughts without ending it.
Speaker 3: All really really tragic. I remember when that happened. It
was very very sad, very sad.
Speaker 2: Now, also kind of a tragedy is the amazing actor
Val Kilmer, who also went on to do tons of
great movies, including True Romance. He was Elvios Elvis and
True Romance.
Speaker 3: Sure he is also Holliday go back to our Tombstone episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I so many, so many great roles. And he
tragically got throat cancer and has completely lost his voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. If you have a chance to watch the documentary
called Val, it's on Prime right now. It's super interesting
Number one because it's a total peak behind the curtain.
Because Val Kilmer was one of these guys who had
a camcorder with him everywhere. He went. Oh wow, So
there's tons of cool stuff. I mean, you get a
lot of behind the scenes stuff on Top Gun, him
with his kids, him with his wife, and then him
dealing with this tragic throat cancer that actually took his larynx.
And so there was some speculation about whether he would
be able to rally enough to be in Top Gun. Maverick, Yeah,
he is in the movie. It's gonna be interesting to
see how he's used.
Speaker 2: So I heard they're using like some kind of AI
to give him a voice or something.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. Okay, So they have created his voice from
all of his movies. They've gathered it together in a
computer and it spit out a computerized voice that's sounds
exactly like him. And when I say exactly, I mean
if my eyes were closed and you played that clip
for me, I would say, that is Val Kilmer speaking Wow. Wow,
it is fascinating. We'll play a clip of it right here.
Speaker 4: When we think of the most talented creative people, they
speak to us in a unique way. A phrase we
often hear is having a creative voice. But I was
struck by throat cancer. After getting treated, my voice, as
I knew it was taken away from me. But now
I can express myself again. I can bring these dreams
to you.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. I mean, that just sounds like him. That
is a computer talking. Wow. That is that. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's talk a little bit about the other
stuff that's in the trailer. All right, Yeah, so I
can tell you that there's not beach volleyball but beach
football on this one. Okay, that's interesting, right, he's spinning
the football in his hand right instead of flexing on
the volleyball court. And from what I understood from the
actors on that one, the phrase that they heard over
and over again was more oil. They even thought about
having t shirts printed up that said top gun Maverick,
more oil.
Speaker 3: That's funny.
Speaker 2: And then the other part of that, and this is
kind of similar to our story on Bell Kilmer in
the first movie, is they shot that scene, you know,
and as an actor you have to totally prep for
those shirtless scenes, and so they shot that scene and
then they're like, okay, who finally done with all of
that work out, all of that prep you know, and
Tom Cruise sent them this big, beautiful like coconut cake
for them to eat. And then just before Christmas time,
whenever you know, they've just finished with Thanksgiving, Joseph Kacinski,
the director, is like, hey, guys, we can't really use
any of that footage.
Speaker 3: I need to do that again.
Speaker 2: So they had to go and try to fast paced,
get themselves slimmed back down to reshoot the football scene.
I saw some of it.
Speaker 3: They looking good.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if those guys eat some turkey and
some stuffing, They're gonna still look good.
Speaker 3: Glenn pal said that after they shot that first scene, Yeah,
they were all like high five and they all went
out for milkshakes and tater times afterwards, you know, and they,
I mean, they had to really be diligent about their
bodies because is there a more iconic scene in Top
Gun than the volleyball scene. The volleyball scene, I mean,
it's definitely iconic for sure, for sure, So the sequel
to that, I mean, these guys had to look great.
And these guys are buffed up. Yeah, young, good looking guys.
It's the key to the success of the movie, right,
No Chinese food for them, and I noticed.
Speaker 2: A girl in her sports brad and the one that
we've got this time. So hey, great, hey, thumbs up
for me. Okay, let's talk about some other things, other
iconic things I saw in the trailer. All Right, we've
got the aileron roll right out of the gate, and
it's an F fourteen Tomcat, which is what they used
in eighty six. Right, that's what those guys are flying. Well,
the Navy doesn't have those anymore.
Speaker 3: These are all decommissions, so that is a big question,
like is he doing a flashback or is this like
one of the enemies because Iran, who we've sold the
Tomcats too, is still using it.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if Iran is the unknown enemy
out there. But it's interesting that we're seeing a Tomcat
first jet that we see in the trailer.
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't even notice that. Okay, we've got a
descending barrel roll. Nice another nice someone right going fuzzy? Okay,
it's spit take man. Oh, Spita, I thought you couldn't
give yourself your calls? Right, I did it?
Speaker 2: That was David right, David Wright and James West's work
together to get spit take.
Speaker 3: Okay, I like it better than Fuzzy.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they did the rolling scissors, which I remember
from the commentary that was one of the most difficult
things to capture in the first one. And they've got
the rolling scissors in there. They've got the missing Man
formation going over as they have the funeral, and that's
another thing. Who's gonna die?
Speaker 3: Right? Is it Iceman? Is he the one that dies?
Is it?
Speaker 2: We don't know one of the guys. I mean, something's
going on where somebody dies. Okay, you want my opinion, Yeah,
go for it.
Speaker 3: My opinion is it's either Viper, huh or it's Iceman. Right,
it has to have meaning to the audience. I think
they've got to pull somebody from the old movie. Yeah,
those two guys make the most sense to me. They do.
Speaker 2: And it would be terrible to do Gester because somebody
would be like Gester's dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we talked a little bit about them having
to get into shape, but let's talk about the aerial
training that these actors had to do.
