Top gun maverick gay
The Original Top Gun Was My Sweaty, Sexy Gay Salvation
This piece is part of Outward, Slate’s residence for coverage of LGBTQ life, mind, and culture. Read more here.
When trailers for Top Gun: Maverickstarted showing up in a big way this past month, I felt a sudden yet familiar throttle to my nether regions, as if hit by G-forces. Something about the naked fuck-yeah-ism of those screaming jets, the quivering whoops of those hotshot pilots, opened a portal in me to a lost teenage dreamscape. Or should I say jerk-scape? Ah yes, I remembered: Top Gun, my first sexual relationship.
You see, in the mids Christian suburbs of Chicago, where dial-up internet usage was closely monitored, Top Gun was my gay porn. And I’m not just talking about the infamous beach volleyball scene (which, trust me, we’ll circle back to—I always did). I mean even the glancing mention of it—just a snack-size quotable like “That’s classified”—cast a cockerel spell over me. Certainly, the Kenny Loggins song “Playing With the Boys” had special essence. As if cued to the baseline and hair-metal
June My partner BR and I walk to a matinee screening of (now six-time Academy Award nominee) Top Gun: Maverick at the Cineplex near us. There’s extra bounce in my step and excitement in my voice. When we arrive, I purchase popcorn in the ridiculous—and ridiculously overpriced—Pete “Maverick” Mitchell souvenir popcorn bucket. This delights and disturbs BR, who has made a grudging exception to her “no creepy Scientologists’ movies” rule to join me for this.
The previous darkness, we’d revisited the first Top Gun and it inspired the same interrogate it always does: Why is it so damn satisfying? And why is the long-awaited sequel also so entirely enjoyable to me? What has me watching and wondering and rewatching and feeling?
BR is not alone in entity rather baffled at the intensity of my enthusiasm. Various friends ask some version of why I, a Gen X butch lesbian feminist, am so excited to see a mainstream, pro-military, Tom Cruise vehicle. “Butch,” soft though I may be, is part of the key here. In , when I first watched the original Top Gun, I’m sure I’d never heard the ter
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don't mind me i'm thinking about how Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and Tom "Iceman" Kazansky are both CANONICALLY QUEER.
That's right folks, you read that correctly. I present to you the evidence:
Regarding Iceman, we all knew he was queer , because Val Kilmer himself literally confirmed it in an interview for Smooch Kiss Bang Bang (he talked about his role as a gay traits in the film and said that it wasn't his first; he admitted top gun was his first gay role.)
And for Maverick, the canon evidence was in the first Top Gun itself - in a scene that SO many people the o-club scene, Goose tells Maverick when they're making a bet that Maverick "must have carnal knowledge, of a woman this time."
That line right there implies that Maverick has hit on people before that AREN'T women-- because if Maverick was completely straight, why would Goose need to specify that Maverick needs to hit on a miss this time?
The amount of queerness in this movie AMAZES ME. And it's not subtle, q
Top Gun: Maverick fails to navigate the flag on LGBT+ voice
In a summer marked by turbulent political and social upheaval, scorching heat waves and, for many students like me, nerve-shredding exams and coursework deadlines, who doesn’t want to sit in the cockpit of a plane with Tom Cruise as he perilously flies through mountains, and performs incredible feats of flight-related acrobatics? All tied together with a bow of synth stings, Jon Hamm doing his optimal ‘angry-military-higher-up’ impression, and gorgeous cinematography? Top Gun: Maverick, in these aspects, is certainly worth the price of admission.
I myself was rather cynical before going in to see this long-anticipated sequel; being a fan of the original, I felt like the franchise was too married to its 80s' roots to be properly adapted into a unused, shining 21st century mould. From the very first scene, which is itself a direct nostalgic nod to the opening of the original, I was on-board; however, the film’s at-times overbearing relationship with its predecessor, as it turns out, might be its greatest weakness.
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