#116. 'Top Gun: Maverick' and 'Top Gun'
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The big topic is Top Gun: Maverick, and all three hosts are smitten: Sonny delivers a "big boy review" declaring it better than the 1986 original on every level — real plot, real stakes, a genuine father-son arc between Maverick and Rooster — before unspooling his own pet theory that Maverick actually dies in the Mach-10 opening crash and spends the rest of the movie working through purgatory before Hangman (whose call sign is missing its vowels, just like Yahweh) flies him into heaven with the line "ladies and gentlemen, this is your savior speaking." JVL, both amused and half-convinced by Sonny's read, offers his own four-level analysis of the film as simultaneously a character story, an industry allegory (practical filmmaking beating back the streaming-era UAVs), and a Tom Cruise career-and-producing-genius allegory, and praises the practical six-IMAX-camera cockpit photography Kazinsky pulled off. Vic, delighted to be back after a laptop meltdown that nearly scuttled the recording, insists the unnamed enemy nation is definitely Iran (F-14 pedigree, mountainous uranium facility) and hands out Quadrant grades of Plot A+, Duration B, Action A+++, and Sex/Nudity B+ — docking points because the love scene is even chaster than the original's Berlin-soundtracked one. Before any of that, the trio spends the long opening third on Vic's PC-vs-Mac nostalgia tangent and a deep dive into old Command & Conquer and Saw trivia, JVL's Tiger King story about accidentally horrifying an employment lawyer, Vic's recovering tooth extraction, Sonny's report on solo-parenting the week and buying a second 4K Blu-ray player because the PS5 is too loud for movie night, a review of the Bob's Burgers Movie, and a lengthy riff on the extravagant Star Wars immersive hotel a friend of JVL's visited. They close by comparing notes on the film's massive $126.7 million three-day ($161 million four-day) opening and marveling at how quickly IMAX screens will get bumped for Jurassic World Dominion.
From the show notes
Here it is, a gigantic episode filled with Top Gun chatter.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Everyone here is the best there is. Who the hell are they going to get to teach us? Captain Pete Maverick Mitchell. Let me be perfectly blunt. You are not my first choice. You were here at the request of Admiral Kazansky, aka Iceman. He seems to think that you have something left to offer the Navy. What that is, I can't imagine. We all do respect, sir. I'm not a teacher. I just want to manage the expectations. What the hell? Good morning, aviators. This is your captain speaking.
Vic00:00:47Then we're off. Hello and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. And don't forget about The Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we?
Sonny00:01:21How are you doing, Vic? Welcome back.
Vic00:01:23Thank you. Thank you. I am...
Sonny00:01:25Are we saving your technical issues? No, no. No, no. You know what? We'll have a discussion until later.
Vic00:01:30We'll go to me and then we'll come back to me at the end. So it is great to be back on the show. You can't imagine how frustrating it was. We spent 30 minutes... 30 minutes. ...trying to figure it out. Now, here's the weird thing. So I'm using Kate's high-tech new laptop that I got. It's a PC. It's a Hewlett-Packard. I'm not familiar. I don't do PCs.
Sonny00:01:53It's thrown. It's a new computer for Vic, so it's from 2008.
Vic00:01:58Oh, I see. I didn't know that you could use my computer. And I got it for her as a gift like a year or two ago. But I'm like, okay, do I still need to know like drive A, like the different drives, right? A, B, and C? You remember that, JVL?
Sonny00:02:10You get the DOS prompt? Yeah. You get the DOS prompt to come up? C, the C prompt.
Vic00:02:14C. The answer was C. Also, like whatever people who are like the big PC defenders, I shouldn't say this to jinx the computer. Now it's going to like shut down on me. But, you know, the big PC defenders used to, you know, all the things that they liked that they didn't like about Apple. And I used to... My one comeback is, you know, in Apple, if I don't like a document or something, I just drag it to a trash can. And they didn't have that for the longest time. I still don't know what they do. How do they get out of the trash?
Sonny00:02:40Wasn't there like a copyright or trademark thing or something? Oh, is that what it was? Where one of the operating systems had a trash can and the other wanted to use it, but they couldn't.
JVL00:02:52Windows had to use recycling, I believe. So they had to use recycling.
Sonny00:02:55Yeah. Like it was like an actual... Like Windows 95, the first, you know...
JVL00:02:58They were going to take the bytes and recycle the bytes. Yeah.
Vic00:03:03They couldn't say it. Windows 95, you know what I remember? The big rollout for Windows 95 was so big. Do you remember who they used to roll it out, if I'm not mistaken? It was like Matthew Perry and not Jennifer Aniston, but Courtney Cox, I think. Or maybe it was Jennifer Aniston.
Sonny00:03:22Was it all the friends? No, just the two of them. Or just some of the friends.
Vic00:03:25They could only afford two at the time. You know, it was a big deal. No, so it's great to be back. And by the way, file names, remember you couldn't do file names? You couldn't just name it whatever. It was like always some weird configuration. Anyway, it's great to be back.
Sonny00:03:42I don't remember that at all. Okay, that's before you were a baby. Windows 95, I'm trying to think. Well, Windows 95, I was 13, but we had a Mac. I'm pretty sure we had one of the, like, you know, early, mid-'90s, early-'90s Macs before the iMac. Yeah, it was a Power Mac. It was like a Mac. You had a Power Mac. Yeah, a Power Mac, like a G3. Is that what it was called? Oh, huge.
Vic00:04:05Well, that was like the first of the colored ones.
Sonny00:04:07Yeah, the colored ones? Jesus. Thick.
Vic00:04:11You know what I mean. Before that, they were all beige. And mine was like a JVL.
Sonny00:04:17They were colored. No, no, no, no. Mine was lime. No, I remember it being like a rectangle. Yeah, oh, yeah, those were the Power Macs.
Vic00:04:25Those were the Power Macs. Definitely. Insane. And you had to wait forever to get a popular game. That was the only difference, is the PCs had the best games, and you had to wait years later to get it for Apple. Yeah.
Sonny00:04:37No, that was a real problem. I definitely played Command & Red Alert like five years after everybody else. I was like, "1999." I was like, "Look at this great game I'm playing, guys."
Vic00:04:46The bad guys were Nod. Nod. Yeah, Nod versus GDI.
Sonny00:04:50Or GDI, right. There was the Global Defense Initiative, which was basically like NATO. And then there was Nod, which was the Soviet counterpart.
Vic00:05:00I assume you were Nod, Sonny. You played as Nod.
Sonny00:05:03No, I usually played as ... Well, I played as both. I would do GDI, and then I would do Nod.
Vic00:05:07You had to mine for those crystals.
Sonny00:05:09Yeah, you had to get the crystals. The Tiberium. The Tiberium fields.
Vic00:05:13Very good.
Sonny00:05:14The Tiberium ... Because one of the games ... You never played this, JVL? Command & Red Alert ... Oh, it was good, though. I think Command & Red Alert 2 was called Tiberium Sun. Or something like that. Anyway, but that was Tiberium. It was like you had to mine it to get the money to buy your troops.
Vic00:05:32Troops and different equipments. But the essence of the game was just dragging. You're just telling them where to go with your mouse. Yeah, you highlight them, and then you're like, "Go attack here.
Sonny00:05:43Go attack here." I liked it because it wasn't turn-based. It was like everything was happening all the time. So it wasn't like you take a turn, then you take a turn. It was all at once.
Vic00:05:54It was all happening, so you had to be quick.
Sonny00:05:57Yeah, the enemy would come in waves usually, so it was kind of turn-based.
Vic00:06:01JVL, now you know how Sonny feels when we talk about civilization. One last Command & Trivia question for Sonny, and then I'm going to move on to you guys. If you were playing as Nod and you needed to build a barracks, what did the barracks look like for Nod?
Sonny00:06:17Oh, I forget. I forget. I want to say it was like a circle. Oh, it was a fist? It was a fist.
Vic00:06:23It was a fist.
Sonny00:06:24Yeah, that sounds about right. That sounds about right. I loved that game. That and Doom 2 were my two favorite video games growing up. Those graphics were scary. Doom 2 specifically, not Doom.
Vic00:06:36Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:06:37No, I only played the first one. But no, Command & Conquer, I almost bought a Command & Legacy pack or something like that. It was like 17 Command & Conquer games for $3. Oh, my gosh. You'd never leave the room. And I was just like, "When would I have time to play 17 iterations of Command & Conquer at this point in my life?" I can't do it anymore. That's it. That's it.
JVL00:07:03JVL, what's going on with you? I have been waiting for this day because I want to take issue with your Quadrant score for The Fifth Element.
Sonny00:07:12Whoa! Okay, refresh my memory because I can't remember. He has been holding onto this one, folks.
