Sea Control - Sea Control 350 - Top Gun 2 Reactions *Spoiler Warning*

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

To celebrate 200 episodes since our relaunch, we watched Top Gun: Maverick!! I'm joined by TOPGUN grad Graham Scarbro and retired Naval Aviatrix and Public Affairs Officer Sarah Higgins to capture all of our reactions to seeing Maverick on the Big Screen again 35 years later. Spoilers ahead!

Hey folks, it's Jared. This is episode number 200 since we relaunched the podcast in January of 2020. To celebrate, we're going to be discussing Top Gun Maverick with my guests, Top Gun grad Graham Heade Scarborough and retired Naval Aviatrix Public Affairs Officer Sarah D.Q. Higgins. So turn back now if you don't want to hear spoilers. We are still looking for additional audio editors. We're happy to provide you with some very basic training materials and instruction in a low-stress environment. so if you're interested in finding a way to contribute to SimSec and add to your resume and personal skill set

please send us an email with your resume to seacontrol at simsec.org Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman You're listening to Seacontrol hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security

Aloha, Shoemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. This is a reaction podcast for the recent release of Top Gun 2. So consider this your official spoiler warning. If you don't want to hear details of the plot, we're going to discuss all aspects of Top Gun 2 to include the conclusion. My guests today are SIMSEC Associate Editor and Top Gun Grad, Graham Scarborough, and Commander Retired, Sarah Higgins, formerly of Navy Public Affairs and herself a Naval Aviator. So thank you both for coming on. Graham, could you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, please? Yeah, thanks, Jared. Glad to be here. Like you said, my name is Graham Scarborough. Call sign is HEED. I am a F-A-18 Super Hornet NFO. I've been doing that job for about 15 years, not including flight school.

Graduated from Top Gun in 2013 and served on both coasts out of Lemoore and Oceana. I did some editing for SimSec for about a year and a half. And yeah, looking forward to talking to you guys. And Sarah, would you mind sharing a little bit more about your background? Thanks, Jared. Yeah, I'm excited to be here as well. I started out my career in naval aviation as an EA-6B prowler, electronic countermeasures officer, always a mouthful, but call sign, DQ, flew for about eight years, enjoyed it, but moved on to public affairs after that as a lateral transition. I kind of like to say it's cheesy, but I went from jamming communications to enabling them. So I go in line. But yeah, so I did that for about 12 years and then retired last year. And now I'm enjoying civilian life. Glad to be here. Well, thank you both again for joining us. As a reminder, all opinions are our own and not representative of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Last call for spoilers.

So if you do not want to hear spoilers about Top Gun 2, this is your final warning. Turn it off now. I did want to start with your call signs. I'm not sure what you're allowed to tell me. It's like, Keith, are you allowed to tell us your call sign story? Is there a legitimate one that's appropriate? Yeah, it's totally above board. Essentially, it's a reference to a Mike Myers movie that was made well before most of today's aviators were born.

Yeah. So you're talking about, so I married an ax murderer. I married an ax murderer. I showed up to my first squadron and the black aces of strike fighter squadron 41 and my fellow JOs thought I had a pretty big head. I will, I will say that I did not have the largest hat size in the squadron, but that doesn't always matter. The facts don't get in the way of a good call sign. So the, the, my fellow JOs dubbed me heed after a rant that mike myers uh goes on about a character with an abnormally large head and i think it's proportional but the jo is disagreed and so i've been heed uh ever since with my uh double extra large uh helmet flying around okay great no i guess that went ahead of time i thought

that's what it might be the case and uh my guess i was rewarded uh sarah can you tell us where dq comes from? Are you Dairy Queen? Everyone thinks that it's Dairy Queen, but no, it is not Dairy Queen. It is Drama Queen. So I like to say I have my moments. Okay. I'm not going to buy that entirely. I'll accept it for now. Before we discuss the latest version, though, I want to hear a little bit more about each of your personal experiences and influences from the original. So Sarah, do you remember the first time you saw Top Gun and what you thought? I've got a very sad to answer for you. I don't. Maybe because I was eight and a little girl and had no interest in naval aviation at all. I, whatever. I don't remember seeing it as a kid. My dad flew F-4s

for the Marine Corps and I don't remember seeing it with him. You'd think it would have been part of the family lore. So I figure I must've, you know, seen it many times on cable just on the weekends uh or you know I'm sure I watched it in flight school but it's one of those things that it's almost like I always knew it existed if that makes sense I just don't have a memory of the first time and it was certainly fun to watch during flight school and be like what have I gotten myself into Graham how about you uh I mean I don't remember the first time I saw it but it's for the opposite reason it's because I watched it so many times um I remember so many uh Saturday mornings right back in the days uh before digital on demand and and all that stuff um you'd get up

early on saturday mornings and you'd watch cartoons uh and then once the cartoons were over on the broadcast they'd show movies um edited for tv and top gun was a was always on and so uh between gi joe cartoons in the morning and then top gun coming on uh at about noon time um it was very um you know it was very 1980s end of the cold war kind of childhood um i grew up in a navy town i grew up in annapolis we sponsored midshipmen um and so top gun came out when those uh midshipmen were in the middle of their um their studies there and so i was surrounded by these mids who all wanted to go aviation and top gun was the biggest thing in the world my neighbors watched it all the time they owned the gi joe aircraft carrier um i remember playing the

