Movies like Top Gun that you must watch next
welcome to Movie DNA, a column that recognizes the direct and indirect cinematic roots of new and classic films. Learn a bit of cinema history, become a more complete viewer, and enjoy like-minded works from the past. This entry recommends movies to watch after seeing and / or if you like the highest grossing release of 1986: Top Gun.
Despite its monumental heritage and the obvious attempts to single out the success of Top Gun, there really is no other movie like this. This is why it was so successful when it was released in 1986 and why it has remained such a unique and iconic example of star-hosted action cinema of its time. Again, Top Gun was not born out of nothing – or even just the California magazine article that inspired its story. Films about fighter pilots in particular date back to the early years of cinema, to the dawn of aerial combat.
And it’s the fighter pilot films that make up the majority of this edition of Movie DNA, as there isn’t much to highlight when it comes to the ancestry of Top Gun. Well, there is the previous work of the people involved in its production. Tom cruise was a cadet of the military academy in Faucets (1982) and starred alongside comrade Top Gun cast members John stockwell and Rick rossovich in Lose that (1983). Kelly mcgillis had his share through his work in Witness (1985). Some composers Harold Faltermeyerof Thief of hearts the score was reused in Top Gun…
And, of course, most notable of all, the director Tony Scott had done an advertisement for Saab in 1984 (“Nothing on Earth Comes”) that looks like an intentional business card for his hiring at the helm Top Gun.
But once the military aerial movies start and never end below, don’t skim over these recommendations just thinking that this is a list of as many pilot photos as I could mention. Each of these titles has some significance for their inclusion and relevance to Top Gun. Believe me, there are so many more movies that I didn’t select (I’m sure I’ll hear from all the aviators), including a lot of the ones I wanted – although I do mention a lot of them. as additional suggested watch alongside specific highlighted movies, as many of this subgenre are quite similar.
Here’s what I recommend watching if you like Top Gun and / or want to see its roots:
Iron Eagle (1986)
Even if Top Gun is without a doubt a one-of-a-kind movie as a whole, it wasn’t the only military action movie released in 1986 about a hot, hothead jet pilot taking on MiGs. A lot of people think Iron eagle was a Top Gun imitation, and maybe it was designed knowing that Top Gun was in development, but it came out months earlier. Its plot, which follows a young civilian pilot (Jason Gedrick) who flies a fighter plane to mount a rescue from his father in the Middle East, is also a bridge between the Vietnam War-revenge focus of the POW / MIA films. of the time (Missing in action, Rambo) and the aerial interest of Top Gun, which is also jingo but not mission-focused. Additionally, Iron eagle offers the piloting of waterfalls by Art Scholl played just before continuing to do the same for Top Gun and died in an accident during the production of the latter.
Moving Violations (1985) and Spiker (1985)
Here are two movies that are really bad but also quite funny. Not unlike Top Gun, right? They just don’t have the production value of a Tom Cruise vehicle made by the Simpson / Bruckheimer team. Displacement of violations is like a wacky version of Top Gun takes place in a catch-up traffic school with a provocative track (John Murray, Bill’s little brother) who ends up dating a woman he meets in class who is unexpectedly a rocket scientist – compared to Top GunThe love interest of being an astrophysicist and class teacher rather than a classmate. Spiker, on the other hand, is just a silly macho sports movie focused on Olympic volleyball players, and it opens with a prepackage (and too brief).Top Gun beach volleyball assembly.
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
Louis Gossett Jr., who also co-stars in Iron eagle, won an Oscar for his supporting performance in this romantic military drama as a tough drill instructor in the US Navy Officer Candidate School. And a lot of people look back An officer and a gentleman as a probable influence on Top Gun – Gene Siskel even concentrated a large part his examination of the latter on its parallels to the previous success, from its protagonist (here played by Richard Gere) having “a father-induced chip on his shoulder” to Tom Skerritt filling the role of Gossett and Anthony Edwards playing an unfortunate parallel role to that of David Keith. Siskel didn’t know it at the time, but both films also won an Oscar for their respective original love songs, âUp Where We Belongâ and âTake My Breath Awayâ.
Firefox (1982)
Another film from the summer of 1982 that looks like a direct influence on, or at least a recent ancestor of, Top Gun is Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, in which Eastwood also stars as a fighter pilot who flies a top-secret Soviet plane – an advanced fictional MiG with elements that technically make the film a sci-fi movie. For the effects of flight and air combat, Firefox employed the Oscar-winning talents of John Dykstra. His work executing space battles in Star wars, themselves influenced by WWII aerial combat (and WWII films), surely, in turn, inspired films like Firefox and Top Gun, which brought such action sequences back to the ground machine (a decade later, Independence Day would link more Star wars and Top Gun air combat with its jet fighter versus spaceship battle).
Lacy clay, who did aerial photography for Top Gun was a consultant on Firefox, but I don’t think the previous movie features any real in-flight stunts. If you want another sci-fi effort with real jet performance, check out the 1980s The final Countdown, which has the first appearance of the F-14 Tomcats in a movie, in front of Top Gun, and they’re also seen parked and taking off from an aircraft carrier in some very cool action sequences.
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
What does an iconic John Travolta movie about hotshot disco dancers have to do with an iconic Tom Cruise movie about hotshot pilots in the US Navy? On the surface, not by much, although I hope I made a pretty clear clue to their very general connectivity as part of this investigation. As Top Gun, Saturday night fever is based on a magazine article, and both films focus on an arrogant young man trying to be the best of the best at what he loves, although for Travolta’s character it’s more of a hobby than a profession (until the rest anyway).
In the book by James Russell and Jim Whalley Hollywood and the Baby Boom: A Social Story, one of Top Gunscreenwriters, Jack Epps Jr., quote Saturday night fever, in the same way An officer and a gentleman and the movie Simpson / Bruckheimer Lightning dance, which is also based on a true story, such as influences on Top Gun at some level. “How can we do this?” he remembers asking. âLet’s do exactly what Paramount likes to do. Let’s give them this very tight little movie with this little drama in the center. The world of Top Gun doesn’t look exactly like blue collar arenas Saturday night fever and Lightning dance, However.
Or even Rocky, which is another one that I would include in the mix if it was Paramount, especially since as Rocky, Top GunThe main character is always mistakenly remembered as the champion of the big competition (Apollo Creed wins the fight in the first, while Iceman wins the TOPGUN trophy in the second). In addition, there are already releases comparing the plot of the upcoming sequel. Top Gun 2: Maverick with that of Rocky reboot-suite Creed.
Yours, Mine and Ours (1968)
I kept the first works of Top Gunthe actors and creative talents of the introduction to this column (and some of them are only mentioned in other entries), but I want to highlight the first screen appearance of the movie’s biggest star : the USS Business. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is part of much of Top Gunincluding her flashiest fixtures, and the exteriors of the real ship even played the part (the interiors were shot on the USS Tidy). But nearly twenty years earlier, the Business made his theatrical debut in another film based on an article: Yours, mine and ours. The comedy very vaguely portrays the real Beardsley family, which consisted of eighteen children, reunited by the marriage of Helen (Lucille Ball) and Frank (Henry Fonda). The fictional version of the latter is a naval officer serving on the Business At the beginning of the story.