JVL00:07:17You gave the Sex Nudity Quadrant... Oh. ...on a PG-13 movie...
Vic00:07:23Oh. ...a mere A. Oh, you wanted A+ for the boob. Despite the fact... Yeah.
JVL00:07:29...that it has Mia Jovovich, a 22-year-old Mia Jovovich, both scantily clad and then... Ukrainian, too. ...full boobies, not once, not twice, but thrice. If that on a PG-13 doesn't get you A++, then I don't know what does.
?00:07:48You know what's funny? You know what's funny?
Vic00:07:48I probably had been watching Fifth Element on USA. What more could she give you?
JVL00:07:51Yeah, that's true. What more could she give you? You know what?
Vic00:07:54I was probably watching it on USA or something. Did you not re-watch it before the episode? I didn't see it in the theater. I didn't see it in the theater.
Sonny00:08:01You didn't watch it on iTunes or whatever? No, I didn't.
Vic00:08:06That was convenient that I was missing from that episode. Yeah.
Sonny00:08:10I was a little surprised by the... I mean, it should probably be an A+ in that category. For PG-13. For PG-13. I mean, I don't know about PG-13.
JVL00:08:20Plus, plus. For a PG-13, that is the gold standard against which all other PG-13 sex nudity quadrants are judged.
Vic00:08:30It's funny because I don't remember seeing her... I must have been just watching it on TBS.
JVL00:08:35Yeah.
Vic00:08:36Well, you missed. By the way, that does pass the TBS test for great movies because that was on there for a while.
Sonny00:08:42You would come across it. Oh, yeah. That was a basic cable classic for a long time. Yeah. I think I actually... The fifth element is interesting because it's one of those movies where I definitely did not see the whole thing until, I don't know, maybe 10 years after I saw most of it, right? Yes. Yes. Because I would turn it on. I had no idea there was a whole section with Luke Perry at the beginning until 2008, probably. Because I had watched it on TNT and TBS so many times, I finally watched it from start to finish one day on. On whatever channel, and I was like, "Oh my God, there's a whole sequence here that starts the movie." That's also kind of how Quick and the Dead is for me. I did not see that in theaters. Sure, from beginning to end.
Vic00:09:27I didn't see that in theaters either.
Sonny00:09:29When I finally did watch it, I watched it on HBO and then TNT or whatever, and I would never... I had never caught the very beginning part where she gets into the scuffle with Tobin Bell's character.
Vic00:09:43Oh, right. The initial.
Sonny00:09:45Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:09:47That guy. Yeah.
Sonny00:09:49Yeah. The guy from...
Vic00:09:51From Saw. Saw. He's the villain.
Sonny00:09:54I get confused. Final Destination and... He's Jigsaw. He's the one. He's the one. He's the Saw from...
Vic00:10:00He's the one. He's the guy. He's awful.
Sonny00:10:03Jig from Jigsaw. If you're not into horror, don't watch it because those scenes will stick with you. Yeah. The first one is... I think the first one is actually the hardest of them to watch because the violence... With Terry Owens. Yeah. Because the violence is actually very... The violence at the end where he's sawing through his own leg.
?00:10:15Yeah.
Sonny00:10:15You hear it.
Vic00:10:16It's pretty. JVL, you've seen all those movies, right?
JVL00:10:19Yeah. No.
Sonny00:10:21We should do a Saw marathon.
JVL00:10:22Saw/The Human Centipede marathon.
Vic00:10:25Human Centipede is interesting. Human Centipede's fine because it's too cartoony. The answer is you want to be in the front. The answer is you want to be... It's too cartoony. If you're... You want to be in the front. You don't want to be in the middle. They did a whole trilogy. You don't want to be in the middle. There's three of them.
Sonny00:10:38You definitely don't want to be in the middle. I feel like middle and end is basically the same, frankly. Because you're... Either way, you're getting...
Vic00:10:44At least my rear is okay. At least I'm okay with that.
Sonny00:10:47No. I mean, would that really be any better? I mean, I... Oh, yeah.
Vic00:10:51Because in your mind, it's like, "Oh, my gosh. Stop eating."
Sonny00:10:53But then you're just going everywhere like an animal.
Vic00:10:59And that wraps up another...
Sonny00:11:00You don't have a mouth diaper to get in. On that note, thanks for listening. We should do a saw marathon where we just keep a camera on JBL's face the whole time, like in close-up. And then... Oh. And then... Just like commentary or anything? No. Just like... Just like an 18-hour episode of JBL's face. Yeah. Wait till he gets to the pit of needles.
Vic00:11:20You know, the pit of syringes?
Sonny00:11:21That was a fun one, where, yeah, the junkie falls into the pit of needles and she's like, "Aah!
Guest00:11:29I got needles in my hands!" They're terrible. Oh!
Vic00:11:32There are still some of those. The one about the lung crusher. You had to hold your breath, and the one who couldn't hold it longest, and he was like a chronic smoker, and then he dies. It was all... It was horrible. Good movies. The Pendulum? How about The Pendulum? Good movies. I don't remember that one. He had to put his hands in a crusher, and if he pulled them out of the crusher, then the pendulum would keep on going, and of course, at the end, he can't keep it in the crusher, so then he starts getting sawed in half.
Sonny00:11:58Well, I mean, if you don't play by the rules, you lose the game. No, you have to play by the rules. It's a very important movie about rules. Rules. Does he ever cheat the rules? Does he ever cheat... Rules matter. Does he stick to it? I think he cheats. I remember thinking... I remember thinking in one of them, like, something happened to make the timer speed up. That's right.
Vic00:12:18Something is cheating now.
Sonny00:12:19Come on, man. That's not fair. You gotta give him a fair chance to be mutilated as opposed to dying. That's right. Because those are the choices. It's only fair. Those are the choices. You have to be fair. Okay. You have rules. People have to follow the rules.
Vic00:12:33Again, JVL. How are you? Great.
JVL00:12:36I'm so great. You know, you're talking about wanting to watch Saw with me. I flash was over at a friend's house today, I went to pick him up, and I was talking with a friend's parents and did not realize that this kid's mom was an employment lawyer. And I don't know why, but somehow, early in the conversation, one of us had made a Tiger King reference. And I said, "You know what? I would pay cash money to sit and watch Tiger King with you just for you to lose your mind over the employment law problems. Going on at Joe Exotics Park with him changing into his EMS outfit when his woman gets her arm bitten off by the tiger and stuff like that. It makes me feel like I need to go back and revisit that."
Vic00:13:24There was a sequel, remember? Yeah, I didn't see that.
Sonny00:13:26There was a sequel, and I watched zero minutes of it. Weren't they making the movie?
Vic00:13:28No, they made a movie about it.
Sonny00:13:29No, they made a show that's on Hulu, I think. I think it's actually already out. It's a dramatization. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They made a movie about it. Yeah.
JVL00:13:42Yeah. Yeah.
Sonny00:13:44Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tiger King is one of those fascinating artifacts of the early pandemic. Pandemic. Yes. Remember how desperate we all were for hashtag content? That was it. We were like, "This is the greatest thing ever. These crazy, disgusting people. Let's watch them be awful to each other and murder their husbands probably," and whatnot. She did it, right? We all agree that Carol did it. She's murdered.
Vic00:14:10I like the other guy with his harem.
Sonny00:14:12Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc.
Vic00:14:16Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc.
JVL00:14:28Doc. Doc.
Vic00:14:30Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. Doc. . . . .
?00:14:40.
Vic00:14:41.