soundtrack and um my dad uh was in aviation didn't fly but it was an aviation squadron so he had a couple old crash helmets and we would put the helmets on and um you know just ride around on our bikes and skateboards and soundtrack playing and you know so i don't remember the first time i ever saw it but man that movie was uh front and center in my life uh and um you know i knew from the age of six that i wanted to fly airplanes uh so so the movie was a big influence especially went in that environment surrounded by other people that wanted to be in aviation or who were aviators. I just knew that's what I wanted to do. Thanks. Yeah. So I wasn't able to remember the exact first time that I saw it either, but I was kind of able to trace it back based on what I

remember from watching it. So it debuted as an NBC Monday night movie on May 15th, 1989. The reason I remember that is because we had a video, we had taped it off of, you know, using a VCR. And if you're a younger aviator listening to this right now google what a vcr is um so we had taped out that because when it came out i think i would have been five years old obviously my parents weren't going to let me watch that but we would watch that vhs tape then as i got older and older and older i don't think i was aware that there was cursing in top gun so like half these lines are like bs you you can be my wingman um like i was not aware that there was cursing in top gun until i think i was like 26 and i saw it on showtime for the first time i was just thought

you know it was it was a very different experience seeing that i was like wait wait a minute where are the some of these lines coming from i didn't realize they were in there um but similar to you grandmas like i had a an uncle who was in the navy and then top gun on top of that i never really wanted to fly and that was not an option because you know the listener can't see this but you know I have my 2200, uh, vision glasses on right now. Uh, if you, if you watch Top Gun too, the closest approximation is what, um, Bob's glasses look like there, but, uh, I was not going to be flying, uh, in any case, but, uh, Graham, you're a Top Gun grad. How's the movie viewed at Top Gun and in Fire Squadrons? Um, so, so I'm going to reference another movie,

uh, from the nineties. So we got, so I married an ax murderer. We got Top Gun. Let's go with tommy boy so there's a scene in tommy boy where chris farley and david spade are driving down the road and they keep changing the radio channel and it ends up on um the carpenters and it's uh they're sitting there staring at each i think it's the carpenters they're sitting there staring at each other and they're like it is the carpenters i briefly considered starting to sing but you keep going yeah so so they they're like you know you can change it if you want to and and you're like i'm fine if you're fine and uh they're like you know i'm cool if you're cool And then the next shot is them singing along and crying to this love song as

they drive down the road together. And that's the perfect metaphor for Top Gun and the fighter community. I had an experience almost beat for beat like that in the ready room at VFA 122 in Lemoore, where it was on cable in the middle of the day and it's kind of a slow day in the ready room and Top Gun comes on and literally that exact scene plays out where we're all like, you can change the channel if you want to. And everyone's like, I'm cool if you're cool. And then next thing you know, Goose is dying and we're all sitting there like this.

And two hours later, the movie ends and we're like, oh, that movie is so stupid. We've just spent two hours watching it. So it's it's the kind of thing where I think it's such an important part of our our shared fighter culture. And it's such an iconic pop culture product that that we all have this like part of our relationship where we love it. because it's such a big part of that but at the same time we watch it we're like oh it's so cheesy and it's it's dated and and you know no one watches it for the tactics um you know and so there's that um dissonance where it's the reality of what we do and then kind of the hollywoodization of of how it's presented in film um creates a little bit of a love-hate relationship but i i'd say it's mostly on the love it's mostly affection um but with a little

bit of like kind of rolling your eyes um you know kind of like uh having a teenager you know they love you but they're gonna roll your eyes at your cringe antics and i think that's how we view top gun uh so that that at at the schoolhouse itself in top gun they they've got a fine system so if you quote the movie um in the schoolhouse they'll find you uh and you'll you'll pay uh in beers at the, uh, at the Oak club bar later on, I think it's a $20 fine for quoting the movie. So that kind of highlights how we, how we think about it. Sarah, similar experience for you in the, uh, in the aviation squadrons that you were part of before you transitioned over to public affairs. Um, I would say just, you know, as you're, uh, interacting with aviation at all, um, whether

you're in it or adjacent to it, you know, Top Gun comes up and, you know, what, what he just talked about with, um, the fine system. I, uh, back in 2015, um, I'm the PAO on USS Dennis and I get told, Hey, you're going to have a writer come out to the ship. It's the new Top Gun 2. We don't know anything about it. It's going to be on board for like four days. He needs to work on the script, kind of bring it to life with detail. So, um, please make sure he can get that done. I'm like, oh, man, I got to be a saleswoman for Top Gun 2 to this, you know, air wing, these squadrons, these people who just, you know, Top Gun 1 is sacred. So it was an interesting task. And to his credit, the writer came out and was awesome and made it really easy. But I was kind of like,

you know, this fine system, it exists on the aircraft carrier as well. And you're not allowed to, well, I mean, you're allowed to, but it's not in your best interest to really, you know, talk a lot about the film or anything like that. You got to be cooler. You love it, but, you know, you're skeptical. It's a good aviation trait. But by the time this writer left the ship, as he catapulted off in the cod, they were playing Danger Zone over the 1MC. So he had done his job he had set the tone of hey we're trying to get this right um and so it was really really cool to you know finally get to this point after code and everything watch the film and see what came of it all now this is a good transition to one of the questions i had saved

for later because you were working with public affairs as the movie was being filled can you tell us anything else about the production from the navy side uh just the fact that you know it was uh it's it's a long complicated process whenever the navy supports a film there's always a production agreement, you know, and it's a back and forth of what the storytellers need to say and what the Navy, you know, thinks is the right thing to say. So it's an interesting process to see come to life. Not all movies have production agreements, not all filmmakers or TV shows or, you know, work with any of the services. But typically when they do, the product is more authentic so that's always what the military and the services are trying to go for there was a lot

