…Top Gun was not meant to be realistic…
How about this for a movie plot…The story begins with a small war where soldiers, mounted on horses, are leading one part of the indigenous population against another - a war not near to any ocean or major body of water. Far away, on the other side of the world, our young “hero” is just a punk kid with a GED and a few years in the Navy riding in the back of a fat, old electronic warfare aircraft.
The war rages on, far away, but our hero, desperate to be part of the action works hard and finds his chance as the war expands across the region. It seems like our war is almost a forever war. The glorious idea of Top Gun studs blasting enemy jets from the sky is replaced by nearly continuous ground strikes with simple bombs against an enemy that barely has electricity. Our hero continues on his Paladin-like quest, even commanding a school (like our pal Viper) to teach the young ones how to use the force to wreck havoc on the enemy.
In the final scenes there isn’t a dramatic dog fight or race through tight canyons, but a slowly rumbling transport jet heading down a runway with indigenous people clinging to the sides. Last scene…our hero is sitting on a beach in Hawaii commanding sunsets and a few contractors…waiting for his retirement to kick in….fade to black, Lady Gaga song, roll credits.
Would you watch that movie? Well, maybe, when it hits HBO.