Speaker 3: This movie was shot with cameras in cockpits. Okay, this
is actual shots from jets. Tom Cruise insisted this is
not CGI stuff, right.
Speaker 2: And let's be specific here. These are specially made Imax cameras,
Like they are Imax cameras a little smaller than like
a tissue box that they can put six of them
in different spots on the jet to get those shots.
I mean that's incredible. Yeah, that is incredible.
Speaker 3: So since they were going to be in jets, they
had to know what to do if something happened and
they crashed or whatever. So they had to go through
this intense navy training for like three months. You know,
what happens if you have to eject, what happens if
you land in the water, what happens? You know, you
got to get out of your seat belt and all
this sudd stuff. The actual actors had to go through
all this stuff, and you can see it on their
faces when they're pulling g's. You can't fake that.
Speaker 2: They have to run the cameras like when they're up there,
they have to be that they they become actor and
director at the same time, because there's only so much
that you can do. So they've got to not only
endure all of those g's, they've not only got to
stay in character, but they've got to make sure that
they're in the frame properly, and that what's you know,
that the light is hitting them on the right side
before they are rolling these things. I mean, it's it's
an amazing bit of work that all of these actors
who are in these planes have done. And Tom Cruise,
He's like, before we even start, I'm putting you through
an aviation training regiment, right. He started in a single
engine to build their like spatial awareness once they're up
in the air, and then went to an L thirty
nine so that they could feel the aerobatics type of
feelings when you do sure when you're doing jet stuff, right,
And then the F eighteen launching off an aircraft carrier.
Speaker 3: Dude, that F eighteen is no joke, man, No, no
talk about that.
Speaker 2: So the you know opening scene again once again, you've
got these two F eighteens that are super close to
each other, right, They're probably as close as you can
get and be within the rules of combat training. And
then all of a sudden, Maverick shoots up between them,
which against the rules, right, You're not allowed to get
that close.
Speaker 3: But Maverick is Maverick. Maverick you know, cannot be teamed.
Speaker 2: Right, So Maverick is still being Maverick in this particular movie.
Speaker 3: You see the clip where he's like, all right, Maverick,
don't get fired on the first day.
Speaker 2: Yep, And you've got John Hamm is obviously a guy
who's ready to get rid of Maverick.
Speaker 3: He is he's the enemy general or whatever he is.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what his rank is, but he's obviously
the guy who is ready to have Maverick out of there.
Speaker 3: So let me just say this up front. So there's
a lot there's like misinformation on the top gun Maverick movies.
So like I wanted to research it, h I didn't
want to learn too much because I don't want to
spoil the movie for myself, right, right, So I'm coming
across like multiple characters for actors, and they've done a
great job of keeping this sort of under wraps. Yeah.
Imagine doing the most anticipated movie, like sequel movie in
thirty years, right, and having to not talk about it
for four years. Right. So John Hamm's character I show
is cyclone. That's his call sign, all right. I have
also seen it listed that he's Merlin.
Speaker 2: What Yeah, that does make sense? Well, I know, okay, Yeah,
I mean why wouldn't they just get Tim Robbins to
play that part? Well, exactly, there's no Tim Robbins. There's
no Kelly McGillis. Right, there's no Meg Ryan. Right, there's
no Tom Skarett. Right, there's no Rick Krossovich. There's no
Rick Krossovitch, there's no Michael Ironside's. Yeah, so we're pretty
well starting fresh. Although I think that, like I show
that maybe Merlin's in this movie, Sundown Slider, Charlie Viper, Hmmm.
I will be interested to see which of these characters
make an appearance. Yeah, this will be exciting. The director said,
you know when they when people were like, hey, you know,
you didn't even call Kelly McGillis. Yeah, and you didn't
even call Meg Ryan. He was like, hey, you know,
this is just a new story. Not everything has to
look back at the old story. This is a new
story with new characters, and some are the same and
some just don't belong in the story, you know.
Speaker 3: So I feel bad for Kelly McGillis.
Speaker 2: Well, Kelly McGillis is living in a lug, having a happy,
quiet life, teaching theater and film at a local school.
Speaker 3: She's happy. I mean she didn't.
Speaker 2: She kind of grew tired of the constant Hollywood image
and trying to live that lifestyle. She wanted to go
spend time with her kids and enjoy them. And I
can't blame her for that.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely not more power to her. But I've seen
more things on Facebook of look, how fat key. That's terrible.
That is terrible. That's wrong. Okay, that's wrong. Okay. So
let's talk about cast for just a second. So Tom
Cruise returns as Maverick. Obviously, he's actually older than Tom
Scarett was in Top Gun. That's crazy, right, he's older
than her. He's a viper. Yeah. So Tom Cruise right
now is fifty nine. Yeah, which is older than Tom
Skarett was when he played Viper in the original Top Gun.
Speaker 2: Right, Tom Cruise aged a little bit better than Tom
Skarett did. Dude, No offense, No offense to Tom Garrett.
I'm just saying Tom Cruise looks the same. Like I
heard the John Hamm interview and he was like, somehow
Tom Cruise like stay in the same spot and I
passed him. Like I didn't just pass him, I like
zoomed by.
Speaker 3: Hey, listen, Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly have that rare gene.
