While the storytelling WAS predictable, I think the point of all that training was the make the mission surviveable, no?

That was Maverick's point - you can and will survive this thing if you fly to the outer edge of your abilities and I'm going to teach you how to do that.

That was the main conflict between him and Jon Hamm, no? Hamm had a set of mission parameters that made the mission more doable but less surviveable. They could've gone in slow and high, made a suicide run out of it, gotten the job done and then gotten blown up.

But Maverick believed his way would allow them to get in, get it done, get out and live to tell about it. And the survival of the 'team' proved him correct. That was kinda the premise of the entire movie - we NEED seat of his pants instructor to teach these high risk maneuvers to give these kids a chance to return home. Otherwise you can just have Jon Hamm tell them what to do and get them killed when all is said and done (as Hamm basically acknowledged).

Now the Tomcat part? Yeah, that was fan service. But !@#$ you because it was F-14s and an F-14 on a big screen again is awesome. And they did at least make the first kill reasonably plausible. The 2nd...uh...less so.

And as a side note - Jon Hamm played his role perfectly. He fully embodied the very definition of corporate kiss ass, because how else could a guy younger than Mitchell make three-star admiral while lining out such a weak ass plan of attack? He's the guy that is all about results with no regards for the people who have to carry out his orders. Bottom line is everything, people!

Maybe that is what being in command is really all about in the military and why Maverick never made it above Captain, but I did notice it while watching it.

I thought they actually did an okay job developing Hamm's character as the movie went on a bit.

By the end I got the impression that he genuinely felt Maverick was a relic who was making promises he couldn't deliver (based on a reputation shielded by Iceman). His view seemed to be that all Maverick was doing was subjecting the mission to a heightened risk of failure without improving the odds of survival (because his view was that Mavericks' version of this mission was simply impossible). With the view that Maverick's mission parameters were unattainable, it makes sense to be 'mission first' in your mindset.

But when Maverick demonstrated that it COULD be done his way, Hamm recognized the viability and the value of that approach and allowed it to proceed.

I agree that Hamm started as your basic 'heavy' who was there to impede our heroes journey - but as the movie went on we did get a better feel for his motives and I think some recognition that those motives weren't wholly malevolent. He was simply a skeptic until proven wrong. And he demonstrated some genuine concern for his pilots at that end as well once the mission was accomplished and he decided "we're not losing anyone else today..."

I think Hamm's character was a tick more nuanced than it would appear at first blush.

Seemed like Hamm hated Maverick for two reasons - first, Maverick got away with murder because he was protected from up on high by Ice, and second, Hamm was butthurt because Maverick was still flying while he'd been riding a desk for years. Still, the utter lack of respect for his abilities and accomplishments was a bit over the top, but it's not like there aren't plenty of shitty zeros out there.

Finally saw the flick last night. Good movie and it hit all the nostalgia notes it needed too. Basically it was the #HeSaidTheThing in movie form, brainless nostalgia fun.

Loved this movie. Thought it was great sequel and ice man. So cool. I may go see it again before leaving theaters..

Finally saw this. Aviation shit was amazing. Holy balls. That's an accomplishment.

It tugged on some heartstrings I didn't expect. Damn glad it got made, damn glad I saw it.

I'd agree. He's whackadoo, but he's good at what he does. I thought this was some of his better acting. Emoting hasn't been his strong suit since becoming an alien in Scientology, but it was believable here. And it worked. Some of it was the fair amount of self-deprecation he engaged in, added a lot of needed humor. But it all worked - his weirdness never took me out of it.

It was obvious the cockpit stuff was real with the grunts and facial expressions as opposed to what a director thinks would happen up there. Made a pretty big difference.

I will say though, I've seen Cruise learn a bunch of complicated ass stunts, learn a bunch of martial arts choreography, technically sound firearms handling, none of which is easy, and a bunch of the stunt stuff is incredibly tecnical. What I don't understand is he learned how to do all this shit, but never learned how to throw a ****ing ball. Couldn't throw a baseball in A Few Good Men and couldn't throw a football in this one. How has ne not just figured it out? Remains one of life's mysteries.