of um filming uh taking place i guess uh uh it's been two years on hold so the two years prior to that um uh when i was at chinfo i was the um i was the ea there uh the um and and at uh the chief naval information and you know just seeing the emails flying back and forth about filming and how it was going um really neat how they you know worked hard to to make the imagery uh so true to life um but it was it was a lot of behind the scenes work um going on for all that can you tell us where they shot the aviation sequences uh i will let heed weigh in after me but i know a lot of them were up in the pacific northwest there's some beautiful beautiful low-level routes up there with it as an, as a Prowler ECMO, I was able to fly all the time. 1355 is a, is an amazing

low level through the Cascade mountain range. Um, and I was really excited to see the film because I mean, we aviation, you know, these squadrons, you make videos, you film stuff, but it's through a dirty windshield and our canopy, I should say. And, uh, uh, uh, you know, there's limitations to our abilities to film and so uh it's really cool to see the footage i almost felt like i was back flying the low levels up there um down in cal i think other locations were down in california but he'd have to uh you know defer to you yeah look so the the whole end sequence that that final mission that's up in the pacific northwest on their low level route up there which is um just an amazing amazing training route that's uh that that the uh the growler guys uh get to use

uh pretty regularly uh and then it looked like most of the the the training montage stuff was filmed in um the uh central california um op area which is kind of on the border of california and nevada um near china lake uh recognized a lot of those a lot of those scenes a lot of that low level stuff was out of lemoore um or china lake uh they got some bombing ranges there all the ranges i used in my uh in my early days so i recognize some of that stuff there so they they filmed that there and then and then underway obviously on the on the carrier out of uh san diego um several times so um so some familiar sites uh for all of us it's kind of fun to be able to look at uh you know the threat the threat country and be like oh yeah i know where that i know where that

is uh or when they're practicing the bombing range be like oh i i could hit that target uh that was kind of fun being able to see some of that stuff yeah there was uh there was a bridge uh there's a really obvious bridge in the final sequence uh up in the pacific northwest but then but as they're coming in off the water just real quick it flashes by there's a bridge and i was like i know that bridge that's awesome and you guys up there in the prowler land you're flying between the spans of the bridge on a knife edge all the time oh absolutely yeah that's you know that's not movie magic we're we can all do that that's just a tuesday in the prowler community i don't know yeah don't even write it down in the logbook it's just that doesn't even

worth a mention at this point sitting in the back seat no forward vision you know going oh yeah there's the bridge going under it cool oh so no forward vision that that must have felt right at when he's flying that Mach 10 airplane at the beginning and he's got no wind screen in front of him, that's a, that's a Prowler ECMO shout out, right? How does he tag? How does he taxi? How does he land? It's fine. It's movie magic. Well, Heath, let me ask you then. We'll get into discussing the movie a little bit more now.

Like what did you think of the movie? How did it compare to the original for you? What did you feel as you watched Top Gun Maverick? It's, it's funny. You can see, I watched a little bit of the first movie last week before going to see Maverick, and it's funny how the – just how to make – how to write a movie seems to have really changed in the 30 years since the original. You know, there's much more emphasis on sort of the – you know, what you call side characters. I mean, the original movie is very much all Maverick. And this one gets into his relationship with Rooster, who's Goose's son, a lot more. But it also does a little bit more to kind of fill out the other air crew aviators in the mission. there's a lot less pop music uh cues i noticed if you remember the original movie that soundtrack

is iconic it's such a it's it's just full of 80s um absolute smash hits and this is much more um score driven which you know i think is probably to give it some staying power and it dated a little bit less um the the um the actual uh plot i think is a little bit more uh drive you from a drive you from a to b you kind of set the stakes early and then and then the whole movie builds up to that final sequence whereas the the bookends of the original movie are those kind of that operational mission uh thing so that the the story writing of it seems like it's a little bit tighter it drives a little bit more towards a linear um fashion so i found that interesting that's all like you know what making movies at a pure level of just like seeing

my airplane on the big screen um was pretty awesome i mean that's the airplane i've flown in um uh for for over a decade so it was awesome seeing the airplane on the screen um i'm excited that all the nfos lived um that's that's gave it away that's huge for hollywood i mean you can go uh you can go all the way back to like empire strikes back and like the you know the tail gunner um gets killed uh and in a flight of the intruder they kill about 60 nfos in that movie and then obviously goose in top gun so i was very excited to see all the nfos uh survive the movie um so that was probably my favorite part of the whole film uh was the fact that all the nfos live okay and you don't feel bad that the cruiser was the hero of the movie i mean if you're gonna let

those tomahawks were fast man so if they can if they really that you know 6 000 tomahawks flying 800 miles an hour like good on them if that's what you guys are packing I'm glad to see it Sarah what were your impressions yeah much like heat I really enjoyed it I thought the storyline was much much more robust I honestly related to it a lot better just do you mean because there was a storyline yeah exactly you know I related to it a lot more love that there was a yeah female pilot um just that wasn't a love interest was you know just part of the group was a shipmate if you will um yeah it was uh it was it was great to be transformed back into the cockpit in a lot of ways I mean I haven't flown in a long time my last flight was January 07 uh so um I come at it from

