Top Gun is a shining example of right movie at the right time. Yes, it is hokey in places, but it never ceases to be fun and uplifiting. It was never meant to be high art, but I actually feel that it has bettered with the passage of time, cheese and all. It does what few if any movies do today. It celebrates America's exceptionalism and the larger than life attitude that made it great. In Looking back on it now, it makes me remember how much prouder and stronger we were as a nation then. It actually fills me with a sense of sadness at what the ensuing decades have wrought. To long for better days gone by.
About two years ago I went to California for the first time. I was in San Diego to see the airshow at Miramar. Let me tell you, as kid who grew up with Top Gun as it happened and who wanted to fly all his life but never made it into the cockpit of a fighter, being there was such an indescribable blast. To see the tower, the former Top Gun hangar, to spend the weekend on what to me is the hallowed ground of Miramar Air Station...kid in a candy store. I think I had a grin on my face for a week afterward. I felt like the kid I was when I saw Top Gun for the first time, and that felt fantastic. It felt like travelling back to 1986.
Great movie. Great memories.