There's stone age, yeah, and probably hard work and good
you know, medical help probably so probably that, you know,
lots of time in the gym that I haven't been
putting in. So Tom Cruise plays Maverick okay, okay, Jennifer
Connelly plays Penny Benjamin. R Okay. Does that name stand
out to you? Yeah, Admiral's daughter. For those of you
who don't remember, when Maverick and Goose are getting balled
out by Stinger for going to rescue Cougar at the
very beginning of Top Gun nineteen eighty six, Stinger's bawling
him out for all kinds of stuff, you know, put
in hack twice by me, one high Speed fly By
and one Addmiral's daughter and Goose Lan's. Everyone goes Penny
Benjamin and Tom Goods like, I'm not sure right right, Well,
Penny Benjamin. As soon as I heard Jennifer Connelly is
Penny Benjamin, I'm like, crap, that's from the first movie.
What a great tie in. Yeah, I get to meet
her now. Then Miles Teller plays Rooster. He's actually Goose's son. Well,
he doesn't have sweet great balls of Fire feelings for Maverick,
he does not, but man, he pulls off the look.
Speaker 2: He's got the perfect mustache sache, He's got the right haircut,
he's got the right clothes. They nailed Goose's look for Rooster.
Speaker 3: They did you know that Miles Teller was actually born
in nineteen eighty seven. He was born after Top Gun
came out.
Speaker 2: So but not bad because in the movie Top Gun
you see Meg Ryan and Anthony Edwards have a kid. Yeah,
and he's pretty young. I mean he's like, yeah, you know, yeah,
So that's that's definitely believable. That could work, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And so there's some bad blood between Rooster and Maverick.
I think he even says, my dad believed in you.
I'm not going to make the same mistake. Lots of tention.
I'm excited for that part of it as well. Yes,
who else you got? Okay, Monica Barbara, she is playing
Phoenix's a female pilot. Yes, so there's that, which is new.
Speaker 2: There were no female cast members in the original Top Gun.
She's out there, and from what I can gather, I
don't think there's going to be some kind of romance
story with her, which is again accurate, because one of
the deals with Kelly mcgillis's character was she couldn't be
a part of the military because the military were not
allowed to fraightenize. And I think if the Navy's behind
this like they were on the first one, they're probably
going to stick to the stick to those guns if
you will.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. We got Val Kilma returning in
as Iceman. We got Glenn Powell as Hangman. He's the
guy that we talked about who they went out for
milkshakes and tater tots after the football scene. I think
he's going to be the sort of iceman character in
this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like in the train it looks like
that rooster is like trying to go after him inside
the classroom quote unquote classroom, which again is still they're
doing it out on like the deck or whatever. It's
not in an actual.
Speaker 3: Classroom, of course, but it's beautiful hang that American flag
while in class, right. And you also have John Hamm
playing Cyclone. As we said, Ed Harris. His title is
listed as Rear Admiral. Uh huh. But I've also heard
maybe Jester okay, And then you've got Jean Louisa Kelly. Okay, okay,
you recognize her from Uncle Buck and yes, dear, yeah,
she was the she was the niece on Uncle Buck. Yes, Tia, Yeah,
she's playing Sarah Kazanski. Oh, so we think this is
a wife, maybe her sister.
Speaker 2: I think there's a wife, yeah, which that kind of
is leaning to me like it's going to be Iceman
who's in the coffin.
Speaker 3: I think so too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, We've got several writers on this one, yes, Okay.
Story wise, we've got Justin Marx who was the creator
of Counterpart, that JK. Simmons in it, and then the
other As far as story goes, we have Peter Craig,
who we talked about on our episode on The Batman. Yes,
it was Peter Craig who went and worked with Matt
Reeves for the script for The Batman. He has also
done Bad Boys for Life, He's done two of the
Hunger Games movies. He's done The Town Ben Affleck Living right.
So I'm looking at him and he's Sally Field's son.
I was like, what what Sally Field son is writing
some of the best movies to come out in the
last ten years.
Speaker 3: Little Frog. We got a couple of other guys who
are involved with the script. We've got Christopher McQuire who
helped with Mission Impossible, Fallout, did The Edge of Tomorrow,
did the usual Suspects, so.
Speaker 2: A one writer there. We've got Aaron Warren Singer who
did Only The Brave, the International and American Hustle. We've
got Aaron Krueger who did The Ring and Arlington Road
and Scream three. Scream three was the worst them, but
hopefully he's improved since then. Okay, but a lot of
writers on this one, But I think the most interesting
thing is our director. Before I get into the director,
I want to talk one more thing about the trailer,
all right, Yeah, So at the end of the trailer,
you've got this scene where Maverick is in what looks
to be a space helmet and he's in like this black,
otherworldly looking jet and it shows this guy standing outside
of a little shack as the jet zooms by, the
dust billows up, and yet the roof literally comes off
of the shack and slams back down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, what kind of plane was that? And
I had heard like, is it a SpaceX thing? Because
I know that Jerry Bruckheimer and Tom Cruise had talked
to Elon Musk about SpaceX stuff. It's not that, okay,
you guys ready, he Here's what it is, all right.
This is a not yet released plane called the Hypersonic
dark Star. It is an SR seventy two. It is
the follow up to the SR seventy one Blackbird, which
was designed by Lockheed Martin and Joseph Kaczinski and Jerry
Bruckheimer got together with the guys from Lockheed Martin and
they are the ones that created this simulation of this
Dark Star plane.