JVL00:14:42wild uh do you remember what tom's call sign was yes duck no what no wink are you sure positive i thought it was duck no wink wink wink i'm gonna check call sign
Sonny00:15:02wink oh i'll check with should have gone one step further and made the call sign martindale
Vic00:15:09yes sonny how many people would even know who that is i don't know this is a weird show so far
JVL00:15:14we're gonna start moving this thing along okay sonny how are you going on with you no not a whole
Sonny00:15:19lot i uh uh my lovely wife is going out of town for like a week next week she's gonna be gone from like tuesday to sunday so i have uh been stockpiling physical media to watch i i because the thing is the thing is we can't actually i can't really there's nothing on streaming i can really watch because we should we want to watch all the shows together right so i can't like just watch you know the rest of stranger things or and you wouldn't want to watch it again and there's yeah i mean i don't want to like re-watch episodes i don't i don't have time for that i got i got you know experiences to have uh so instead so instead i've been uh first off i actually i actually this i'm not proud of this but i purchased another 4k blu-ray player because the playstation 5 is so incredibly loud when the 4k disc runs i don't i don't know how to explain it and it's it is a problem with the equipment uh that everybody has but it is like yeah well it's it it so it's it's the it's the mechanism that spins so like oh when you put a disc in and it starts spinning up it's like like if you put a blu-ray in it's fine just a regular blu-ray you put a regular blu-ray and it's fine it's like no no sound when you put the 4k in i guess it spins at a greater speed so you and it is it's like having it's like having uh it's like having a vacuum cleaner on in the next room it's crazy it's the crazy now that's weird now luckily luckily uh it's at the same frequency and it keeps going so you just ignore it because it kills the the parts of your ears that hear that right so i'm just going deaf with this thing in my in my room i'm just like slowly going down anyway uh i so i i bought a i bought another uh relatively cheap 4k blu-ray player and i've been uh stockpiling movies to watch i i have them here i've got uh candy man the new candy man oh i'm gonna watch that vick vick here's a good one this is a quadrant killer atomic blonde oh
Vic00:17:20that is such a good one that's such a good you know it's funny no nudity but it's the sex it's
Sonny00:17:25there's definitely nudity did you watch this one on tbs too no uh really us and get out we're gonna be gonna be watching that gonna get ready for jordan nope hands across america even jay yeah i love that movie i love that movie that's it's so much better than get out us greater sign get out i didn't see get out so uh uncut gems uh i'm gonna rewatch the movie that jv was out on and then uh and then i've got four i think then i've i've got i've got another couple coming i've got the the original django arrow arrow video put out a 4k release of the original django not django unchanged what about once upon a time in hollywood i've you know i've got all those um uh once upon a time in hollywood yeah no j not not django unchanged not not the jamie foxx movie the original spaghetti western okay yes yeah once upon a time in america is that what you think no no no
Vic00:18:21i'm just throwing it out there do you have that on four oh i do i do have that on 4k that was
Sonny00:18:25actually the first 4k disc i bought i bought that uh you know proof future proof myself uh because i bought it before i even had a 4k player i also i have uh the big lebowski coming on 4k gonna rewatch that one you know and uh something else i don't know but anyway i'm just i'm just i'm just like going through days of material here i thought about getting the whole mission impossible 4k
Vic00:18:51set but i did even two they throw in two you're forced to watch two i'll watch it john woo guess
JVL00:18:58what they were all masks it was in disguise they fooled you jv you you saying that you had to buy a second 4k player yeah because the playstation 5 makes too much noise yeah that makes more sense than anything you've ever said i mean i endorse that so completely and totally i could not live like that and you should not
Sonny00:19:24have to live like that either i i thought i thought i thought maybe it's a me problem maybe i have like set it up wrong so i looked on the internet and found out that no pretty much everybody has this problem and there are ways that you can lessen it if you put it on and i've done this if you put it on like a hard plastic surface that'll reduce some of the vibrations and cut down on some of the noise and that worked a little bit i've been throwing a blanket over it but i'm sure
JVL00:19:49that's like roasting the inside yes that's like i so i live like that sonny so eventually i i just
Sonny00:19:56i i just threw in the towel and i was like i will keep you for to play the video games but i gotta get a regular i gotta get like just a you are not a savage two hundred dollar you know 4k player yeah i just have to do it and i i i i have no regrets i've no i just started watching dvds on
Vic00:20:15blu-ray which is an interesting thing versus the regular thing you know i could still hear you when
Sonny00:20:23you took the headphones out uh dvd i've just started watching dvd on blu-ray that's yeah
Vic00:20:29are you angry that they have the black bars on either side i gotta zoom in so i take the
Sonny00:20:38bars out i gotta set my tv to full screen uh that was a thing by the way blu-ray is blu-ray is a separate format it's not it's not dvds on blu-ray it's the two different one is the digital video disc the other is a whole different format sometimes they give you a choice if you're
Vic00:20:57streaming to watch the 4k version i was listening to the album on cassette i was gonna say am i and i click it on does it make a difference on my tv i have no idea it's not really it's not actually
Sonny00:21:08giving you uh a it's not you know what i'm saying like you'll be like yeah yeah no no it depends on so are you talking about like amazon so like basically what what amazon will do what amazon does and i actually asked amazon about this one time because i was curious yes if you if you order a if you order a movie if you like rent a movie i rented i think it was the father the anthony hopkins uh movie that was up for best picture a couple years back i rented the father but i didn't specifically rent the 4k version i rented you know i i just rented the hd one yeah and like went through the whole thing and then like two minutes later i was like oh wait there's actually there's a 4k version did i am i getting the 4k version what's the difference and i asked i asked amazon help on twitter and the the helpful you know robot on the other end was like don't worry whatever you get we will up clock it to like the highest rate that your internet connection and your tv can handle so like it no matter what you you are watching it in the highest resolution possible no matter what you're uh if you're watching on amazon on netflix you actually have to there's like a higher tier you have to buy it's in which is
Vic00:22:18really annoying but like everybody else i feel like the netflix every time i turn around they're upping the subscription rate and it's not like 50 bucks a month i feel like it's just just make it 50 because that's i feel like we're going there it's not like 15 it's it's 20 a month for me
Sonny00:22:33because i have the 4k version and it's and and at this particular moment at this particular moment it's worth it because i am watching stranger things i like i haven't started it
Vic00:22:42i this is not the episode for this jvl don't worry don't get nervous but uh i'm hearing mixed
Sonny00:22:48reviews i i i enjoy it i i i'm a sucker for this show i i have always enjoyed it i like it you see my shirt you see what it says palace arcade is that a new jersey place no no hawkins indiana that oh look at you like look at that see that's a stranger things reference that is a stranger things reference jvl have you watched stranger things have you
Vic00:23:08pass oh of all people to pass man you'd love this it's meant for you it's meant for it's meant for
Sonny00:23:15us it is pure 80s nostalgia i think you would love it it's a series a series television on
JVL00:23:23netflix you've already lost me i i don't do series tv and everything on netflix is terrible
Sonny00:23:28no except for a few exceptions this is mostly true i agree mostly i agree mostly with jvl percent of the time i'm with you on this and and stranger things especially in season seasons two and three does have the netflix bloat problem um and i i was afraid this season also was going to have that problem i watched the first episode i was like what the fuck is happening why is this it gets why are you saying it gets better but it gets it gets it gets better it goes
Vic00:23:53faster um so first season watch the first season of that it's it it'll fly it's fly by it's really
JVL00:23:59oh i can't i'm so excited for obi-wan that's what i'm gonna be spending all of my series
Sonny00:24:08tv time on i hope not i hope not i watched i watched i've watched the first two episodes and i don't know about you guys but it looks as cheap as everything else that disney plus does i don't know man i like a friend of mine a friend of mine uh made made the point in dms the other day that this this stuff just looks it is like it is xena and hercules with a star wars patina on it it is it is cheap looking listen that's fine
JVL00:24:38but a friend of the show went to the uh crazy galactic star cruiser star wars hotel yeah in disney world and wrote me like a 3 000 word walkthrough with pictures explaining what it is what and the three of us need to go
Sonny00:25:00but it's like isn't it like ten thousand dollars a day or something no it's not that much if you get a
JVL00:25:08suite with a couple people uh a certain buddy of mine who may or may not be a member of the priesthood has committed to going with me because he's also a star wars nerd i believe my brother-in-law has committed to going we could get a full but what what so my buddy's sausage fest package everything down there is in everything at the star wars hotel is a ratio i'm sorry
Vic00:25:38star wars star wars hotel yeah what is that what is the ratio in the in the star wars
Sonny00:25:43hotel of men versus women it's got to be 85 85 to 15 listen the point is the odds the future is female futures the force is female the point is then as my buddy said in this
JVL00:25:59i was so grateful that he took the time to sort of to send me his walkthrough of it he had one of those immersive murder mystery dinners yes right where are you dinner theater dinner theater but it goes on for three days and it's basically a choose your own adventure oh come on where everybody who works at the hotel is essentially a playable character that you can talk to and get missions off of oh come on and you you basically decide early on if you're gonna i don't like it if you're gonna go roll with the smugglers and sort of go or if you want to go to be if you you can choose to be with the resistance or to be you can be a sympathizer for the first order and everybody makes up everybody does