a different perspective than he'd certainly and I didn't expect that I mean I knew I'd heard from you know the public affairs support of making the film that it was going to be great aerial imagery people saw the rough cut some some early examples and they just came back and it's like their eyes were kind of bugging out of their heads and how good it was you hear that but you're like okay I'm going to judge for myself and then I got to watch the film this past week it's it's fleet week here in New York right now and and so there was a screening aboard the Intrepid Museum which was really cool because you know you're on an aircraft carrier it's not you know perfect sound or visual but the environment is just appropriate and cool and it was a bunch of service members

and and veterans in there and we all reacted pretty pretty strongly to to scenes there's a lot of audience interaction. I don't know if you guys had that in yours, your viewings, but loved the storyline, liked it. There were so many characters, love some of the unique twists that they did. You know, Maverick walking into the classroom as the, and everybody else kind of groaning, you know, it was just such a nice flip on Kelly McGillis from before. I also really, really loved the character of hondo i don't know if he struck a chord with you guys but he was like basically the audience uh personification throughout the whole thing yeah hondo is the audience avatar but i have roughly 12 million questions about that guy's career is he just

like maverick's ballet that he goes to every place he goes yeah he's oh no he's a typical warrant officer he can kind of do it all exactly everyone every time you turn around you're like where'd you come from and he's like oh don't worry I got it taken care of yeah he was everywhere sir you mentioned this grandma would ask what what the vibe was like in the theater that you were in sadly I kind of went to a mid-afternoon show I think most of the people who were in there were roughly Tom Cruise's age so it wasn't as much audience interaction whereas like there were a couple moments and we'll we'll get into what were your some of your favorite moments where we're like I wanted to stand up and like punch the air uh and we didn't talk about those

But the audience where I was at was unfortunately just, I think, a little bit too old to be that kind of into it. But Graham, how about where you were? It's funny. I went to a screening for for Oceana and it was so mostly active duty and a few family members. And I expected sort of that like cauldron of reaction kind of atmosphere. A lot of, you know, a lot of active duty, a lot of our young sailors. and it it it wasn't a real raucous environment everyone seemed very focused on the movie I it surprised me a little bit um but I think it was because we got in the movie and like I think all of us kind of looked at each other like man this movie's pretty good

you know like it you had to pay attention right we were all really we were all really drawn into like oh man this is a this is a good movie and I think we got a lot out of um Sarah you brought up kind of the interaction between the characters specifically phoenix shout out to phoenix she's wearing bfa 41 patches black aces that's my first squadron so i love seeing that on the big screen uh seeing that ace of spades up there was awesome you know the interaction between them at the at the club or the bar at the beginning of the movie where they're all just sort of chatting and talking and catching up and they're like oh yeah the lamor guys are here very casual kind of interaction felt true to life and so i i think um i think seeing some of that more um you know that

presentation of our career that sort of resonated with people i think it kind of kept that the audience i was in pretty transfixed and we were all pretty invested in the movie i expected a lot of you know yelling at the screen or or or hooting and hollering and it was very much like we were all dialed in to focus on this movie which i i i enjoyed but i i was surprised that that was uh kind of how we took it. You make a good point. Oh, go ahead, sir. To be fair for the viewing that I went to, there was an open bar ahead of time. So it probably helped with the, yeah. Graham, you make a really good point about expectations going in though, because I think when all the press leading up to it talked about the aerial sequences and the authenticity of the

aerial sequences and everything that they were able to do and the pilots, the actors who played the pilots getting actual time in the back seats they're flying around and doing all that quote unquote doing all the stunts on their own so i went in with a very you know an expectation that it was going to be very similar to the first one it's like that's going to have all these cool aerial sequences and the story will really be sort of the secondary focus of it but uh you know sarah you mentioned how relatable it was that was the thing about i was not prepared for sort of the emotional weight of the movie here and uh if you haven't experienced some of the things that they're the the themes that are being addressed in the first hour of the movie uh they may come off as

schlocky to you but you're talking about a boy like okay he's a grown man rooster here but they do flash back to showing him as a boy who's you know lost his father in this terrible accident and then it comes out later that you know his mother has passed away as well he's got a strained relationship with a surrogate father in maverick and that strained relationship is based on the surrogate father wanting to protect him uh and trying to like protect his you know mother's reputation too because she obviously didn't want to fly again point where there were like three or four points in the first hour of the movie where i was trying not to tear up and then you spend the last hour of the movie putting these people into danger again and again and again like i was uh i

like sweat through my shirt by the time i got out of there it's like i was not emotionally prepared to have this kind of experience on a friday afternoon i thought this was gonna be like we're gonna go in and watch some jets and see some really cool uh really cool animated stuff here but that was uh that was not the experience at all and like you said grab it i mean reflecting on it the day after where i was like man that was just a really good movie i went home told my wife all about it but yeah i think i think one of the things is they they they took the time in this movie to to build out the the other aviators as if if not like fully fleshed out characters right Like, I don't know where any of them are from and I don't know, you know, what their, you know, hopes and dreams are, but at least their, their personalities are, are archetypes. Right. So you've got, you know, Rooster, who's a little bit more conservative. You've got Hangman, who's a little bit more aggressive. You know, they kind of dialed him up in more of the Iceman tone, but you can sort of recognize like, okay, he's playing it a little bit over the top, but you can still see a sort of aggressive, confident archetype.