Speaker 3: What it is awesome and Jerry Bruckheimer, whatever they did,
Jerry Bruckheimer said, it was so real. It was so
real looking.
Speaker 2: That China changed their satellite direction in order to get
a better view of their fake plane like they thought
it was. They thought it was the real thing. Skunk
Works was the name of the company that were the
guys from Lockheed Martin's who built and designed this mock
up Dark Star Hypersonic SR seventy two. Very very cool.
I'm excited to see what they do with that. It
was not just for the trailer.
Speaker 3: Dark Star sounds like a new gi Joe toy I
mean Dark Star was the name of the movie that
John car Carpenter, Yes, John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon from
the movie that they did to get y. Yes, that's
right way to go. Okay, I just want to touch.
Speaker 2: Cinematographer is Claudio Miranda. He did Life of Pie, he
did Benjamin Buttons, he did Oblivion and Crimson Tide your favorite, right, Yeah,
And our composers Harold Faldemeyer is back and to join
him Hans freakin' Zimmer.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, Hey, you know who else is back?
Tell me Kenny Loggins?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 3: Yes, tell me more. Here's what I know. Kenny Loggins
is releasing a new version of danger Zone. That's all
I know. And I can't wait to hear it. Freaking
ready to get my sock socks blown off right here,
it's always a different article of skirt, the dress, socks,
my gloves are gonna fly off.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now let's talk director Joseph Kazinsky. Okay, So
Joseph Kaczinski. His first movie was Tron Legacy. Since then
he's done Only the Brave. He's also done Oblivion with
Tom Cruise.
Speaker 3: Of course. Yes, he also did the Taco Bell Web
of Fries commercial. It's pretty awesome Web And here's a
little special treat for you, sir. He is got an
upcoming movie Twister. Wait a minute, would that not be awesome? Really?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, let's go. That is freaking cool. So, Joseph Kaczinski,
I got some story here.
Speaker 3: Wait before you get in, Before you get into it.
I called you the other day and I said, you
have got to watch Oblivion. It's one of the best
movies in the two thousands. You know, we did that
episode a couple of months ago where we ranked the
best movies since two thousand. Yeah, Oblivion did not make
my top ten, but looking back on it, it probably
should have. Okay, did you watch that movie? I still
have not seen it. I've been begging Gayleb to watch
it with me, and it's just like you know, with
your kids, it's like, I want to watch it. No, thanks, dad,
no thanks? Oh my gosh, it's so good. So, if
you haven't seen Oblivion, Tom Cruise is the star Oga,
Carolinko Hore Schmokes, and then of course Joseph Kazinski directing.
It's awesome. Yes, so tell me.
Speaker 2: About what you learned about how many hours of footage
you've got on this.
Speaker 3: They shot eight hundred hours in order to make this movie.
Eight hundred hours.
Speaker 2: That's nuts. So I was thinking about this when you
told me that. I'm like, okay, So they shot that much.
You don't have time in a normal setting to go
through that. They've had four years, I mean nearly four years.
They've had nearly four years to go through all of
this and really tweak the heck out of this movie
if they wanted to.
Speaker 3: So you really are.
Speaker 2: Going to get the best of the best of eight
hundred hours of footage, which, as we mentioned, are shot
on Imax cameras.
Speaker 3: The whole movie is shot on Imax digital cameras. The
original Top Gun was shot on thirty five millimeters. Yeah,
when you think about the eight hundred hours in order
to properly edit, and we know this because we edit
our show. Yeah, you have to watch to see what's good. Yeah,
eight hundred hours. You'd have to spend one hundred days,
eight hours a day just to watch. That's not the
amount of edything they had to do on this is
beyond me. Right, before you go into your Joseph Kazinski story, Yes,
you threw that nugget at me that he's got Twister
maybe coming up on the horizon, which sounds great. I'll
count me in, right, Also possible remakes that he's in
charge of. You ready for this, Yeah, if you are
in a seventies, eighties nineties movie buff, listen up. Yeah,
he might be working on Logan's Run. Oh wow, the
black Hole, Oh wow, the Twilight Zone. Okay, that is
freaking awesome. Keep you go, and the movie version of
the video game Grand Treatsman. Wow, this guy is somebody
to keep your eye on. The black Hole. Scared the
holy crap out of me as a kid.
Speaker 2: If they've got to have the scene with the book
in the saw is all I'm saying, absolutely, or.
Speaker 3: Make it better. I don't know how you went up
that one, but that's yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2: So let me tell you a little bit about Joseph Kazinski. A. Right, yeah,
So this is a this is a prime example of
you don't have to go to USC's film school to
become a director of some monumental movies.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he started off at Stanford studying jazz and engineering.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, tell me more.
Speaker 2: So he is an engineer student. He goes to this
product design class and at some point the professor kind
of pulls him aside and says, hey, you get a
really good eye for design, maybe that should be the
thing that you pursue. And so he decides to study
architecture as a grad student. And he thought that was
going to be the best way to kind of combine
these artistic interests and the design and architecture interest that
he has. And so he goes over to friend's house
he's trying to decide where he wants to go to school,
and on the friend's wall he sees this Marcel Broyer
chair and he's he finds out from his friend, Hey,
that's my older brother did this thing. He goes to
Columbia at the School of Architecture and he's like school architecture, really,
He's like, yeah, that's the way to do it. Over there,
they are doing amazing new things with computer that beyond AutoCAD,
and so he's like, Okay, I think this is the
way I'm going to go, and so becomes he was
a grad student at Columbia in School of Architecture. He
actually finishes and is teaching. He's a professor of architecture.