Sonny00:26:47this in character and so you gotta go it's too much work that's too much i'm sorry that is not that is that is not that it that does not sound like a relaxing trip that sounds
Vic00:26:58like work it sounds like you're into it you look you want to escape you escape this sounds amazing it's like total recall minus the injections yes my buddy says that he was giving me his
JVL00:27:08backstory and he was a smuggler who uh who was born on hoth and that his dad uh had been killed by a one-armed wampa oh one arm that's good arm that's good whole backstory whole back this is we gotta do this
Sonny00:27:28we gotta do this much work i'll wait for westworld this sounds like this sounds like i bet you yeah me too this sounds like a much lamer version of westworld i want westworld where i can go and shoot people and other things do other things all
JVL00:27:45right so vic just you me you me father harrison and my brother-in-law oh great great great lots of lights let's do this it will be it will be just like when we went to the now departed uptown theater to watch the phantom menace only it'll be better right i think
Vic00:28:03i think my uh computer is failing me right now hold on i think i'm fading away sorry
Sonny00:28:08i uh no that's i really i i understand i get it i like actually get it i do get it like i think that's there's a there's a universe in which that could be kind of fun but like at the same time again it's like i don't i when i go on vacation i want to i want to be able to relax and that does not sound relaxing it sounds like it sounds like a lot of effort you know am i wrong am i am
Vic00:28:32i just uh yeah this is the only way in which i'd be tired of it after and after a few hours yes i'm sure that is that would be the case for you but it's the only i hate being around people this is a way that i would not as yourself you know one of you you'd rather be somebody else do you have an identity there's an identity crisis going on here okay i just that all it just seems
Sonny00:28:55it seems like too much for me i don't know i'm gonna be i'm a buzzkill that victorino how are
Vic00:29:00you buddy i'm fine i'm too tired to go into my whole spiel just to get to the transition which
JVL00:29:08are things let me pretend things okay with what you know oh the tooth i've gotten used to having
Vic00:29:16a tooth gap and um like you know i was gonna lose it anyway because of the hole but your hole the hole in your mouth the hole on the right side i'm chewing well i'll tell you the indicator is i'm back to my normal weight because i was like i am now like you know potato chips and everything else just we gotta let it soften and then take my chances you know nothing to jab
Sonny00:29:38uh and do you still get the occasional like stray stabbing pain oh no no no that is now
Vic00:29:46it's amazing now that that that that's gone so that's nice and i have no more bits of the cadaver floating around in me it's all gone i think everything's sealed i don't think i have dry socket or whatever it's called so that's fine um thank you look at sonny uh that's the malignant face thank you thank you i have well i i still have the mysterious tooth and i have haven't gotten the a treatment plan from the doctor and i kind of feel like i'm not really in a rush for that right now in my in at this moment you still have the evil tooth in your head
Sonny00:30:17yeah the one that's traveling up to your brain to kill you yeah from your twin well it's taken
Vic00:30:2249 years to travel up there and it's going up to my nose maybe i'll blow it out so i don't know it's it would be you know what that would talk that would be a deadly ejection speaking of which over the weekend huh top gun maverick top gun maverick sword to first place with last i checked 126.7 million well that's over the three day yes three day weekend
Sonny00:30:47four day weekend was 161 something followed by doctor strange and the multiverse of madness
Vic00:30:53which took in 15.9 and in third place the bob's burgers movie uh which john potthart's loved he was just telling us that five stars kidding so i want four million dollars box office so i actually
Sonny00:31:08went to go see the bob's burgers movie because i needed something to review this week and i didn't i didn't want to review i i don't really want to review the new david cronenberg movie crimes of the future which looks like it's very cronenbergian body horror you know and you didn't want to do downton abbey a new era i didn't want to do downton abbey uh but i did go see bob's burgers and i was interested to see it because i've never watched a single moment of bob's burgers yeah does it work if you haven't it's been on if you haven't been on for well it's been on for 11 years now i haven't watched i haven't watched an episode uh so i was kind of curious to see if it would work and i think it does basically work it works for me i know jpod didn't love it i um i found i was entertained and i was able to follow it which is always the thing that i worry about with something like this where there's like a giant pre-existing property and like there's definitely there are definitely references yeah that i don't get yeah that i like don't that don't make any sense to me but like for the most part it's it's a pretty easy straightforward uh simple to follow i'll i enjoyed it in part because i am just a sucker for h john benjamin who plays the lead he plays the bob of bob's burgers and he's uh he's also the guy who plays he does the voice of archer on fx's archer it's that guy that you would you recognize the voice if you've um if you've ever heard it before but he's he's very good and very funny i i just have always liked his deliveries and the movie's actually very densely packed with jokes there's lots of like not just the jokes in all of the signage in the background is filled with like puns and wordplay and it's it's it's fine it's fine it's uh it's i i was entertained i did not i did not regret going to the multiplex for 105 minutes or whatever oh short on plot that's good the uh the the big question uh will be how much top gun maverick drops next weekend uh because it has nothing it's not really up against any competition um and the word of mouth word of mouth on this one is like through the roof to the point where uh to to the point where beth and i are actually going to see it uh friday night she had she had fear of missing out for the
JVL00:33:19first time on a movie in a long long time yeah so i am also going back to see it friday night with shannon and my sister and my brother-in-law and i bought our tickets for friday thursday morning and i believe we got the last seats in the auditorium amazing it's crazy so looking at all of the friday and saturday night showings they were already sold out or nearly you know three seats left as of thursday morning wow i think it's not going to drop very much no i don't i don't think i mean like all of the imax
Sonny00:33:58uh showings in the evening hours were basically sold out except for like the very front rows yeah um all of you don't want to be there and it at the at the draft house i mean i would say that uh you know it's it's there are something like 15 screenings and almost all of the like stadium seating section of all of those theaters
JVL00:34:18is is sold out so so i i have a a public service question for you sonny because what i think people need to know is how long they have to see this on the big screens so on either the at most theaters the imax theaters or if you're going to the alamo the big the big show theaters which is basically at most how when does top gun maverick get pushed off of those screens right next
Sonny00:34:51weekend what so you gotta go now you got if you want to go see it in imax you have to go in the
Vic00:34:57next six days why would that what are they making room for what's next because they're because up
Sonny00:35:01next is uh jurassic world dominion uh universal has those screens for the jurassic world movie that's that's gonna be killing me that's gonna be on imax and dolby and and all the rest uh so that is uh that is uh that's coming and it's gonna make displace top gun maverick i saw people really do need to do this and you
JVL00:35:20gotta go see it on the biggest screen possible like it's not enough to just see it in a theater
Vic00:35:24i gotta go yeah that's what i did i saw it at amc courthouse and the screen was about the size of this computer oh that's the worst did you really go to yeah i i didn't have any time i didn't have time before uh the next show so i had to see it on thursday and because we were off like i couldn't see it for whatever the reason was so i know i saw it on friday and then we were up in jersey saturday sunday monday whatever monday and then here we are now so i didn't get a chance and then kate just saw it too separately but uh dick you gotta go see it i know oh believe me you've reminded me so i gotta book that i gotta book that definitely
JVL00:35:58because uh yeah i mean this is worth making an appointment for oh yeah if you're listening to the show you're the type of person who cares about these things yeah make an appointment to
Vic00:36:08see this show which is two hours long as soon as you're done with the show then we have uh get you
Sonny00:36:13know get those i don't want to hear any complaints from you guys about the length of this show we missed we missed the bonus episodes the last two weeks you didn't even do the show you didn't even do the show last week i want to hear it you're a workhorse you're a slave driver i demand i demand content for the people we we are providing a service for money if you ever watch you ever
Vic00:36:36watch the uh the peter jackson beatles a documentary yeah yeah and you'll hear everyone's just doing their thing and then you'll hear paul mccartney get on john lennon's case about memorizing the lyrics and he's like i have it right in front of me i i know that but you should memorize it i don't know just memorize right he's right paul
Sonny00:36:52mccartney was right john lennon was a piece of shit put it together later on and john lennon was no not later on now paul mccartney was always right he was the driving force of that band the only good one him and george harrison harrison george harrison okay most musically anyway uh sonny how about how about oh yes go ahead well we're gonna do we're gonna
Vic00:37:14do top gun first we gotta talk about the original top gun oh let's get to the we gotta get to the
JVL00:37:20big boy review of top gun we should do maverick first and then you want to talk about the old
Vic00:37:26one later whatever but people want to get to the meat and potatoes now 30 36 minutes in um don't
Sonny00:37:32don't you dare don't you dare we got like time check me we have 10 don't you dare time check i
Vic00:37:38clock okay uh sonny how about a big boy review and i am saying a big boy review of the movie not crazy theories not crazy theories yet conjecture the crazy i don't want your conjecture
Sonny00:37:50quite yet you could throw that in later we'll get to that we'll get to the accurate statement of what really happens in this movie nuts it's nuts okay just qua movie movie qua movie uh all right so top gun maverick uh stars tom cruise as pete maverick mitchell who is uh at this point in his career still a captain he's doing test piloting of a new airplane they can go mach 10 7000 miles 7000 miles an hour no i didn't said skunk there's a
