Stunning aerial footage still best thing about Top Gun at 40

Released in 1986, *Top Gun* received mixed critical reviews but became the highest-grossing film of the year, earning $358 million globally. Its success led to video games and a 2022 sequel, while its aerial sequences boosted US Navy enlistment numbers. The film was inspired by a 1983 magazine article and features Tony Scott's direction, with the opening scene showcasing Maverick and Goose flying an F-14 Tomcat.

When the action film Top Gun hit the big screen in 1986, critical reviews were mixed, but audiences were thrilled. The film racked up $358 million globally, making it the highest-grossing film of that year. Its success spawned a few video games and a critically acclaimed blockbuster 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, and the eye-popping flight sequences definitely boosted enlistment numbers for the US Navy. Those scenes are still the best thing about Top Gun, 40 years later. Spoilers below because it’s been 40 years. The film was inspired by a 1983 article in California magazine detailing the lives of fighter pilots at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego aka “Fightertown USA” and featuring plenty of aerial photography alongside the text. Producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson tapped Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. to write the screenplay, with Epps sitting in on declassified classes at the academy and even taking a flight aboard an F-14. Tony Scott, then a relative newcomer with just one feature film 1983’s The Hunger to his name, was hired to direct. However, he had shot a commercial for Saab featuring one of the company’s cars racing against a Saab 37 Viggen fighter jet, so the producers figured he had the chops for Top Gun. The film wastes no time getting us in the air. Our hero, Maverick Cruise and his radar intercept officer, Goose Anthony Andrews are flying maneuvers in an F-14A Tomcat in the Indian Ocean, along with Maverick’s wingman, Cougar John Stockwell and his RIO. They encounter two hostile MiG-28s a fictitious craft represented in the film by the Northrup F-5 . Maverick scares one away with a well-timed missile lock, but the other MiG locks onto Cougar before getting chased away by Maverick. Just to make sure we understand how Maverick got his nickname, the pilot inverts his plane and flies directly above the hostile MiG, giving his adversary the finger as Goose snaps a commemorative Polaroid.