This guy's like our age, right, yeah. Okay, So he
realizes that this is not the way he wants to
spend his life, and so after school he's like, I'm
gonna start.
Speaker 3: Making short films. Okay, So he starts making.
Speaker 2: Short films with his computer and distributing them on the internet. Well,
this is like eighteen ninety six, I mean, this is
who this is. This is pre YouTube, this is pre
I mean we're talking.
Speaker 3: About AOL dial up at this point. Wow.
Speaker 2: And this guy's making short films. And so he starts
this little company with a friend of his called KD Labs,
and their tagline is we are interested in exploring the
blurred boundaries between architecture, film and graphics. So these short
films get out on the Internet and he gets invited
out to go to La. He gets hooked up with
David Fincher in LA in the nineties. Wow, who gets
him a job an advertising production company called Anonymous Content
and he starts doing commercials.
Speaker 3: Told you, dude, that's the way it.
Speaker 2: Is, Like, I mean, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott. Making commercials
leads to movies. This guy, So let me talk to
you about the commercials that he's done. I sent you
the Sab commercial, which you know again Tony Scott. So
he did this awesome Sab commercial.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He did Halo three Starry Night if you want to.
If you know that commercial, it's impressive. He did the
Chevy Baby one, he did the Gears of War Mad
World one. He's done a ton of these awesome commercials
and he was there whenever YouTube was new. So I
went and I looked at it. He's got like four
hundred and thirteen followers on his YouTube channel because he
hasn't posted anything in thirteen years, but it's.
Speaker 3: All of his commercials, right.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 2: Well, thirteen years ago is when he gets a knock
at the door and they said, hey, we'd like you
to do the new version of Tron for us.
Speaker 3: Wow. What an incredible story that is. By the way, yeah,
have you seen child Legacy? I mean I have not known. Okay,
it's a lot like a Ridley Scott or Tony Scott movie.
The visuals are out of this world. Right, It's a
bit long and boring. Okay, you know right, that's kind
of what I That's what I got. Visually stunning.
Speaker 2: If you look at his old commercials, They are all
obviously heavily computer and CGI driven, and he does a
great job with it. And you are not big fans
of CGI, but he seems like the appropriate choice in
twenty ten to be the guy that does a movie
where the guy's stuck inside of a video game, right, right,
he seems to be the obvious choice for that. It
didn't turn out as well as they wanted it to,
but leads down some rows.
Speaker 3: Right. Sure.
Speaker 2: So around the same time twenty ten, he is writing
a graphic novel as a story idea for that he has,
and that is what becomes Oblivion. Yes, Tron was filmed
in March of twenty twelve, released in twenty thirteen. He
was supposed to do a third Tron, but Disney was like, no,
this wasn't well received, We're not going to do another one. Fortunately,
he goes on to do Oblivion. He then does Only
The Brave, which I mean that's not a CGI movie, right,
I mean, that's you've got some fire effects, but it's
all very realistic. And so you can see this kind
of gradual progression of this guy from heavy computer Sure,
and now what we've got with top Gun Maverick is
we don't want any appearance of CGI at all.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And fortunately with this guy, I think he's good enough
that if it's there, it's going to be so good
we're not going to know it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the goal, right, By the way, have you
seen Only the Brave? I have not. Let me tell
you about it. No, please don't.
Speaker 2: I'm talking to Jason on the phone and he's like, oh, hey, yeah,
so and Only the Brave. This moment is so impactful,
and it's I'm like, are you telling me what happened
in the movie? And he's like, oh, but don't worry.
That's not really what happened.
Speaker 3: Is other thing. I'm like, no, stop telling me, Stop
telling me what happens. So that is our spoiler warning, right,
that's our warning. We will have spoilers very shortly. But
we got just a few more couple things to talk about,
and then we're going to go watch the movie and
tell you what we think. Yep. Okay.
Speaker 2: So when you were talking to me, you're like, so
this is Joseic Kazinski's and Tom Cruise's second team up.
Speaker 3: Together, right, yeah, Oblivion. Oblivion was first. Yes, he was
going to do a movie called Go like hell, go
Like Hell. I saw him on this.
Speaker 2: It was on Comic Con and he was with the
director of the new Jurassic World movies and Robert Rodriguez
and him, those three guys, and they had different questions
for him, and they're like, Hey, what's the movie that
you were super excited about that got canned, you know,
went into development?
Speaker 3: Hell whatever?
Speaker 2: It was right, and he was like, oh, well, I
had this movie that I was going to do called
Go Like Hell. It ended up being Ford Versus Ferrari. Oh,
he goes yeah, we just couldn't get the budget that
we wanted for it. And the guy's like, well, how
close were you? And he goes, well, had Tom Cruise
and Brad Pitt doing a table read for me. Whoa
And the director of Jurassic Park Rustic World was.
Speaker 3: Like, what so this is really their third team up.
It's just that the second one didn't work out. Wow.
You have the two guys from Interview with a Vampire
back to do another movie. I mean wow, I mean
two of the biggest movie stars of our time.
