Why?

Rumours were at a fever pitch that Paramount is working on a sequel to TOP GUN. Earlier this week, the stories went one step further and started to say that Tom Cruise would be up for reprising his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. News of this has me repeating the same word over and over again…

“Why”?

Let’s start with just the idea of the movie on its own. I should preface this by saying that I was a huge fan of the original. From the first time I saw it around twelve years old, and through much of high school it was far and away my favorite movie. I still have a soft spot for it, but of course the years have put the whole “U-S-A Rah-rah” story into perspective. Nowadays it feels more like a guilty pleasure than a true favorite. But secret shame or not, I still don’t think it needs to be remade.

Hollywood is in the middle of an 80’s re-visit. Films long left for dead are being dusted off, re-imagined, and re-released. Some of them aren’t that bad (DIE HARD 4), some of them are that bad (RAMBO). Putting the past in a shiny new package and re-feeding it to the masses is nothing new, it’s cyclical and nowadays seems to have the “Me Decade” right in the middle of the bull’s eye.

As far as TOP GUN is concerned, what more story is there to tell? If they want to film a new class of hot shots, they could have done that ages ago…why now? The movie has been copied, re-copied and spoofed so many times over the years that it feels like we’ve already seen a sequel anyhow. Paramount must have a better script in the drawer than this.

The cherry on the sundae that is this rumour, is the notion that Tom Cruise would reprise his role as Maverick (now an instructor dealing with a cocky new hot-shot student). Paramount has been quick to dismiss this story, and for good reason – the man is currently box office poison. Even if they do green light the flick, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything more than a cameo.

For me this is the saddest part, because I think back to the fourteen year old kid I used to be. The one who thought that the epitome of cool was Tom Cruise singing off key to some girl in a bar. Juxtapose that with the thirty year old me typing this who thinks the epitome of sad is Tom Cruise considering re-hashing a twenty-two year old part in the hopes of getting his career re-sparked. The fourteen year old me would have been first in line to see TOP GUN 2. The thirty year old me wouldn’t watch it for free on TV on a lazy Sunday.

TOP GUN is a bit of a Cool Movie Classic. Please Paramount…do us all a favour…leave it alone.