JVL00:38:22there's a skunk on the tail oh the tail fin of the thing has a skunk on it and it's total skunk works and there's in the deep in the credits there's a thank you to lockheed martin skunk
Sonny00:38:33works yeah i'm sure that's a prototype well there's a lockheed there's a lockheed martin logo on the yeah on the like on the joystick or whatever whatever you call it the throttle
JVL00:38:42yes right now your dad is losing his mind the airplane yeah my dad doesn't listen to anything
Sonny00:38:49i do or write any they read anything i write uh the the stick thingy you know the joystick i don't know uh so anyway um pete maverick mitchell is test pilot he gets up to mach 10.2 and the airplane explodes and then he's gotta he he comes back to earth and admiral kane who's played by ed harris in like a two-minute role i don't know what he's doing in this movie for two minutes he's like are you gotta go to top gun we're sending you back to top gun we got a mission for you he's very he's gotta go back there he's gotta go back there and he has to train past winners of the top gun competition to do a very difficult mission to take out the enemy and their nuclear uh uranian enrichment facilities now i don't know any nations that are in a mountainous that have uranium enrichment facilities that need to be taken out uh by the united states like you're looking around but they but they they they're just called the enemy in this yeah there's
Vic00:39:48no i will lay around yes i will i will lay out the definitive evidence of this after you do your
Sonny00:39:55thing but we all have theories so does it does it involve does it involve an f-14 oh yeah exactly okay anyway uh so the uh so uh maverick has to train these guys john ham is like i don't like you hot shot he's basically playing the ice man role um who is also in this movie valcomer appears a little bit later on we'll talk more about that well this whole thing is spoilers it's gonna be spoilers if you're if you're still listening spoilers forever um uh and of course in this group of kids that he has to train one of them is rooster the son of goose played by because that says played by the great miles teller uh from whiplash and only the brave and other things uh basically so i it's all it's all shorthand for uh you know having to uh you know put to put the sins of his past to rest he has to help the the son of the guy he basically got killed uh up in the air you know accomplish his goals blah blah blah um here's what so here here's why this movie is so much better than the original spy i wanted to talk about the first one first but this movie is so much better because it has an actual plot as an actual plot there's like a goal that needs to be accomplished the guys get in an airplane and they're they do all the stuff in the air and that's awesome that's awesome just like from the first one i see jv in this in this movie there's an actual mission there's an actual mission that they have to do and accomplish and and in in the course of accomplishing this mission they also uh progress as human beings and they they you know they they uh get they they progress they become they progress they be they be they become better as people they learn you know what they have been missing in their lives uh and they they grow they grow as people so they accomplish a mission they grow as people um it's better on every level the action is better in this movie the plot is better the acting is better uh the beach sports are better um i don't know man i everything about this movie is better than the original uh and we can talk about my accurate statement of what the movie is actually what is actually happening in this movie a little bit later but i want to know about the quadrants vic how does it do jump right to that
Vic00:42:12on the quadrants here we go here we go okay uh plot is an a plus that was easy though there is no there's no surprise there's no like what happened now granted granted you could say that the ending was a bit of a stretch but that's okay i'm already sold on the movie so i you know i was like is this turning into behind enemy lines which is another great another good movie owen wilson and gene hackman but you know what i mean uh how do we get you out of there and everything moved pretty fast from the end where they're on the they're behind literally behind enemy lines and then they have to find a way to get back are they going to get back how many people are going to die okay fine whatever a little bit but i still thought hey this is very straightforward there's a mission they do the mission done okay and there's other levels going on here there's fathers and sons and then there's sonny's crazy theory we'll get to that later on okay duration is a b technically it would have been long it would have been lower but it did not feel it did not feel like two hours and 11 minutes or whatever it was it was like let's keep this thing going okay action and violence is a plus plus plus the aerial acrobatics i assume there is some cgi with the explosions and but it didn't look like fake fire right i mean they spent money include you know everything else okay are you uh are you ready for this the sex new today are you ready for this are you for this b plus why is it a b plus okay on the one hand because the quadrants are a lie no no quadrants are quadrants always the truth on the one hand the actual love scene is like really kind of it's very chaste it's unclear it's even
Sonny00:43:50chaster than the original in the oh yeah the original pg top gun which is like it's basically
Vic00:43:56shot like a music video with that was it was and it was it was with the bluish light the bluish tint
JVL00:44:02and berlin practically expect the girl from berlin to come out from behind and start singing it i'm
Vic00:44:08gonna make a joke can i make this joke or you could bleep it out about it but i you know that original scene that that required some serious acting from tom cruise oh oh come on no because
JVL00:44:19you know i mean it's just very awkward with everybody you know it's very awkward to film
Vic00:44:22these because it's the clothes also required some acting from kelly mcgillis oh come on oh man what's
Sonny00:44:31happening here okay uh why they're both actors they're both actors it's they're just acting it's
Vic00:44:38i'll tell you why is it a b plus what nonsense reason because because because the dog fights were so hot like when the cruise missiles the time i said where's the time i hot cruise missiles all of a sudden they're flying overhead i was it was literally like whoop that's what happened okay i'm just saying sound effect for you f-18s they fire off countermeasures i blacked out
JVL00:44:58that was so hot the countermeasures i want to see counter you don't see enough countermeasures
Sonny00:45:03it was hot more countermeasures you know what we didn't see we didn't see
Vic00:45:08chaff when we saw no no that's interesting maybe chaff is like passe now and it's all about the you know the other cat you know the the flares and things and it's the sound looks so much better the flare was so electric it was like ah um flares look so much better than in uh air force one
Sonny00:45:23two i mean it's remember the flares in air force one you know what was realistic with air force
Vic00:45:29harrison ford hanging on by a hand at the back of the plane yeah one hand one hand we remember
JVL00:45:37parachuting kicking her legs and what she says she says we it was like a ride despite the fact
Vic00:45:46that half her cabinet had been murdered on that plane she's floating down because that's how you just parachute okay uh i i just really love this movie okay back to you back to you guys we'll get back to me later i have more thoughts but oh let's get jvl come on talk to me uh it's it's
JVL00:46:07great yeah it's great yeah and i i gotta say so this is something which i do not recall ever happening to me in a movie uh it is the same thing that happened in the movie is that what you're gonna say no no it's different the loudest movie i've ever been to and this i'm sure did not happen to you vic because you were not in a giant court screen on this so i was wearing i can only imagine i was wearing jeans in the theater and down i was wearing set pants continue so down by you know the the very bottom the cuffs of your jeans where they that they touch the top of your sneakers right i don't know what that part of the band but you know like they like this fabric there right like the there were several points during the movie in which i felt that fabric vibrating from the audio mix almost like uh do you remember like the gaming chairs that were hip for a while really oh you could sit a chair and it synced up to your playstation and evolve almost like that except these chairs weren't meant to vibrate it was just the sound mix right of the of the jet engines i was like oh this is so good it's uh everything about it
Sonny00:47:20did you see it on imax did you did you go to the imax and see i went to the big show okay so i saw
JVL00:47:24it on the the uh the alamo version of it and i mean i don't know the idea that tom kazansky got to be sync pack didn't that blow your skirt up victorino right that was uh and i we can so we can talk about we could there was one thing i did not like about maverick from a storytelling perspective uh which is the character of hangman attacking rooster for like oh your dad's dead right kind of like that is not right but that is simply not something that is in character for like super professionalized fighter jocks who are all training for a mission like that that felt like a bad and i heard that
Vic00:48:15by the way i saw an interview with a top gun pilot and he mentioned the same thing that everything else about it was really good but he thought that that sort of it's just a false note it was the
Sonny00:48:25only false note in the movie i i would just i disagree with this in the sense that it's not like he's like oh your dad's dead you're gonna cry about it it he he's making an actual point about how rooster is flying the planes which is tepidly he is he is flying he is flying scared okay he's thinking
Vic00:48:44too much that's true he does say something at the very end of that confrontation says and you he turns to uh maverick and goes and you know it he says yeah and maverick does know it maverick i mean
Sonny00:48:54there's there's no universe i'm my only false note is that there's no universe in which maverick would pick rooster to go on this mission over hangman yeah hangman is hangman is i think hangman has demonstrated he's not he can't be trusted he's dangerous just there was just no but that's why