Speaker 2: Really, to be honest, yeah, absolutely so. Can you imagine
Fod versus Ferrari with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt instead
of Matt Damon and Christian Bale. That would have been yes, please, yeah,
I mean talk about your recasting of movies. That would
have been something spectacular, fantastic. I can't figure out. I
don't know if they ended up getting more money after
he left the project or what. But obviously they didn't
spare expense on that movie.
Speaker 3: That seems like a sure thing. I don't know why
they demanded that one, but right, Okay, so you got
anything else, tell me what you got. Okay, I want
to add one more thing before we move into the
spoiler zone here. Okay, I've just seen Tom Cruise out.
You know, he's doing the publicity right now. Again, we
haven't seen this movie just yet. Tom Cruise was asked.
They were like, did you ever think about showing this
streaming along with the theaters? Is never? Never, never, right?
This is a in theater experience movie, and I really
I give it up to him for that. Tom Cruise
is a lot of things, but what he's really good at.
He's a great movie star, and he is a cinema lover,
and he is giving us a movie that deserves to
be watched in the theater. Let me just say this.
Speaker 2: We kind of gushed after we saw The Batman together, right,
and we saw it in Imax.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, after that, I talked to friends who had seen
it who were upset with the sound quality. They were like,
I felt like they were whispering the whole time. And
I know, as a guy who watches movies at my house,
sometimes the loudness of the sound effects or the loudness
of the soundtrack gets overwhelming and I feel like I
don't want to put the subtitles on, but I can't
hear what people are saying, and I am going deaf.
But okay, but there's something about an Imax theater where
the sound is so perfectly designed that I didn't even
those weren't even thoughts that remotely occurred to me as
we were watching it in the Imax theater. And so
we're gonna go watch this one Imax.
Speaker 3: I want to urge.
Speaker 2: Anyone who can go see any movie that's big and
beautiful like this, go see it on the Imax. And
even if it's not this big beautiful movie, go see
it because I think the sound design is even better
and won't be distorted like it is on your home
theater or if you try to stream it on HBO
when it comes out in a month or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: So please do this.
Speaker 2: Movie the justice, And if you've got a four D
theater near you, you need to go see that because
there are moments in this movie where you're going to
be side view in a F eighteen jet.
Speaker 3: I mean, Hugh making my own face here. I can't
I can't wait to go see this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just real quick before we head to the theater.
Everybody talks about how awesome Tom Cruise is and how
much passion he has for all of U projects, especially
this one. After Top Gun the original, he became a pilot.
He owns his own planes. He was the guy giving
instructions to these actors, and he said that this movie
is a love letter to aviation.
Speaker 3: I can't wait. He legitimately thought that the Navy was
gonna let him fly an fad. No, they were like, uh,
not so much.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: But he did land a helicopter at a screening just
the other day. I saw him landed the helicopter like
a frickin' boss. And God often went to his premiere.
It is too exciting for us to talk anymore. Let
us go buy our popcorn and check out this movie.
Let's go that you are now entering the spoiler zone.
Whoa there, buddy.
Speaker 2: Before we jump into the spoiler zone, we have got
a special little treat from the guys from a Film.
Speaker 3: By Bredon Jeffer of the Film by podcast. Let's hear
what they have to say. Brad, you want to know
who the best podcast is? That's them.
Speaker 5: Surely you can't be serious podcasts. It's the way they
talk completely sure them elves about the movies and music
from the eighties and nineties. You believe they were on
set or in the recording studio, whatever movie your album
they discussed.
Speaker 6: Well, let's hope their show is a target rich environment
for this promo. Hey everyone, this is Brad and Jeff
from a Film by Podcast. We love what Dean Jason
do and we welcome you to check out a Film
by podcast or right discuss Oh sorry, Jeff, we discuss
the underrated films of our favorite directors.
Speaker 5: And every other week on our limited series nineteen eighty six.
We're on a mission to determine whether eighty six was
the best year for cinema in the nineteen eighties, as
well as decide what was the best movie of nineteen
eighty six? You mean Big Trouble On Little China could be,
but hey, it's also the year that gave us Top Gun, Aliens,
stand by Me, Crocodile, Dundee, critters, Barris Bueller's.
Speaker 3: Day Off critters.
Speaker 6: Jeff, come on, seriously.
Speaker 5: I am serious, and we're discussing them all.
Speaker 6: Well, check us out a Film by Podcast. D Jason,
we love you both, but the plaque for the alternate
is down in the ladies room.
Speaker 3: Brad, you kill me, you really do?
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no no, there's two f's in Jeff.
Speaker 2: Boys, Oh my gosh, the quotes are going to be
rich in this episode.
Speaker 3: I cannot wait.
Speaker 2: Guys, truly great podcast that you have. Thank you very
much for doing that for us. We look forward to
listening to what you guys have to say once you
get to see the movie, mad Wick.
Speaker 3: That's right, be sure and check them out over at
a Film by Podcast.
Speaker 2: Now it is time to jump into the spoiler zone.
We have seen the movie now, yes, and I can
say a long time ago, in a movie theater far
far away, we saw an amazing movie. Yes, and then
we came back thirty something years later and we saw
another amazing movie that was very much like Top Gun,
but also very much like Star Wars.
Speaker 3: It really was. We both agreed that this was really
kind of a retelling of Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Right, So, just in case you didn't catch it, we're
about to spoil the heck out of this movie. So
if you don't want to hear the spoilers, run away.