um, in, um, in hangman Phoenix is sort of like a slow and steady, like, like even keel. And then you've got Bob, who's kind of the awkward, you know, NFO sort of like, Hey, I'm just happy to be here. Um, a little bit awkward, very, very, a little on the nose for us, NFO types, but at the same time, like I have a hard time kind of denying that. Um, but they, they, they sort of built these characters into a little bit more than just one note, which is something that in the original movie you kind of only really get with goose and and to some extent ice man maverick is very until until goose dies maverick is very uh he's a one-line character he's two-dimensional right and it's goose's death that kind of changes him um ice man i personally i think ice man's a little

bit more complex and then goose is sort of a fully fleshed out character um despite the fact that he's kind of second billing tom cruise but they kind of applied a more of a development brush to each of these characters and i think that makes the story better because you can kind of see how they play against each other which i i didn't expect like you said i expected the flying to be awesome and then you know i expected it to be maverick with whipping a ragtag group of you know bad news bears into shape or something along those lines and that's not what we got and i thought that was a lot uh it was better for it you know you make a really good point here because you know you think that way just because of the the storyline and the focus of the first film but

then it's also Tom Cruise and you're so used to you know he he's he's the center of it all right and I would argue he still is the center but there's so much of the story that expands beyond him it's like the next generation almost and and that's really kind of a neat neat balance to see um I was so skeptical beforehand of the character of Rooster um I don't know if you guys were but i was like oh man you gotta have goose's son he's gotta have a call sign of rooster he's gotta have the mustache he's gotta be wearing the sunglasses and i think there was a still i saw of him playing the piano or singing or something like that i was like man this is so on the nose and as the film started there were some really heavy um tones back to goose and maverick's relationship and

photos and imagery that they kind of had you know around maverick's house and it just felt really heavy the second Miles Teller got on that screen and started walking around I was like oh I see it and it was just I was glad to have my mind changed you know it was just a really good performance I thought yeah that first uh you mentioned the heavy scene like that first scene when he gets on the piano starts playing and Mav is immediately drawn back to the bar the bar window and is flashing back to Goose like that was I was beside myself for a solid five minutes uh when that came on and get back to the relatability piece too i'd like when we talk about the first time we saw a top gun okay i was five when it came out i probably saw when i was nine the first time you were

probably eight or nine sarah same for you graham you said like maybe six or so those are people that you can relate to when you're a little kid watching top gun the first time okay they're like adults um they could be 45 for all you know like the difference between 32 and 45 it doesn't even matter when you're that age. Yeah. It's the same thing when you're six. So it's very tough. They're almost like cartoon characters to you. And the only relatable aspect of it is the friendship between Maverick and Goose, because obviously you have best friends when you're that age. So this one, just, you know, approaching it with a little bit more life experience here, there is just so much more there. I want to do talk, I do want to talk about sort of the best

moments so the the punch the air moments um sarah what did you have for as far as like what what got the crowd going while you were watching it fleet week i think it was just mostly the flying um you know some of the lines uh you talked to me goose was a nice reincarnation a few times oh there was a moment when i think it was uh rooster says from the back seat do some of that pilot shit math sorry am i am i allowed to say that on this podcast well now i'm gonna have to click the an explicit language but that's okay like one one s-bomb won't look like won't get anybody hurt we're all good but you're just quoting you're quoting yeah it's okay uh you know i mean it was uh yeah it was just a lot of moments all in a row you know my audience they sometimes reacted

to things that weren't right frankly um i know that's not what you're asking so i'm sorry i'm going off script here but no but like you know the funeral that happens um yeah and the person next to me goes that's a seal thing that's not an aviation thing you know with you know punching uh the warfare device into the into the um into the coffin but you know i mean that's those are those are nitpicks and that overall everything was just um together it was it was all it was all just really kind of great to see on film graham how about you yeah what what's funny is that the like i can't pick out like a specific moment and you think back to top gun and the original and you think of like quotable lines or or like famous moment famous moments and those

things are so iconic but you wonder if they're iconic because the the movie has kept going and going and going and so those things kind of pick out so it'll be interesting to see if stuff like that kind of emerges over time and if we we end up with quotable lines and things that stick but I didn't know it. I didn't find this very quotable at all, which is fine. That's not what I'm going to judge it on, but yeah. So, but when you get, get back to your question and you asked about like favorite moments, I'm like, man, I don't know that I pick out one moment, but I, I, the, I found the flying scenes very compelling.

I found the relationship between Mav and Rooster very good. I mean, I've got some nits to pick on sort of some of the specifics, but I thought that that was pretty well done. You know, you're, you're, and you contrast i enjoyed the contrast between mav's relationship with rooster and ice man's relationship with maverick right ice man comes away from the original movie as sort of a a fan of maverick despite their differences and spends his career kind of looking out for maverick and sort of protecting him but in a way that allows maverick to kind of be successful in this sort of like top secret test world where he can kind of do his own thing and doesn't have to be

button heads with anybody maverick on the other hand tries to protect rooster but is is overly protective so whereas ice man sort of shepherds mav along and ensures his success maverick kind of overreacts and and puts barriers in front of rooster and i found those those two sort of parallel mentorship relationships if you want to call it that i found that really interesting Whereas Mav obviously has a really warm relationship with Iceman, the relationship between him and Rooster is very cold for a long time. And I really enjoyed watching that, how that worked out. And at the end, it's Iceman who sort of turns Maverick towards Rooster and says like, hey, man, you're supposed to be doing for him what I'm doing for you. It doesn't say that that's subtext or whatever, but I thought that was really good.