JVL00:49:14he couldn't go this is this is when you say that when you when you say well you know what maybe we'll just commingle the two movies but uh the story of the original top gun is the story of a truly great pilot tom iceman kaczynski helping to fix a broken pilot pete maverick mitchell and turn him into something that is useful because because maverick is not actually good right he's you know he's out of control and he doesn't know how to you know he doesn't understand duty doesn't know what and iceman teaches him that the hero the hero of that movie yes man he is the hero i agree i agree maverick is dangerous that's one of the things that's so great about the way the kaczynski character was written and it is beautiful to me that the the script for maverick for top gun maverick understands that clearly right um the way iceman is written is you almost think that he's supposed to be like the 80s izod lacoste you know wearing a pink polo shirt with his cricket sweater over the shoulder like that type of villain right the pretty boy he's perfect and everything but that is a hundred percent not what is going on with that character uh he is he is an absolute professional who is interested in getting the job done and wants everybody else to be better around him which is why he actually helps maverick and the fact that top gun maverick then recognizes those two guys became lifelong friends is an acknowledgement of what you were saying sonny that iceman is is the real hero of the original top gun he's the hero because he's the one who helps tom cruise's character make that journey yeah yeah iceman doesn't have an arc pete mitchell has an arc and he is sort of guided along that and helped through that by iceman yeah there
Vic00:51:12were two kind of star wars elements to this movie one is the more obvious which is that they had to get this bomb in a hole like the size you know it's like i mean it's like you
Sonny00:51:25know it's shooting a bomb right it's literally the same size it's three meters they call
Vic00:51:30it they call it they say three meters and and the other one though is uh the constant sort of mantra the advice that maverick has for rooster which is to trust your feelings don't think just trust your feelings you know
Sonny00:51:42he literally turns he turns the targeting computer off he's just like i'm gonna do it
Vic00:51:46i'm gonna wing it here that was a little weird okay it's i mean it's like it's literally the star wars death star run it's amazing it is it is and yet again i okay i i have other okay here my other thoughts and again this does not detract from the movie because the movie is amazing i will go back to it later about how why i love this movie so much during the movie i did wonder why couldn't they use uh you know f-35 droid strike fighters which do have some limited stealth capabilities um and the second thing but they don't have a lot of stealth it's really where the weapons are located because they're in an internal base the second thing is um why couldn't they have used an f-22 raptor which is of course fully stealth mode then you wouldn't have to go through the maze you could just fly and then drop the bomb a laser guided munition uh and the two reasons one they're given
JVL00:52:37an explanation right i i don't miss the explanation they don't mention the f i don't think not the rap they only mention the f-35 not okay so they have 22 there's two problems with
Vic00:52:46that one uh one is you got to take out from a runway so is it either like from diego garcia right in the indian ocean or from prince sultan in saudi arabia politically problematic in the grand scheme of this mission um and the other problem is a movie uh story uh problem which is uh that's an air force plane and this is a tv movie yeah oh that's right yeah so they wouldn't be able to use it for that but incredibly difficult i appreciate them and i did i said why where are the tomahawk missiles so they do use them but in order to like knock out this runway um so it's like a full-on war it's not like they're trying to sneak up it's it's happening um but i do appreciate the larger mission which is that our fighter planes are at this moment when we used to be at the time of top gun in 1986 you know we there was no question about air superiority between the f-14 and the f-15 but today it is true that we are behind and that we need to do better either with better planes like the f-22 or the uh the ed harris um uh approach which is all unmanned vehicles well well in
Sonny00:53:57but in the original in the original though the f-14 is basically underpowered against the mig the mig is silly is like you know they're they're i had a problem
Vic00:54:07maneuverable i had a problem accepting it was those were f-5s to made look like to be like made black and i was like there's no way the f-5 so i'm when i'm watching it i'm
Sonny00:54:18like it's the f-5 it's not the my question 27 my question is how did how did uh how did the uh how did the iranians get a hold of an f-35 no that's a that's a sukhoi that's
JVL00:54:29a sukhoi su-57 that's a whatever whatever the fifth generation fighter is yes so that the su-57 does oh my gosh and that's that's not cgi that's a thing no that is that is a thing that that plane can do i've seen it in air show youtube videos before and it's the craziest fucking thing you've ever seen and it's real right it's as real as it gets baby that i was curious as to where how they got that footage oh i they just repurposed
Vic00:55:01air air show footage for it but that was an amazing because they're like what just you know the version it would be like the p-51 coming against like the the messerschmitt by the way we're really geeking out on this move in this episode but the messerschmitt tc like a jet fighter you know like what is that and that was that that maneuver was crazy but uh exciting when i watched it and uh so that's the one thing um let me just go briefly and i want to get the sunny's theory so i'll do my thing first which is it's definitely iran oh it could be north korea whatever no it's definitely iran for a couple no not russia no uh because you're getting from the water well i could be but uh you could get you could definitely get from like the persian gulf to the iranian mountain ranges like the zagros mountains in like 15 minutes if you're traveling a thousand miles an hour right right and they have these plans the other thing of course is iranian america which is very topical and then the third thing of course is f-14s which the shah had before oh the f-14 the the only
Sonny00:56:04other nation to ever have the f-14 i think yeah i'm shaking my head in sadness in circulation was the uh was iran was yeah and they yeah you know and it was so it's iran i mean it's definitely it's definitely iran i mean for it couldn't be russia because there's no way in hell i mean first off f-14 russia well russia russia also doesn't like need uranium enrichment like that's fair enough that's fair but like they're allowed to have uranium but but on top of that like nato would never authorize uh a missile run on russian territory like that that's like that's actual nuclear war but it really is we can do that to iran before they get the enriched uranium because fuck you iran you don't have a nuke what are you gonna do one of the big one of the big things the
Vic00:56:45big problems uh that iran had was getting parts spare parts became a real bitch because
JVL00:56:49after you know yeah the changeover okay but there's a i just want to say before we get to sonny's theories which i think is it's actually i don't think we should talk about them quad theories i think we should talk about the multiple levels on which the movie works because there's more than just one there's actually just there's actually
Sonny00:57:07four of them uh specifically four levels on which this movie works it it's a it's a
JVL00:57:14really well told story and it isn't there's a tiny bit of fan service here and there uh but it's really a character-driven story that all hangs together and i i watched chip and dale rescue rangers this past weekend and this is a movie that has nothing in it except for references member berries that's all there is no there is it all it's a hundred percent pure uncut member berries uh there is not a single original thought in it there is not a single joke that works as a as an actual bit of humor none of the characters are interesting you don't give a shit about anything happening the only pleasures which that movie delivers are oh i remember him from that thing that that's it and that is short-lived pleasure case that is not the case of top gun maverick uh i think in order to appreciate this movie you need to have seen the original top gun to understand who maverick is and how he got to this point in his life because it is a character-driven story about him you need to understand that he was basically wrecked by having his his backseater killed like there's a reason he has never gotten over that it was not quite a happy ending at the end yeah and uh and so you need that to understand but it's not a this isn't a nostalgia play like it very much is its own movie and it's wonderful there that's that's all i wanted to say before we talk about the other thing did you appreciate by
Vic00:58:48the way first of all it's such an amazing opening i love that that's kind of a member bears because it starts with kenny lockett's which is so good but like with the new care new new carriers but i appreciated i appreciated the credit that it wasn't just brookheimer but don simpson simpson
Sonny00:59:07i i i would push back a little bit on the idea that there aren't that it is not a member very heavy movie i mean there's a lot of replaying things that happened from the first film i mean like the the we mentioned the the danger zone on the on the aircraft carrier to start with like the hazy red background but also like the beach football scene and we're gonna call that
JVL00:59:33stuff with penny even though they're playing football the brand you know the penny stuff i thought was all very effective i thought it was really well done oh look sketching out the the character journey which is that you know it what it did it it put a bow on the idea that his relationship with charlie in the first one was like everything else forget that was her name um was wrong in the sense that she was too old for him and she was a bad fit for him and that relationship can never go anywhere no plus she was on she was amish thank you jvl sonny smiling i
Vic01:00:17don't know you get it sonny no yeah i get i get it it's very very funny anyway so this is again
JVL01:00:24the uh this is a this is a really well told piece of character writing in that he finally is with somebody who is age appropriate culture appropriate and whom with he has a past history at the end anyway and uh i don't know if i can say this i have never really been into jennifer connelly i think she's a lovely actress yeah i know i know what i think she's what i think she is a lovely actress i enjoy her her as an actor and everything she's in but i have never been into the jennifer connelly thing but milfy jennifer the milf version of jennifer connelly in this movie
Vic01:01:04that is a-okay yeah no it's funny i must have missed her in a lot i mean i know she was in the rocketeer and she was in she was in a great movie with frank whale ass to ass what ass to ass but but her her the poster was great and she was she's she's quite something uh but uh i could have watched her i could i i would i found myself so confused because i couldn't believe i was like wait a minute she's my age i'm almost she's even older she's she's older older than have i ever have i ever vix mrs robinson to an older woman this is so crazy i can't but i could have stared because it's a lot of time there's a lot of this movie is that she's one year older than you vick she's she's one year older than you she's 51 uh she's the time