But I'm not going to give away what I think
are probably the best parts. I'm just going to tell
you great stuff coming right, sure, sure, Okay, So we
started off this movie with virtually an identical introduction from
the original movie.
Speaker 3: I loved it. It was a love letter to the fans.
Speaker 2: It absolutely was. And I get to say for this
whole movie, if you are going to take a movie
that has the nostalgia that is attached like the nostalgia
is to Top Gun, this is a lesson on.
Speaker 3: How to do that.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: They let us in with this beautiful throwback to the
way that we saw things when we first saw Top Gun.
They ended it in a very similar style. It was
spot on. Hey fans, we're here for you. But also,
here's another great story that is very unlike the first story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this really blew my doors off, so I appreciate
the effort and the time. You know, we talked about
how this was a love letter not only to aviation
but to movie fans. Yeah, if you like cinema, this
was a love letter to you.
Speaker 2: Yep, this is a way not to screw it up.
There have been tons of screw ups that have happened
in the past. I've ventured to say even Joseph Kazinski
probably had a lesson to learn from doing the Tron
Legacy because it didn't really pay off the way that
the original did. But what he did with this one
was a masterpiece.
Speaker 3: It was fun, It was a little less rock and roll.
It was definitely more concentrated on Maverick.
Speaker 2: The story. I expected a deeper story and I got one.
This one, it's true, was not full rock and roll
all the time. You got plenty of fast jets, you
got good looking women, you got good looking guys, you
got guys who are kicking butt, and it's all kinds
of awesome. But there is a much deeper plot line
behind this one than from the original movie. Yeah, which
is not super hard to do because the original movie
did not have a super deep plot it was about
rock and roll in the sky, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: It wasn't deep it was. It was still a very
much popcorn movie, very enjoyable at least two like bust
out laughing moments. Yes, that were very real. So even
though I thought the movie was sort of more serious
in tone, it was still tons of fun. The aerial
combat stuff was amazing.
Speaker 2: So let me talk about a few of the things
that we talked about in the early half of this episode.
Right in the first half of this episode. Number one,
I mentioned the Dark Star. Yes, that is You're gonna
get that right off the bat, and it is awesome.
It is a great introduction. It lets us know where
Maverick stands, like how he's grown as a human being
and not grown as a human being. It is very
well executed and lays the foundation for the story at hand.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It is a it's a foreshadowing of what's to come.
They then bring us into very similar circumstances, like we're
going to go back to training, right, but it's not
police academy at all. Right, it's it's not back to
the miner. Yes, it's it is. It is some genuinely
good stuff. They've got a woman who's now part of
the Top Gun crew, and what they're doing in this
one was a little more in line with what we
talked about Top Gun being really like where each squad
sends their top pilots to learn and then go back
and teach. And what we've got in this one is
those guys are coming back again.
Speaker 3: It's like, not just.
Speaker 2: The best of the squads, it's the best of the
best of the squads.
Speaker 3: It's like the best of Top Gun. Yeah. Yeah, I
gotta say there's a sequence involving an F fourteen. Okay,
so that was like my favorite part of the entire movie, right.
I have to say I talked about this first half
of the episode. You know, the fact that there was
an F fourteen Tomcat in the trailer, and I was like,
I don't know how they're gonna bring that. Is this
a flashback?
Speaker 2: What is it? It is the best payoff in the
whole movie, in my opinion, and they lovingly refer to
it as a bag of ass.
Speaker 3: And not only is it a great moment when that
thing comes back in, but the whole use of the
F fourteen is beautiful. And I'll say this, Okay, so
we've seen two kind of Hey, we're re redoing a story.
This year.
Speaker 2: We saw The Batman, we saw this one. The Batman
I loved, but it didn't deliver as well in the
third act. Same problem I had with The Dark Knight,
same problem I had with Batman eighty nine. This one,
I think the third act was probably the best act
of the whole movie.
Speaker 3: Totally agree. The climax and then the second climax, We're
out of this world, blow your socks off, awesome popcorn fund.
Speaker 2: We had a couple of points of no return and
they delivered like we probably had three to four points
where you're just like, I don't know how they're going
to get out of this one. And it wasn't contrived.
That's what I loved about it. None of this was contrived.
Everything was like, Okay, that makes sense. I mean, they
they sold it. They didn't give us something that we're like, okay,
come on, really, No, this was all spot on, great
storytelling from beginning to end.
Speaker 3: I will say this, so before we saw the movie,
obviously we didn't know about it. No slider, no viper,
no gesture, no sundown, none of the guys from the
first movie except well, you have Maverick. You have Iceman,
and you have Penny Benjamin, and you have Goose.
Speaker 2: You know, well, yeah, there's talk of Goose. There's some
flashback moments, but yes, see.
Speaker 3: The ghost of Goose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't get Obi Wan saying use the force,
but we got pretty darn close.
Speaker 3: There was some very close similarities.
Speaker 2: So big spoilers coming along here. Well, part of what
they have to do is hit a like three meter
wide target.
Speaker 3: Hey, we used the bullseye wap rats back home on
our T sixteen. It's not much bigger than two meters right, right.
Speaker 2: And you have an outlaw member of the Top Gun
crew who saves the day at the end of the Yeah,
my god, all clear, kid.
Speaker 3: What's well? This thing to go home? Hey, you know
what one of the funniest moments of the night. We
were standing in line.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this is the best.
