TAMPA – Three fighter pilots entered a bar on a Wednesday night. He was an especially neon drinker in the lobby of the AMC Veterans 24 multiplex. Dozer bought a round of cold for Rock and Ratso. They had met minutes before, but they had already fallen into an easy conversation about where they had been and who they knew.
The occasion: a first screening of “Top Gun: Maverick”, the next summer hit that revives Tom Cruise as the most arrogant Navy pilot ever seen on screen, 36 years after the original “Top Gun” made him the biggest movie star. on earth. These guys were waiting for that day.
“Just looking at snippets online, I’ve identified things about flight maneuvers that are technically more correct than the first movie. It’s like, ‘This guy is really doing a Split-S,'” Brandon “Dozer” Sellers said. a 46-year-old sales representative for a technology company, wearing a custom-made Bremont watch for his squadron and a shiny face that looked clean even with a beard.
Chris “Rock” Petrock had a jawbone as a quarterback and looked at least a decade younger than his 51st. “I can honestly say that I was part of the ‘Top Gun’ generation,” he said. He had six days left on active duty, but had just started a civilian job with a defense contractor. It was in high school when the film was released. “It was a driver for me to go to the Naval Academy.”
Mike “Ratso” Cariello, a 61-year-old American Airlines pilot, had a regulated haircut and unquestionable eyes. He had brought his TOPGUN business card. “He was in flight school in Beeville, Texas, when he left. Yes, it was a big deal.”
The three men had flown F / A-18 fighter jets like the ones in the new movie, Dozer and Rock with the U.S. Navy, Ratso with the U.S. Navy. Rock had graduated from the Army’s elite Strike Fighter Tactics program, known as TOPGUN, in 2000. Ratso went through TOPGUN in the early 1990’s and later taught again. It was there for the final class in San Diego, where both films are developed. Dozer was not a TOPGUN guy, he was an F / A-18 instructor pilot. Everyone lives here now.
From left, fighter pilots Mike “Ratso” Cariello, Brandon “Dozer” Sellers and Chris “Rock” Petrock. [ Mike “Ratso” Cariello, Brandon “Dozer” Sellers and Chris “Rock” Petrock ]
In the darkness of the auditorium, Cruise’s “Maverick” and Miles Teller’s “Rooster” navigated their rocky relationship and their dangerous mission to destroy a nuclear facility in an unnamed desert nation. Dozer leaned over and took notes on what came out.
The language of communications is fantastic. Dagger attack. No, don’t go to the elevator with your jet.
When an extra from a bar scene thanked Maverick for buying a round from everyone (a penance for the sin of placing the phone on top of the bar), Dozer said out loud, “I know this guy.” .
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Rock saw Rooster’s “Star Wars” style flying through the canyons of the screen and recognized a real Navy training course. When the credits came out, Cariello counted the names he recognized.
The three men smiled as they returned to the lobby light.
“I could almost feel my hands moving, as if I wanted to take control.”
“How many training infractions can you fit into a movie?”
“None of these guys would fly again.”
Laugh. They crossed the parking lot to another bar and back to the courtyard. Beverage establishments were a focal point in both films. Realistic?
Definitely. You are away from your family, in a secluded place, Ratso said. There are many links in the bar.
What about speed? Is there really a … need?
“My wife absolutely hates the way I drive,” Dozer said.
Ratso appreciated that the film portrayed “stretching Gs” and showed a character who lost consciousness due to an intense gravitational force during a climb. This type of pressure physically forces the blood out of the brain. “We’ve all lost friends that G closed down on, unfortunately,” he said. The men nodded.
The flight was much more realistic this time, they agreed, possibly because the actors were filmed inside real fighter jets (albeit without control). The jargon was almost right.
There were tricks, of course: laps during the climbs that would have shattered an F / A-18, pilots flying without masks, and a seemingly endless supply of fuel. Not only would he not like Maverick himself, he would arrest him.
And they didn’t keep any memories of volleyball or beach soccer, like Tom Cruise in jeans. Instead, they recalled a pilot game called “raw” that involved pool tables and lots of elbows, or more adrenaline-fueled activities such as rafting and downhill skiing. Even golf, which the fighter pilots agreed they loved, always became an intense competition.
Throughout an aviator’s career, every aspect of every flight, from takeoff to landing, is scored and all names are sorted daily on a board in the room prepared for everyone to see. “From the moment you get to flight school, it’s all competition,” Dozer said. Another point for the realism of “Top Gun”.
Less authentic, Rock said, were the call signals. Everyone in “Top Gun: Maverick” has a fantastic one, like Phoenix, Coyote and Hangman. “Actually, that’s not even close. … It’s usually related to some joke you made. In fact, what’s blocking a ringtone is if the guy doesn’t like it.”
“Okay,” Dozer said. “There aren’t a lot of Mavericks flying around.”
“I actually met a real ice man,” Rock said, nodding to Val Kilmer’s character.
“Really?” Dozer said. “He gave himself this one?”
“Dozer” earned a night in the Pacific with a bottle of whiskey and an excavator. There is a story, “but I do not want to embarrass the Japanese nation in any way or form.”
In “Top Gun: Maverick,” Cruise refers to his crack squad as the best in the world by dropping bombs from high altitude, but regrets his inexperience in dog fights. That, Dozer said, tells the true story of modern air combat.
He had trained for air-to-air combat, of course, but never took part in its advanced deployment from 2001 to 2004. A U.S. Navy F / A-18 shot down a single Syrian Su-22 in 2017, marking the first U.S. air-to-air assassination in decades, but the last time U.S. fighters actually did what is seen in “Top Gun” was Desert Storm.
Dozer thought about it, and for the first time all night, he seemed a little embarrassed about what he meant. “Is it great to be able to sail at 35,000 feet, drinking from your bottle of water, dropping things safely? Sure. But maybe you wanted some opposition? I don’t know. It’s very easy to say sitting here at 1 G “.
The night was reduced. Plans were made to have a drink sometime. It turned out that they all live in the same neighborhood. Dozer had a ticket to see “Maverick” again in a week. Ratso had one for two days later.