Not the greatest movie ever, but maybe one of the greatest accomplishments to get to film.

I thought he handled that pretty well. Honestly, I wish people would be more candid when they call reporters out on their shit. I thought he equated himself well, honestly.

Remember this? Thought he handled this well...but I'd be terrified if I was that guy lol.

https://youtu.be/KBRuvQP5fd8

I read that Tom Cruise, when they were filming this and were aboard a real Navy vessel, had outlandish demands. No one, including the damn captain, was allowed to look at him. No eye contact at all. If Tom was walking by, you stand aside and put your eyes to the floor. He expected that from everyone regardless of rank.

Made me less of a Tom Cruise fan, hearing that.

Sorry, I call bullshit on that one. For starters, no carrier captain is going to kowtow to anybody like that on his ship. That's the apex position every naval officer seeks/dreams of, and you don't get to that level by being a pussy. And while I've not forgotten that Cruise is still a scientology weirdo, I think he's conscious enough of his good guy image not to be a shit to people around him, at least while he's filming. There are just too many cellphones out there, and video of him being a douche like that would come out.

That being said, I don't doubt that crewmembers were told not to **** with him, but it probably came from the Navy.

All of his movies are just pure quality entertainment, 40 years of nothing but net.

Agreed - none of that passes the sniff test even a little bit.

There is no WAY that guy treats servicemembers like that and it doesn't become a thing. Especially when he does the first screening on the carrier deck and seems to be getting along well with all of them.

Not buying it.

This is not true. The crew was told not to bother him by their superiors not Tom Cruise.

I gladly stand corrected by you fellas. It was purely a rumor when I heard that but it seemed credible at the time.

I mean, come on. You really think a US Military ship is going to let a movie star come aboard and disrespect even the Captain, let alone the cooks?

"Top Gun: Maverick" has now passed "Titanic" at the all-time domestic box office, per CNBC.

Holy shit. 25 year record.

Fun fact. Jerry Bruckheimer also produced Cold Case. You know that late 2000s cheesy detective show.

Damn.

Say what you will about Cruise, and most of it will probably be believable, but the one thing you can't say is that he doesn't take his craft seriously. And that includes keeping himself in shape and marketable at 60. Clearly.

McGillis said she wasn’t asked to be in the reboot because “I’m too fat and old”

She’s 5 years older than Cruise so imma gonna say it isn’t your age honey

I'm not a big fan of the man but he's good at what he does. No doubt about it. He takes pride in it and he's got quite a list of quality films.

And for the record it would appear I was dead wrong about this. Everyone I've talked to has liked it. Looks like this sequel was the exception to the rule. Good for them...

Saw it this weekend, and my cynical old ass came out of the theater smiling ear to ear. It was great. The had call backs of course, and there were one or two moments where my eyes started to roll a bit...but then I said **** it, I'm enjoying the hell out of this and I'd see it again for sure. The last act is just awesome.

Go see it. In the theater if possible. You won't regret it.

Well, the ladies don't typically age as well as the dudes, even with all the procedures they can get. But she probably is too fat and old for this.

https://external-content.duckduckgo....879&f=1&nofb=1

Yeah, no way...sorry.

Coming to paramount plus tomorrow apparently. Definitely worth seeing in theaters while you can.

I really wish we had the 100% true and complete story of just what the hell happened with The Mummy.

In a way I admire that she didn’t turn herself into a Botox monster like so many actresses do… Still.. Would not…

A) Duh. Of course that's why she wasn't it in. Kudos to her for not being bitter about it.

B) Wouldn't it strain credibility to have her in it, even if she wasn't fat and old? This is just some civilian instructor that showed up to Top Gun 25 years ago and taught a class. Then became some chick that Maverick banged. Okay - betting a world class fighter pilot banged LOTS of chicks.

Trying to shoehorn her into the movie would've just been silly and unnecessary. Some "PhD in Astrophysics" isn't gonna just cool her jets as an instructor in San Diego for the rest of her life. That girl's living in DC. In fact, the person the character was based on (Christine Fox) ended up the Deputy Secretary of Defense after spending years at the Pentagon.