Sonny01:01:54all day she's the lady version of tom cruise and that she's like basically ageless like she does not she does not get older i first off the the the admission from youtube that you have never been in to jennifer no i i recognize her it makes me it makes me understand why you love the original top gun so much frankly i think you had to have watched it at the time all their shirtless volleyball scene no i think you had to have watched it dudes in locker rooms it makes sense now oh i'm not into jennifer connelly oh i just want to watch guys take showers i do think i do
Vic01:02:29think that it makes a difference to have watched at the time versus just having watched it now people who say oh i just watched the original for the first time the other day and now i'm going to i don't think it's the same as having watched it when you were like 13 at that time uh that's the way and i'm curious about the number of like you know how we're talking about uh the box office numbers for next week and how many people how many of the people are going are our age versus
JVL01:02:51young kids and i'll tell you did you see did you see the breakdown on this uh the percentage of people over the age of 35 who went to that was more yeah huge yes it was this was the movie for
Vic01:03:01the old this was the gen x downton abbey yes that's right downton abbey for gen x boys that's right that's it you nailed it that's it and i'll tell you what i what i noticed for example um the scene where uh the big poignant scene where uh pete mitchell meets uh sees uh iceman again right they get together maverick and sees iceman and and the whole thing right how powerful it was did you cry in the middle i i got teary-eyed and in the middle of that in the middle of that uh like john pod at jvl's nodding and i could have it was like so affecting having seen the documentary of course too which is a great documentary but in the middle of that as it's happening i see some girl walk up and she's walking towards the back of the theater with her phone looking at stuff gonna get some snack i'm like really really so she should have been thrown out no i mean and i think just total indifference like
JVL01:03:55i don't know some guy i don't know my favorite maybe not my favorite grace note in the iceman scene was that when pete mitchell arrives at his house there are grandkids playing in the backyard yeah we and it just it actually just struck all i had to think of was that iceman has had he is going to essentially get to die the way don corleone did in the tomato patch with his grandkids and he got he got to live the life that we all wanted for him because we all loved him in the original top gun and i i loved that yeah i loved it it made me so happy yeah all right so sunny would you like to talk about your thing but can we talk briefly about the technical achievements uh our our buddy ryan kinney did a deep dive on this stuff for me this is amazing so uh joseph kazansky first of all this whole thing yeah because kazinsky so he uh he comes up with the this the script because evidently this script had been floating around but there's a problem with the rooster storyline and kazinsky thinks he fixes it and so he calls jerry brookheimer and pitches him brookheimer says this is great uh we got to go to paris right now to go pitch cruise because cruise is taping uh is filming i think it's one of the missions one of the mission possibles and so they get 25 years ago too yeah they get 25 minutes with tom cruise and cruz is like yeah sounds great and he picks up the phone and calls whoever it is he calls over paramount just gets it the movie green lit right there in the hotel room which is amazing um but the the best thing that uh that ryan sent me kazinsky figured out a way six imax cameras into the cockpit of an f18 yeah does that blow your mind or what yeah because in
Vic01:05:55the cockpit they're on the they're out the exteriors from different angles it's so he
JVL01:05:59thought it looks so it's gorgeously shot he finds an interview with kazinsky rinded so he and the navy are working together and he says we pointed at every single piece of equipment in the cockpit and asked do you need this for the plane to fly and if the answer was no we asked them to rip it out so they could just make room for the cameras and so the deal was when the actors went up in the air to tape these little things they're they rehearsed on the ground what they would do in the air and then it was up to them to like flip the cameras on wow it's fantastic yeah so that's how real this is yeah right it is so real the actors are in the back seat of an f-18 flying over the ocean and they are responsible
Vic01:06:43for turning the cameras on themselves it's so visually refreshing to see this oh after having seen you know doctor strange and all the things it's just it was just great to look at it was really quite something um and again the f-18 is an interesting it's an interesting fighter plane it is outdated in many ways and it's not as you know fast as you know the f-15 and it's not as big as the f-14 but it it works it works okay sonny go ahead what did you discover while watching this movie
Sonny01:07:13and i mean it's well it's just it's just obvious what this movie is actually about i mean i like in the opening moments of the film again i like the the whole thing is the whole thing is essentially there there are biblical references scattered throughout and and like down to like in the opening moments when admiral kane is trying to kill the brother program of the drones he wants to like you know smash the jet fighter he is able in the head if he's able to i made this joke in my piece uh but but you know like whatever like okay fine in in the opening moments tom crew his airplane explodes at mach 10 his airplane explodes at mach 10 he's in the low atmosphere right he you're i'm sorry you're telling me that he ejected from that safely and got to some where some kids like where are you from mars or whatever that line is no he dies he dies he dies in that opening sequence he's dead he's vaporized turned into a trail of stars uh and and burns up in the atmosphere because he's going 7 000 miles an hour when his plane explodes because he's dead he's dead when the movie starts the movie starts he's dead and instead of instead of actually dying right and so well i mean he dies so when he we he doesn't realize he's dead he uh so he goes back to the base and the guy's like i should have you court-martialed you should be out of here forever but instead i'm gonna send you to relive all your past failures and all of your past triumphs and you're going to work through your issues uh on this magical place fighter fighter town usa where you are going to get to do all the things you did before like beach sports and you're going to hang out you're going to hang out with goose's kid rooster and you're going to become the father figure he's always needed and he's going to become the son figure you always needed you're going to hang out with with uh you're going to write your past romantic wrongs we're going to do all this um then we're going to put you on this mission where you have to put it all together you have to get it all right and you have to perform two miracles miracle number one then miracle number two you have to he sacrifices himself he makes the ultimate sacrifice for the life of someone else his son uh figure in this movie goose's goose's kid he sacrifices himself uh and then as they as he works with the the kid to get back to the airplane the guy who saves them and a reader actually pointed this out to me i didn't i didn't notice this at the time a reader pointed this out to me hangman saves them right hangman saves them on hangman's airplane he is the only of the pilots not to have his name on it just his call sign only has his call sign and on his call sign the two a's are missing he's missing the two vowels from the letter you know who else you know who else misses uh the the vowels in their name yahweh yahweh in the in the old jewish dream is this a jewish dream i mean it's it's a mishmash uh and what does he say what does he say as he is saving them uh ladies and gentlemen this is your savior speaking in the in the in the uh in the you know so he's god hangman is god he sends tom cruise to to be free of all of his worries and concerns he gets to go to fighter pilot heaven god's like boom you're in okay and the end of the movie the end of the movie is him the end of the movie is him in in essentially what is to him heaven he's got his son figure he's got a woman who uh loves him and he's got a great cool ass old airplane that he gets to fly around it it's it's he goes he literally goes to heaven at the end of the movie that's it that's it that's it okay well this is all the time we have for this i mean it's so it's so obviously the like one of the levels it's one of the four levels on which this movie is working it is so clearly like no through it's just he goes to purgatory he goes to purgatory he works out his issues then he goes to heaven
Vic01:11:32boom question are these things all you're saying that this is all in his head as a death dream or is he really there i'm not saying i'm really there i'm not
Sonny01:11:41he's like a ghost i'm not saying it's all in his head is it like is he like richard dreyfus and always i'm saying he's i'm saying he's sent to purgatory works out his shit and goes to heaven
Vic01:11:51boom okay it's gonna be so great i know he's he's helped people like wait a minute he'll be putting all these pieces together he's like halfway there i can't believe that i'm the
Sonny01:12:02one who saw this and you two you know supposedly religious again again air quotes religious figures on the show i have no idea once again at least for one of us here
Vic01:12:14man of the people i'm seeing this as i'm like the you know the the lex luther line about you know some people read war and peace and come away with it it's a nice adventure story that's me it's not unlocking any secrets i'm just looking at this as cool fighter movie uh um it's at have you you've seen obviously uh the great spielberg movie always with richard dreyfus and he's giving guidance as a spirit to the young guy uh joe whatever this is kind of like that um it's interesting i i don't think it's i don't think it's intentional i think it's very much like paul is dead in the conspiracy with sergeant peppers and and the abbey road album cover but uh i don't think they meant that if they meant it that way there'd be more clues than that it's
Sonny01:13:00all just it's all just it's all just these are all just coincidences baby it's all just coincidence
Vic01:13:06no no no it would be more like jacob's ladder and j like the end of the movie like you would
Sonny01:13:11stick around to the at the very end of the credits it's exactly like jacob's ladder