Speaker 3: It's the best moment of the night.
Speaker 2: So Jason's wearing his top gun shirt, right, he's got
his top gun shirt on. We're standing a line. I
don't even know why we're standing in line because we
have assigned seats, but I guess, you know, we're like, oh,
we're dumb fans. So we're standing in line and this
guy's in front of us and he goes to Jaycey's like, oh,
nice shirt.
Speaker 3: How old is that?
Speaker 2: And he's like huh. He goes, is it from the eighties.
He's like, no, I got this like a couple of
years ago at Target. And he's like, oh yeah, you
guys excited and we're like yeah, and he goes.
Speaker 3: Have you seen the original?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, yeah, we caught that one.
Speaker 3: I almost started laughing and I'm like, I've seen this
movie a thousand times. Have you seen the original?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes we have.
Speaker 3: That's why we're here on Opening night with my top
gun shirt on.
Speaker 2: That's classic. No after credit scenes.
Speaker 3: In case you're wondering.
Speaker 2: About that, you will have you will have an nice
little epilogue. Let's talk about Penny Benjamin real quick. She beautiful,
but not like overly plastic to you know, I mean,
she looks like a genuinely.
Speaker 3: I think I told you she looks like a beautiful
soccer mom, a.
Speaker 2: Very beautiful soccer mom. But Jennifer Conley has aged exceptionally well.
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise have aged extremely well, and they have fought
their early eyebrow problems. They've got the eyebrows under control.
Speaker 2: I was really hoping that there'd be like a quarter
operated horse on this one. But Sulu, there are really
some great touching moments in this one. The dynamic between Rooster,
who is Goose's son and Hangman, and the dynamic between
Rooster and Maverick and the story of why they're at
odds is great. It's well placed, it makes sense. Just
great movie overall, guys. I super enjoyed it. So let
me ask you this, Jason, Yes, tell me thoughts on
the movie better or not as good as or as
good as Top Gun the original?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not thirteen anymore, so this didn't quite strike
me like the original. But the things that it really
does well are exceptional. So the aerial combat stuff is
stuff you've never seen on screen before. Just the feeling
of being inside of a jet, this I think does
a good job with that, and the relationship part of it.
It's really good. So it's a little less you know,
Talpopp and fraternity boys stuff, but I still loved it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think? This one's better movie to me?
By by far?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 2: I mean I told you before Top Gun was a
good movie to me, But I didn't love me away
like it did most of the guys my age. This
one is better at the storytelling part of things, which
you know, that's great, That's what I want. But in
my opinion, it's better on the aviation stuff too. It's
the scissors flying, the dives, the g's that you're feeling
with those guys. To me, it was much more, and
it could be the fact that we were watching it
an Imax theater, but it was intense along with great characters,
great story, a history that they build without doing a
lot of exposition. I mean, yeah, to me, Top Gun
Maverick is a better movie than Top Gun.
Speaker 3: Wow, I got another question for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Top Gun Maverick, Yes, or The Batman.
Speaker 3: I still I like the Batman better. Yeah, I like
the Batman better. But I did enjoy this When I
think I told you just the idea of making a
movie that pleases audiences makes me happy.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 3: This was directed at fans, and I am very thankful
and I am fully in full appreciation mode from Tom
Cruise and Jeff Kazinsky. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Joseic Kazinski, by the way, is about our age. I
think he was born seventy five around our time, and
so he grew up with this so like we did.
And so this was you know, Tom Cruise. So this
is a love letter to Aviation. To me, this is
Josep Kazinski's love letter to top Gun.
Speaker 3: I agree with that with that. Hey, one thing I
wanted to mention to UD, I thought they used the
Lady Gaga song throughout the movie, just like Take My
Breath Away. It was underlying, it had that piano key.
It set the tone for the movie. And I come
out the other side of the movie liking that song better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't. I haven't listened to that song a
whole bunch. But I did notice on the opening credits
that they had Harold Fltmeyer, they had Lady Gaga, and
they had Hans Zimmer all listed at the same time.
So she's she's got equal billing with those guys. I
can say. I noticed when Hans Zimmer's music came in
and they put it in the perfect spot. But you
had that intensity that only Hans Zimmer can do during
those air maneuvers that they were doing. It was intense
and awesome.
Speaker 3: One more thing, Yeah, Kenny Loggin's Danger Zone is played
unmolested and in its original nineteen eighty six form. No
added rap, no stupid crap. I'm jacked around with it. It's
full blown danger zone. It was.
Speaker 2: When I heard it, I thought it was like maybe
remastered or redone, but just intensified a little bit. I
didn't think that it was exactly the same, but I
thought that they didn't. They didn't mess with it. They
did it and they were like, Okay, let's how we
can tweak it and just make it a just a
smidge better that and I think they delivered.
Speaker 3: Well, unless they brought in Toto or something like that.
Speaker 2: Guys, tell us what you think. Be sure and hit
subscribe or follow on whatever podcast app that you have.
We are excited to hear what others think of this
amazing movie, and I strongly, strongly encourage you if you
can see it in Imax.
Speaker 5: Do so.
Speaker 3: Absolutely come back next week. We got Et versus The
Thing versus Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: Holy smokes. These movies are forty years old, all released
a couple of them on the same day, but all
within a week of each other.
Speaker 3: For forty years ago, this June Ash Well