So that was some of the more story driven stuff that I thought was really, really good. But I love the flying. I love the the, you know, the emphasis on the the wizos lays in the bomb. That's how I live my life for 15 years. So seeing that they're throwing some love to the backseaters, like it's such a little thing, you know, popcorn eating America watching this movie. they're not going to care but for me as an nfo like i was like yes finally like yeah we got something to do in this movie um that was a lot of fun so i i really enjoyed uh kind of those aspects to it i i guess i just want to add i the the bar scene the bar scene was just great i felt again i said earlier i felt transported with with some of the flying scenes um and i felt transported in that that bar scene because i i you know i getting thrown into the pool just you know

deemed for the cell phone on the bar oh the cell phone on the bar was so and i didn't expect like that's just a nuance like how did the filmmakers know that they knew that because they hung out with aviators and listened yeah the guy next to me the guy was sitting next to me a buddy of mine from my my uh my my command he turns to me when maverick puts his phone on the bar he's like if penny knows what she's doing she's gonna ring him up like you cannot put your cell phone on the bar and we're worried that the scene is about to end and she reaches up and dings the bell and we were like that was my like it's so silly that that's the fist pump moment but i'm so glad you brought that up dq because like yes i was like oh someone did their research um and and knows like

you do not put your cell phone on the bar uh that was great yeah though i'm glad you brought that up dq that's awesome yeah the the one that stuck out to me where i wanted to like i didn't have any more popcorn at that point but i would have thrown my popcorn if i'd had it aside from the cruiser of course was a sort of mabs prove it run where the three star is up there yeah he said okay guys we're going to dial back they've been like we're going to roll in the safety parameters now we're and you see like the little npds symbol pop up on the screen of mavericks aircraft and then you hear him check in on the radio and then the audience avatar it flashes to phoenix's face and she realizes what he's about to do which is go and run this thing and show him like no no kids this is

how we do it here and i forget exactly what she said but it was something like yes like the all caps yes that you'll see like on online when people agree with something that was where i was like ready to stand up and punch the air but it's just like old people as far as the eye can see and it's like i'm gonna be the only person standing here people are gonna think i'm a lunatic um do we talk about quotes of the soundtrack a little bit here we're so one i was surprised they showed the uh composers at the beginning and you got harold faltermeyer on the left who's kind of a classic top gun composer you know he's got the the thing with the bell at the beginning here that's the start of um and then hans zimmer and then right in between them lady gaga i was a

little disappointed i did not get a lady gaga take my breath away um rendition as part of this so in any other thoughts on the soundtrack for you i realized like the more modern stuff i think we're not the target audience for that so i didn't walk away necessarily quote unquote disappointed in that i was just surprised there wasn't more more pop though i did enjoy that they started with danger zone i wondered about that going into the movie because i mentioned it before the soundtrack to the original was so iconic you know i it's i've been listening to it for two weeks um just to prior to watching the movie and i wondered if they were going to do that same thing you don't see a lot of pop music in um in movies uh that much anymore and they they had a

couple um the football scene and then the kenny loggins at the beginning and the lady gaga at the end but that that was really it not you know i don't know enough about movie making to know if that's you know if that's out because you know i mentioned before maybe they they find that the movie it doesn't date itself as much if they don't rely on pop music um you know the top original top gun feels very 80s and the soundtrack helps with that so maybe that's something they try and avoid nowadays but i i did wonder if they would have you know some up-and-coming pop stars uh you know providing the soundtrack but who knows maybe the the production delays were not maybe not production delays the release delays may have contributed to that too right the the singer that

they thought was going to be hot two years ago uh you know nothing came of it and so they can't include that song in the movie because everyone's gonna be like well who's that um so i i don't know i don't know enough about movie making but i did notice the you know more more of a cinematic score kind of uh feel to it yeah i that's interesting you bring up that two-year delay and how that might affect um you know the the current soundtrack but I I think my main thought about it um I loved the opening sequence um you know it really hearkened back to the original film I was kind of like oh why are they starting it this way I mean the same flow of words on the screen and then opening on the flight deck with you know the the complicated nature that a flight deck is which is

That was always my favorite scene in the first film, those opening minutes with the steam rolling over the aircraft and everyone in their, you know, flight deck gear and all working hard and you can't hear each other. I mean, it's just beautiful and hard at the same time, which isn't normal. And they brought that back, different vibe, but they brought that back with Danger Zone. Perfect. Awesome. um but I thought it in a different way it was a great setup to show how far from the action Maverick was you know this is this is where he was at a long time ago and now 30 years later it's in 06 and he's off you know testing stuff in the desert um and then the rest of the film

the music almost didn't matter I I noticed uh Lady Gaga's song was playing in one of the bar scenes like really quietly in the background I thought that was a nice touch and then it came up nice and loud at the end but um yeah there was really one pop song in this film is that it okay well now it's time to i i label this like navy nitpicks or whatever but these are things that you know you can point out is like hey hang on a second this doesn't make any sense so he'd uh sarah you're raising your hand go ahead i'm raising my hand as an ecmo come on now where where were the growlers where's some ew going on that's that's my uh i'm not worried about it i don't feel bad about it oh how dare you so he you i'm sure i've been out of the

cockpit for so long and i've never been in a growler i mean the missions the tactics are basically the same missions basically the same but i would love to hear your take on why a couple of growlers uh couldn't have been used but i know what your answer is going to be frankly it's going to be it would have ruined the story and the tension so yeah they're not cool they're just not cool we would have won the fight without having to have the whole story man i mean it does hurt the whole surface to air missile death canyon if you've got a couple of growlers chugging chugging along it also would hurt the story if some of those tomahawks went to like i don't know the surface to air missile emplacements that they knew where they were