Charlie got some sweet gig at the Naval Academy working in some high end physics lab and making six figures a year for a 3 hour/wk class she taught on advanced mathematics or something. If you need her, you can probably find her at her kick-ass Brownstone on DuPont Circle. She's doing just fine not paying the bills for some stalled Captain fighter jock who lives in an airport hanger in the desert.

This pretty much describes what her costar Meg Ryan did to herself. Meg and Melanie Griffith must have the same plastic surgeon, and I'm pretty sure it's the guy from Escape From L.A. I don't even want to post a picture of either one of them because it's just too depressing to look at. McGillis just looks like an old lady, which is fine. Better that than a swollen-faced science experiment gone wrong.

Notice that Meg wasn't invited back, either.

This guys videos are awesome. The realism on DCS is fantastic.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dcum_ZLQehA?start=26" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

HAHAHA! Yeah, that was about what I figured.

"I'm in good shape here....nevermind"

Now there is something to be said for the fact that the opponent, even when sidled alongside him, still KNEW the Tomcat was an aggressor. That wasn't the case in the movie.

But yeah, sad to say and sorry to report that the other SU involved in that fight would've made short work of a Tomcat.

Check out more of his vids. He managed to defeat a SU-57 with an F-16 by using terrain. There's a ton more stuff out there. Quality entertainment!

Top gun trailer
 

Not a surprise but this isn’t true. It’s available to buy through streaming now but that’s it. There is no date for when it’ll be on Paramount, which sucks, but I can’t blame them given they have a 7 day free trial that everyone would do, me included, just to watch the movie then bail.

Blu Ray is November 1st which is probably when you will be able to rent it but I’d guess it would still be a while after that before you can watch it for “free” on Paramount.

You utter, utter bastard...

I've spent the last 24 hours mainlining this shit and now I want to go drop $1,000 on a rig to play this game (and lose. Often. And badly).

His RIO randomly punching out on him every now and again just kinda cracks me up.

Dude, I've withheld so far with the simple fact that those guys are REALLY good at flying simulated combat and I'd get annihilated.

Still, I wanted to be a fighter pilot until the Air Force said my eyesight wasn't good enough at 18. Went civilian instead.

This looks really awesome.

I used to try the more simulation oriented flying games back in the mid/late 90s and I never did get the hang of energy management. Put me on a stupid Nintendo game with unlimited thrust and I could win just fine.

But anytime I set the sliders to realistic on the PC games (don't even recall what they were), I'd have that thing in a stall or going about 45 mph and getting shot out of the sky as quick as a hiccup.

But yeah - these guys would absolutely eviscerate me. And just about anyone else for that matter. But given a little bit of time and especially if I committed myself to a particular jet first (probably an F-16 for ease of entry), I could probably get to average in a reasonable amount of time.

So now that this is on Paramount, the ripping services have much better copies.

So a reminder that M4UHD.TV has pretty much any movie you'd ever want to see. I recommend installing the Amazon Silk Internet app due to its popup blocker and you can stream to your TV in whatever format your internet can handle.

Enjoy, lads.

Right?

I haven't been on for 24 hours but I've wasted waaaay too much time watching simulated fights.

I went ahead and bought Ace Combat 7 for the ol’ PS4.

Maybe it will be enough to sate my desire to shoot shit down with Phoenix missiles. Or yell ‘Fox Two!’ and ‘splash one mig’.

I hope so. I can justify the $20. I can’t justify the cost of a combat simulator.

ROFL

Nice. I'm probably not good for it. I can't keep track of the vectors over 3 dimensions anyway so it would probably be a waste of time.

Yeah I found this out after I posted it. Hollywood reporter article said it was but was disappointed when I saw it wasn't on there. Hopefully soon

I started pricing together a PC to run DCS. One was for VR, the other IR tracking.

Mind you, when I do something, I do it NICE.

OLED monitor or VR rig, I5, 3800 card (maybe 3900), MB, ram, HOTAS controls, rudder, christ, jesus, **** me, etc.

It turns out that 5-6k is the running total to enter the game comfortably.

Yeah, no. I'll watch Growling Sidewider on youtube just like my 10 year old son.

