Display MoreGreetings WingNuts,
The Wing Commander Movie Club has visited the danger zone and lived to tell the tale! We found that while Top Gun remains a striking movie full of fast action, striking cinematography and endearing characters… it also isn't much of a story. The scenes we remembered from years past were still wonderful but the lack of connective tissue seemed more apparent today. There's not really a character arc for Maverick: the film seems to set him up for a decision between being a devil-may-care fighter pilot like Iceman and a family man like Goose… and then Goose dies and instead he has to (fairly rapidly) get over his grief. But since the accident isn't his fault and he ultimately just splits the difference (he goes back to the girl AND is still a hotshot pilot!) there's not a very satisfying resolution.
But do you know what other movie has that exact combination of action, cinematography and characters but also falls apart in the final edit? Wing Commander, of course! As AD explained going in, FOX's marketing is absolutely correct: before we even get to dogfight cinematography, the movie borrows a LOT from Top Gun. Specifically, what's left of its character arcs strongly echoes the same scenes in Top Gun, often split into different characters: Blair is distracted by his war hero/traitor father's controversial past just like Maverick… and he's ultimately counseled by mentor Paladin just like Maverick's resolve is finally steeled by Tom Skerritt. Maniac's story is taken from Maverick with even fuller cloth: an flying accident kills a loved one (Rosie/Goose) causing him to lose his nerve before his CO gives an inspirational speech to bring him back into the fight. Angel and Charlie both act as love interests and psychologists for their respective Mavericks… and both Mavericks get a final "you're okay" scene with their rivals (Hunter and Iceman).
We previously quoted Wing Commander's VFX supervisor Chris Brown as saying Top Gun inspired the movie's dogfighting choreography and it's easy to see why. Top Gun's breathtaking aircraft photography and its frenetically paced cuts between cockpits, helmeted pilots and flying action are spectacular. Even the decision to use real F-5s instead of model MiGs is immediately understandable: models or CG would never look this good (the restored 2022 UHD release is strongly recommended)... I suppose this would be like having Talons show up as Kilrathi fighters, which did technically happen in Super Wing Commander. As you can see from some of the quick comparisons below, both movies use exactly the same set of paints for their dogfights just as Brown suggested: straight on shots of the pilots, ones that use their head motion to express action, angled exterior shots that include the aircraft (Wing Commander cut in half one of the Lightnings to allow for clear Top Gun style pilot shots). Then there's forward-facing VDU shots with very similar targeting systems… and that's all before the actual flying shots. Wing Commander can't match Top Gun's aircraft closeups but it does a great job on its take on Top Gun's more distant dogfight shots.
The Wing Commander movie's second act scramble is also heavily derived from Top Gun's two beautiful F-14s-at-sunrise takeoff sequences. Of course, this is just how an aircraft carrier works… but Top Gun was the movie that tuned the dramatic dance of loaders and catapult officers and showed it to the world, there's little doubt Wing Commander was following it.
And then there are plenty of aspects of Top Gun that connect back to the earlier games. Wing Commander III's scramble is similarly inspired as are things like the locker room… and Rachel's flight-oriented double entendres and even her look lead right back to Charlie!
… and let's not forget the now infamous volleyball scene. Wing Commander Academy gave us our long-deserved Maverick-and-buddy cheesecake when they went swimming on Greenhouse in On Both Your Houses! And this speaks to another aspect of Wing Commander that comes right from Top Gun: the 'best friends/rival bros' connection between Blair and Maniac which is clearly patterned after the relationships the Top Gun pilots have. In Top Gun their as-close-as-lovers connection is a fascinating setup (I would argue a Lawrentian one) that never quite goes anywhere. But maybe there's still time for that story…
I also suspect the Top Gun helmets are what Andrew Keith was imagining when he described Maniac's in the Wing Commander III novelization: "Marshall, wearing a flight suit and carrying his colorfully painted helmet under one arm." In fact, Andrew Keith likely owed his Wing Commander job to Top Gun mania. In 1991, he and his brother William Keith were hired to create a series of Top Gun-inspired action novels set aboard an aircraft carrier appropriately titled CARRIER. Andrew co-authored the first three and wrote the fourth on his own. The series, always attributed to the company name Keith Douglass, has continued well after Andrew's tragic passing.
But in spite of all of that there are some pretty interesting differences. Wing Commander's Maverick explicitly isn't like Top Gun's: he's a rule follower and not an obnoxious asshole. Despite borrowing the name from Top Gun he doesn't carry with him the personality; can you imagine Mark Hamill's Blair buzzing Captain Eisen in the tower? Maniac gets that part of the character instead but it's always portrayed as charmingly stupid and accidental instead of a good thing that comes from having a type A personality.
Wing Commander has always had an interesting relationship with the 'Maverick' name. It was Chris Roberts' callsign when he played the original game but they avoided locking down a canonical one for Blair for quite a while. The writers bible even named him Falcon/Phoenix with a backstory about how it changed between Wing Commander I and II and that's referenced in End Run… but since it was only ever in the bible and not the game itself, no one knew what Forstchen was referencing! The Sega CD release of Wing Commander I named the character "Hot Shot" (or Starbuck in Japan). The first mention of Maverick was in Super Wing Commander where the player character was given an entirely new name: Maverick Armstrong, leaving questions as to what the intent was. Blair was finally called Maverick in the Wing Commander III novel and for a time fans argued back and forth about whether that was really his callsign or just a description. But then Academy surprised everyone and used the callsign throughout every script. Blair was then listed as Maverick in Kilrathi Saga and in flight in Prophecy. The Wing Commander movie, for obvious Top Gun reasons, avoided giving him a callsign entirely! (Though it is mentioned in the adaptation… and then changed to Pilgrim for the sequel.)
I also couldn't help but notice that Maverick's rival Iceman was also likely the visual inspiration for Wing Commander II's Jazz. Wing Commander II based its characters on real actors (sometimes role specific ones) and it's not a stretch to imagine the art instruction for Jazz was to make him young Val Kilmer!
Sully believes he is even more handsome than Tom Cruise AND less morally problematic.