i don't know i was like what like well that was one of my nitpicks i'm like good job destroying the airfield um maybe we should have used some of those missiles on the missiles um destroying the airfield but leaving a completely uh operational f-14 fueled in arms in the hand yeah um i i did like the scene where rooster gets in the back of the f-14 and it's just totally bewildered about like what in the world am i looking at and he asked mav some question about how to do something and maverick goes i don't know man that's your dad's department well i thought that was that's perfect like that that is two seat pilots in a nutshell was like they'll be like hey man do this and you're like what are you talking about they're like i don't know it just sounds like something

you should be able to do back there i don't know man i love that the the you know there's lots of things that you can you can pick out like why why on earth were the two admirals on the carrier in their khakis like you know i look i don't know a lot of admirals why was a three-star administrative administrative commander uh over in another aor right leading an operational mission and you know admiral's gonna get on the boat and he's gonna be like oh thank god i can put my flight suit on you know what i mean um a lot of uh good conduct medals running around on uh on admirals um which you know is not impossible but it's improbable um just given the you know the career progression um that like a john john ham's character has probably not been in the the navy long enough

to have eight good conduct medals or whatever he had but you know whatever that you're we're used to seeing that sort of stuff on our um in in popular media costume designer probably looks at a list of ribbons that that someone could wear and says oh good conduct well this guy's an admiral he's i'm sure he's had good conduct for a long time they got a bulk discount right yeah yeah i don't know right maybe there's so funny i didn't notice any of that i just wasn't even looking at those ribbons no most people won't you know whatever who cares but at the same time um you know you you wonder about i'm i'm really fascinated by the the process of um you know just being involved in movie making uh from the military side i had a we we flew a jet

out to north island for the scene where all the jets are parked on the on the ramp at north island and they're doing the brief with john ham and all that stuff um we just about everybody flew an airplane out there and all the skippers were fighting over whose airplane was going to get parked where so that it could be you know front and center and a buddy of mine was talking to john ham who plays the air boss and was said something like well you know we you know when you're done speaking or when you leave the room everyone should come to attention and and stand there until you leave and john ham's explanation to him was like yeah but that would slow the story down you know we we've got we've got two hours to tell this movie and there's a lot of things that

we do in the military that it just it wouldn't it wouldn't make sense it would disrupt the flow of telling the story um to include those details and so whereas military viewers might view it and be like well that's not how that would go you have to remember they've got 120 minutes to get through the story and if they if they included every single weird thing that we do in the navy uh as accurately as possible they'd never get through that two hours because um you know nobody logs in to verify their uh dependency data before they go on this dangerous mission there's no you know someone should be standing up in front of them be like hey remember before we go on this top secret mission update your will and your contact information right you're

not going to include that stuff that's totally going to take you out of the story so i don't know i'm inclined to let a lot of that stuff fly by why does john ham have 12 good conduct medals and a naval academy ring on i don't know but whatever it's movies yeah i mean they i think you actually went a lot deeper than i did like the one that stuck out to me was rooster being all upset that he didn't get to go to the naval academy and then quote it set him back four years yeah like buddy let me tell you about the rotc program and how you could have done that like at the exact same time joined at the same time and had a normal college experience there's no one i've met who went to the naval academy who was excited about their time at the naval academy

so rooster like you probably had a much better time i'm just throwing it out there i mean that right that's something that they could have said you know maverick could have pulled his could have recommended against him going aviation and he went to the surface fleet for three years right like that makes a little more sense to military viewers of like oh he had to go to the surf he had to go be a SWO and he had to lat transfer and that took three years and then he had two years for flight training but it's it's it's shorthand it's easier to just be like oh he didn't go to the naval academy because of maverick most viewers aren't going to pick up on what that means and you know you just kind of got to let that stuff slide otherwise you're going to be mad the whole movie

and you don't got time for that when you're mach 10 and your hair's on fire all right and argue go ahead we can um you know forgive those small details because they got so much of the big stuff right you know just just like we were talking about ringing the bell in the bar you know that was that was just it was more important to get that right than to get ribbons right if that makes sense no no i'd like i 100 agree they got uh the atmospherics correct um for all that stuff um san diego is fighter town did they not want to do lamore as fighter town gram you think it's like how much time have you spent on the more when i saw that i i said that's the only time in the whole movie i got emotional was when they said san diego was fighter town usa um i get

why they did that i mean it's to connect it to the first movie you know what i mean they want to they want to yeah take maverick back to the same place where he was it's better for emotion you know in in in story universe maverick probably hated going to fallon when he was there um because he'd rather be uh you know cruising pacific beach or or something but so so from a story standpoint it makes more sense to take him back to where it all started blah blah blah so um but that that did make me a little sad um apparently they really built that bar on the on the beach and um uh at north island and everybody loved it so uh that's that's pretty cool obviously based kind of on the standard oak club ibar kind of setup which was pretty pretty cool to see but

i get why they had to go back to san diego yeah i mean the movie did make me miss san diego a lot san diego is where i was before i came here obviously we weren't able to take quite as much advantage of it uh with very small children and then followed immediately by covid but there's a lot of stuff there just the proximity to water and uh being out in the sun like that really made me miss san diego a lot um do you guys think ice and mav use emojis when they text no i don't think so i don't think that just text only just straight boomer it's probably just enough that they do text yeah i don't even i don't even think they would abbreviate like the word like where are you i don't even think they would do romeo uniform i