Vic01:13:15a lot of deep revenue mavericks ladder but at the end of jacob's ladder you know for me the quadrant of jacob's ladder was like heading towards an evidence oh wait oh okay makes sense thank you for explaining that he died on the operating table uh and but there's no scene like that in this um i will say this i will say this when i was watching this interview with uh um the top gun pilot on tv he there was like oh you know what's realistic what's not realistic the usual stuff and he talks about how you know a lot of the you know the the aerodynamics are amazing it's a lot of this is true but some of it's played out and he talked about the fighting that's a little bit you know over dramatized in terms of the tension there's a lot more camaraderie as jvl was saying in a team they're not going to do something that's not going to happen and the one of the last things he says is not one of the last things that's impossible because you
Sonny01:14:06know no really oh obvious oh oh yeah i'm sure he just floated i'm sure he said we
Vic01:14:12down you don't know that he ejected a mach 10 right before it exploded could have been dropping down to seven it exploded and he died it was a weird scene in the sky but i don't know no what
Sonny01:14:26okay oh yeah no then he just had to go do two miracles i would be shocked if the people who
JVL01:14:35made this movie were not aware of this interpretation they may not have intended it from the outset but i knew that sonny was going to pick up on i am i am 95 certain that the people associated with this the highest level christopher mccrory christopher mccrory is not an idiot say no you're gonna have to get chris mccrory on your show sonny you need chris mccrory on your show hey chris yeah you got a an allegory about tom cruise's career right and and the the way in which he has matured he's sort of an old man now this is the first time i've ever looked at him the little did you get the
Sonny01:15:21alamo sonny get the casual tom cruise i saw it i saw it you know how they do it his hair so it looks so weird he suddenly looks they do old in that yeah um his his face looks a little puffy and his his hair somebody somebody on twitter described his hair as like late robert redford
JVL01:15:41hair and i'm like yeah that's about yeah late robert redford but he looked i mean he looks like he's got down to like 0.15 percent body fat and anyway just you know a guy who looks old who has not changed the kinds of movies he wants to make and can he still do it and the other the reading of it is is that it is a movie about the state of this the film industry itself in which the the uavs are netflix and the streamers and the mcu right in the mcu and this it is an insistence that this old way of doing things right using just f-18s that are not fifth gen this is still valuable and there are still missions that we can undertake with them and i i i just think it works on all all four of those levels i'll tell you how i i'll i'll tell
Vic01:16:45you what resonated with me was when he has the uh tom maverick has the exchange with ed harris's character uh and uh ed harris says you just you the only thing you did was buy yourself time but inevitably you know you're done for and he says but not today and that's how i feel about editors
JVL01:17:04i feel about that
Vic01:17:06so that's how that's what i saw into it when i was looking i have to one one last thing uh i i do
Sonny01:17:14think we're we're wrapping up here finally uh the the other thing about this movie that is very interesting to me is that it is the first legacy sequel that really makes no effort whatsoever to pass the torch to the new generation this is not like the force awakens right which very very very explicitly kept the big three apart um and was like here are your new heroes you have ray you have finn and you have poe and everybody else is in service of them and we're getting them and they're or well say her name sonny that's don't erase her that's the last jedi different movie but but like same but same basic thing right you have you have rose or whatever you babu frick in the ninth one um uh or like jurassic world right jurassic world which had i think only one character from the first jurassic park and that was bd wong's character like he was like um uh wait who or did i get that actor's name right no bd wong yeah yeah yeah uh i was afraid that he was in the lab uh but the uh but no but that uh but uh but like there's only one character and it's it's about all right this new series of jurassic movies is about chris pratt and uh ron howard's kid and that's that's what we're doing with these it's you know we're doing we're doing this and we're we've moved on it's dinosaurs but with new people and this movie is just like you know who's awesome maverick you know who's you know who you love maverick you love maverick don't you because maverick maverick's the guy he's the guy tom cruise is the guy and i understand that there are deeper levels there that that he's he's you know we're we're we're getting stuff with uh with rooster etc but like this is a movie about how great maverick is at the end of the day no i think
JVL01:19:06it's a movie telling a very specific story about this character and it's not a franchise and it's not trying to be a franchise right if it wanted to be a franchise where there were going to be five of these entries then it would have been constructed differently
Vic01:19:19i i would watch a hangman spinoff you and i sonny's great the actor glenn i can't remember
JVL01:19:26his name something do you remember him from uh dark he's from dark night rises yeah he's the
Sonny01:19:30he's the traitor the traitor who bane is like bane is he's like there's no money here there's nothing
JVL01:19:36to steal and bane's like it's not likely then why are you here uh this this is something you and i talked about this offline a little bit i believe that tom cruise is one of the great film producers of our day yeah and that he his partnership with paula wagner taught him all the things he needed to know to be a really active producer and a really skilled producer and then his partnership was an admission that he needs to be a great producer you need a great writer right and somebody who can sort of see your vision and and is is is a great filmmaker as tom cruise is not a filmmaker right he's an actor and a producer and he understands that the skill set of a producer is absolutely vital to making good movies and i would argue the value he brings to a movie is at least as much from his producer role as it is from his starring role and that's why his percentage of movies that he makes that are good and that are interesting is incredibly high for a star of his magnitude really really high and that's why we didn't get a top gun sequel in 1995 you know like the or or 1989 or something like that you know what you did get you got iron eagle too thinking the alamo eagles the alamo uh did you know their pre-roll which they do and they do a custom pre-roll for every movie their 30-minute pre-roll for top gun was amazing there were uh ads for the nintendo the original nes top gun game which i had which was terrible just trying to get that thing refueled trying to refuel fighter was impossible uh there were the thunder jets fruit snacks do you remember those victorino thunder jets
Vic01:21:36was that like um team america style thunder jets or no what was it yeah but it was thunderbirds
JVL01:21:43that's what you're thinking no they were thunder jets and they but they they put them out like right after top gun was like hey we can make those fruit snacks into things that look like airplanes and people will buy them yes uh and they did a trailer for the original iron eagle ah lewis got academy award winner lewis gossett jason gedrick academy award winner lewis gossett
Sonny01:22:06they also had the ad for the micro machine aircraft yes they did which i owned that was like it looks really great awesome it was amazing yeah yeah okay that was great anyway this movie is so much better than the original it's better on every level no i like them i like them both the originals the original has many pleasures it is a it is it is a movie filled with pleasurable instances but as a very funny as a movie quad movie it is not a good movie it is not there's like no real narrative too many there's so many there's so much voiceover that's like okay guys on this mission you have to you have to defeat the pilot in a i find that very helpful i wish more movies did that i know i know that you like that help me yeah and subtitles but it's also and it's like the the whole thing with tom cruise's with maverick's dad that's like tom scarrett comes in he's like he's like you know you're you've got his shadow living over you and let me tell you he was a hero we can't tell anybody else about this but we can tell you he's a hero all right
Vic01:23:15let's go buy some more airplanes he's still around but they didn't do a member berries and have him come out so should have been there you know what i you know what i wondered i wondered um is there always a naval photographer on standby to capture the great images because like you know he has the photo of you know maverick and iceman after the big mission gun that's framed and then there's one at the end you know where they oh yeah that that
Sonny01:23:40that thing from his memory that is just magically a photograph in his definitely not purgatory uh state you're killing me yeah it's just it there was just a guy shooting photos there
Vic01:23:53just saying it's fine too much okay i'm just saying just saying thank you uh do we have corrections shout outs anything spirit of the week now nothing okay let's get whew i that is all the time we are giving to this episode questions comments compliments tweet us at sonnybunch at victorino mattis again be sure to subscribe to us on patreon go to subbeacon.com we are there tell your friends until next time
Sonny01:24:21yeah i wouldn't be shocked if this movie makes 80 million dollars this weekend like it would not it would not surprise me i hope it does like a 50 percent yeah that no that i mean that would be 50 off the four day it would be about it would be about a 33 drop off the three day impressive i do want to address uh
Vic01:24:46some folks on twitter did a twitter poll about who they thought i would find quote intriguing in this movie and the selections were jennifer connelly oh no oh no phoenix and then they threw in the daughter that's just totally ridiculous and i said i tweet i replied i said you people are terrible uh for the record i found con jennifer connelly i found jennifer connelly i found jennifer connelly i did i really i she was so great to watch on screen and she's a great actress she's a great actress she's very cool i don't know if i could like date her and be intimidating i'll tell you it would be super intimidating to date phoenix because she's obviously more of a man than i am and could you imagine hanging out with her friends like if you were just like this is the lady pilot of the lady pilot yeah i forget her name her last name is barbara and i was like oh she's kind of cute and then the football scene and you saw her in the sports uh bikini a sports bar and i'm like sold sold like that so really that's it and but the daughter one right
Sonny01:25:41no i'm not gonna i was gonna say you know if you have sort of like jennifer
Vic01:25:45you know connelly's coolness mixed with phoenix's sort of face and then maybe the mind of the daughter but no i was kidding i'm just
Sonny01:25:51kidding i'm sure it's fine
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