Hahaha i just bought it a few weeks ago for the PC. Loved it as a kid. These days i have a real hard time with the dog fighting. Im ****ing upside down and all sorts of different directions trying to track an enemy fighter. And this is an arcade style simulator. Good god...f it were a real simulator i'd be fooked.

Growling Sidewinder has intimidated me enough that its still in the wrapping and I'm sticking with some NASCAR Heat 5 until I can build my own Cup team and win a championship with it.

Gotta have goals and know your limitations.

Is there a dedicated dogfight mode? Because that's all I really want to do - just go select an F-14 and attack a computer opponent.

I haven't ****ed with it enough to know. I think there's a PvP Online Dog Fight mode though where you can compete against other players.

I bought it at the same time i bought Forza, just to scratch that itch like you were saying.

Surprisingly Forza has me by the balls right now. I even have a copy of Elden Ring that was gifted to me that i still haven't touched yet because Forza.

This was still as enjoyable on the second watch. This was my first time with a 4K blu ray and my system has never sounded or looked this great.

Well Jennifer is aging quite nicely, so far.

Outside of her magnificent rack going AWOL. :sulk:

Yeah.... Her getting a breast reduction is a disappointment.

No, it's an affront to God Himself

Very late here but man I loved this movie. It’s the kind of movie that makes people want to go back to the theatre. Tom Cruise just does movies right.

-The amount of flying they did to cut down on CGI was very noticeable. You could actually see gravity take hold of the actors in the plane and that made it more real.
-Phoenix wasn’t pushed as some love interest or bad girl or any of that shit. She was just a damn good pilot who happened to be a woman.
-Hangman didn’t pout, get pissy, walk out or anything when he wasn’t on the final squad. He was a cocky SOB but he was also a team player and that showed at the end.
-Mav/Rooster didn’t fight off a bunch of military people to get to that plane. The storyline of the bombing and smoke from it actually made everything completely believable and real.
-Teller, Powell, Ham. All very good actors added to this and they fit so well.
-Bob is Bill Pullman’s spawn? Well how bout that? LMAO

I guess you could point to pure nepotism of Rooster being Dagger 2 simply bc of his ties to Maverick. It feels like he should have been barred from being on the squad for his actions during training.

All in all amazing. Loved it.

I watched this again recently - it's available on Amazon Prime. My opinion of it has improved dramatically. Initially I was more than a bit disappointed by the ending, but now, frankly, I love it. Sure it was silly and unrealistic, but it was also a wonderful storybook ending and a throwback to another era that I really miss. The steely-eyed man's man All-American Hero saves the day, gets the girl and flies off into the sunset. Utterly, completely and unapologizingly unwoke.

We need more of that, not less.

The 20ish minutes from 'send it' to Hangman showing up was just so damn well done. The practical effects and cinematography was just ****ing amazing. Hell, even the last 2 minutes of that when the last jet shows up with the 'sad top gun' soundtrack and then the missile releases...and the top gun bell.

**** this movie is awesome.

In the theater it was the most enjoyable movie experience I have EVER had. The only think close was Dunkirk on the 2nd largest screen in North America.

"Set time to target, 2 minutes, 15 seconds..."

Shit y'all, I can only get so erect...

That's also when you kinda realize that Hangman isn't the bad guy they kinda wanted him to be. He's just ****ing good. Frankly, he IS Pete Mitchell.

That little smirk when he hears Maverick on the range; he knows he's about to see some serious shit.

I've watched it 4x... really enjoyed it

Yup the Maverick test run was nostalgic and awesome.

My biggest question after seeing it again is after they go up past 9G on the steep incline after dropping the bombs, that’s such a steep slope and such a speed that you figure it would take time to snap out of that while enemy bombs were triggered as soon as they went past the top.

That seemed to be the scariest part of the mission more than anything. Your oxygen is pressed to the max, you’re damn near blacking out and oh yeah there’s bombs right there immediately coming for you. Didn’t seem realistic but hey it was still ****ing awesome

You can shake G-Loc in 10-20 seconds but that's essentially an eternity here.

I think ultimately they're relying on a fairly dumb weapons platform. Sam's aren't laser guided or anything; they're infrared. So you come out of there, get the bell screaming in your ear and it shouldn't take too terribly much presence of mind to fire off your flares and bank.

