This is a classic movie, directed by Tony Scott (Ridley’s bro), that pretty much launched Tom Cruise’s career (You can argue that Risky Business did this, but the majority of females will not remember that movie as much). It’s an intense movie where shirtless hotties (the guys – didn’t mean to fool you all) basically walk around strutting their egos. This movie was probably the yardstick to 80’s manliness. When you can get Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise together at the peak of their careers, you know that your movie is going to turn out right. Not to mention that the movie is good on its own. The actors and actresses just made it better. As Beth Barnes remembers, she can’t remember how the story went immediately, but she does remember the volleyball scene well.
The movie looks a bit dated, regretfully, especially with Val Kilmer’s Vanilla Ice haircut, but it certainly doesn’t disappoint in terms of footage and action. The cockpit scenes are still very intense and still look as good as they did when they first hit the silver screen in 1986. It’s amazing to see how well the scenes were done, especially the fight scenes and it’s easy to understand how Hot Shots got their material.
Overall, the movie is still quite good and shouldn’t be missed.
HD or not HD?
This is where the HD-DVD really scores big points. When you can take a classic movie like this and upscale it to a beautiful HD, you’ve got my heart attached to it. I think that it takes a lot of thought and a lot of effort to make a movie that was obviously not shot in HD (not even a term in 1986) and bring it to the level of HD perfectly, you can’t argue with the results. This and other movies deserve an HD upgrade. That’s what makes Top Gun HD-DVD so good and worth the purchase.
Of course, aside from visuals, you also get enhanced sound, which is beautiful in a 5.1 – 7.1 setup.
Final Thoughts
The movie is great, the visuals are beautiful, the sound rocks… where are the extras? I know the movie in HD is unbelievable, but seriously where are the extras for a 40+ gig disc? Certainly commentary or anything could have fit on there. An updated trailer, maybe? It would have been nice to see some features included on this HD-DVD, it’s certainly too bad there weren’t.