What confused me about that sequence is why they spent so much time in the coffin corner. Your presence is known so staying below a radar envelope isn't getting you anywhere. Incoming aircraft aren't on scene yet.

Hit the damn afterburners and haul ass out of there. You should be exposed to maybe two SAM sites before you're clear of their radar range. Make a couple of slight banks to separate from the flares and give the missiles something else to hit (and avoid getting hit by shrapnel) but man, I wouldn't think you'd need to jink more than 20% off center. And even if you did - get the noise pointed due west and be gone as quickly as you can.

They just seemed to be loitering in a kill box.

Some SAM systems use radar-guided missiles. In fact, I think they say that the SAM systems protecting the nuclear weapons site were radar-guided.

Which makes the flares useless, but it's a movie, and flares are a lot more dramatic-looking than bales of foil being ejected from the plane.

That and jet black, wavy, long hair.

http://t2.gstatic.com/licensed-image...BgSaDYcWKgfIG8

How anyone would watch Anywhere Anything Anytime Anyplace or whatever that god forsaken film was called and think it was better than this...Ill never know

A friend sent me this one. Gentleman and lesbians, the cause of friction scabs on my penis in the 90's:

Is it possible for internet pages to be stuck together?

So weirdly, that's been altered....but not very much.

Here's the original:

https://i.redd.it/2jc7um4a1je51.jpg

If I'm betting, yours is a Megan Fox mashup.

I'm old enough to remember when she looked like this.

https://i0.wp.com/www.bulletproofact...17/01/1-13.jpg

When she was in her early 20s, Jennifer Connelly was pretty much the most fantastically beautiful woman on earth.

Yeah, my first true crush - she was stunning. And just classically beautiful to boot; would've been a smokeshow in black and white in the 20s.

Glad she was willing to get the girls out when she was still in her prime...

Rocketeer.

Jesus Christ. I saw that one time when I was a young kid. I remember her character making me melt.

I had forgotten about that movie and didn't know it was JC.

Can't see a picture of her without hearing "ASS TO ASS! ASS TO ASS!"

Uh.....wtf how did i miss THIS?

NSFW

This movie was an extremely pleasant surprise

Rocketeer is such a great movie and she was absolutely breathtaking in it.

Saw a naval aviator talking about this movie and he said that on an F-18 there are a few ways to use your countermeasures. There's a 'stalk' of sorts where you can select flares or chaff but there are two emergency buttons where it runs a program that can (and likely will) fire off both. It's varied based on the mission, etc... but it's all pre-programmed.

So you could argue that their emergency deploy button is both chaff AND flare, and the chaff simply isn't showing up on the screen.

So that's what I'm gonna go with...

In case you didn't know (and I don't know why you wouldn't), this movie holds up spectacularly well after repeat viewings.

Yeah - it remains pretty unassailable.

Even the fighter pilots are like "Yeah, some of this is a little off, but damn this is a great movie and hey - it's a movie. You have to suspend a little disbelief here..."

Like the part where Maverick sacrifices his plane to flare off Rooster - the guy essentially says "Hey, theoretically it might be doable. In practice, nobody has ever been that good. There's just no way to locate a point in space and get from point A to point B like that."

But I think my favorite nitpick was a simple one - airspeed. Every maneuver has you bleeding inertia. And they're going to be bled white coming up that cliff face into coffin corner anyway. They would have ZERO airspeed. And how are they going to gain it? Usually you'd nose down but they're in mountain canyons - they can't do that. Worse still, they're up and down, left and right, all over the place trying to evade.

They'd simply never have the airspeed to make some of those banked turns; they'd fall right out of the sky the moment they threw the wings over, slammed the emergency countermeasure button and pulled the stick back.

But hey - movie would be a lot less good if it was:

"Dagger 1, Defending...."
{whacks countermeasure button; banks and pulls yoke}
{Every stall alarm in Gods creation sounds simultaneously - plane noses over and flutters helplessly into side of mountain}

ROFL

https://i.etsystatic.com/12361819/r/...83650_l4kg.jpg