think they would spell out are you well you know and a question mark and a question mark yeah big I think, I think Iceman's kids have probably been on like a 20 year long fruitless journey to get them to try and, you know, relax, but I don't think it happens. I don't think it happens. I'm glad to see they text though. That's good for their, for their generation to be texting. That's, that's pretty good. Yeah. Sarah, how did you feel seeing, seeing Val Kilmer back in there? uh i was uh that was great to see him in there and you know obviously uh in a different capacity than previously but uh um i it actually took me back the the writer who came out to stennis back in 2015 one of the things he shared was like oh we're writing a part for val kilmer but you know back then they didn't really i don't think anybody knew what was wrong with him or you know that

they just knew he was sick and they didn't know he'd be able to participate so when in leading up to the the film coming out um in the production notes or whatever I said you know Val Kilmer is is participating it's like oh sweet you know they were able to make that happen and that was so it sounded like that was a goal for a long time um and they were really happy that it came to be and and that scene um yeah that was a nice scene there um reminiscent of the original film too when you know uh uh mav goes to get some mentorship from i'm forgetting the character's name but i'm scared viper yeah there we go viper um there were just those like nice moments of symmetry in the film that i thought were really well done um and it's amazing to me how tight the story was we got to

know so many characters and understand them like you said graham you know really um fleshed out more so than the first film um when all of a sudden you know in in like almost two hours into the film there's an ejection sequence and then you're on the ground i was like what is this gonna become like is there a whole nother hour of evading that i'm about to now watch i was very confused but they tie that up so nicely quickly i was that was just great well i think that's uh about all the time that we have for today did either of you two have anything else So you wanted to add anything we didn't touch on? Are we going to talk about call signs?

Oh, yes, we have time to talk about call signs. I'm sorry. So, like, first of all, I don't know which of you two wants to start. Graham, I know you have a whole list, but can you explain to the listener where call signs come from and what they're usually sort of meant to denote? Call signs exist to keep you humble. is the is the basics right they they pick out something about you that you you screwed up or uh some you you'll look weird you do something weird you say something weird you act weird you make a mistake and it's a permanent essentially a permanent reminder to like

keep your ego in check right but uh and it can range from from anything that you did or said or how you look or a movie character that you resemble or anything right and so the number one problem with movies like top gun is that the call signs are always way too cool they are way too cool in the air force they give each other cool call signs like blade and laser and and you know i don't know dingo or what dingo nope dingo's too dingo's not cool enough dingo sounds realistic yeah i think there's more of a navy call sign um in the air force you can get away with that stuff those guys they're they're way too concerned about how cool they sound in the navy and the marine corps it is designed to remind you every time you put your uniform on that you're sort of a loser

and there's always someone better than you right you will never you know you are reminded of some past mistake or something that someone thought was weird about you every time you put your patches on and and i think that that's an important part of our culture right that the one thing that the one line that drove me crazy was um they're in the bar and phoenix again shout out to my black aces she says yeah but who's gonna who's gonna teach us and that is a hundred percent the wrong attitude for naval aviation every one of us knows that there's somebody better than us out there all the time um you can always find someone who's a better pilot a better wizzo a better officer a better leader than you are and and you look out for them to learn from them um and call signs are

part of that culture of just reminding you you know you're never as good as you think you are yeah i forget uh who was tweeting about it but somebody described as like air force call signs are the way that you said like they're all meant to make the person give that person an aura and make them sound cool whereas navy and marine corps call signs are basically macro aggressions against who you are as a person designed to make you feel as small as humanly possible okay but graham i'd like i think you wrote down the call signs for which were which are most or least likely to see in the fleet so i'm going to turn it over to you here and just go on for a second let you let you go deke i want you to jump i want you to jump in if you think

i'm way out of line but this is like from least likely to be in the fleet to most likely to be in the fleet so number 15 out of the movie is maverick like you're never going to meet a maverick in the fleet uh 14 is ice man again it's not going to happen unless those call signs are applied ironically because nobody likes uh after that is uh that happens all the time yeah it does happen but it's it's because they're they're trying to correct your behavior if they're calling you maverice it's because the squadron thinks that you're a screw-up uh halo that's just two out there um okay so number 12 is phoenix now a couple of asterisks on phoenix if she went to an online college they would probably call her phoenix short for university of phoenix or if she went to the

naval academy and never shuts up about it they'll probably call her university of phoenix so that could jump that up into the in the line then payback way too cool cyclone but an asterisk on cyclone if the name cyclone comes from the fact that he trashed a hotel room in tokyo after a wild night in port cyclone goes way up the list uh after that is warlock fritz omaha and then harvard and yale that's a buddy call sign if if they're brand new guys and they won't talk about how they went to cal and stanford they might get called harvard and yale um but eventually the squadron's gonna be like ah that's too boring let's figure something else out all right we're at the top five so these are more realistic coyote hangman fanboy i think is your number three bob is

your number two and your number one most likely is rooster because i think we've probably met each met a rooster um call sign out there there's a couple of roosters running out there so that's most likely call sign and then bob fanboy hangman and coyote are your top five yeah i totally i'd agree with that yep do you have any possible backstories for any of those call signs uh fan fanboy i okay so fanboy would have to be like totally into something but yeah i would just think it would be somebody who's really into like marvel or something and well it never shuts up than that it would they'd be like oh yeah you're really into like you know some weird uh k-pop yeah yeah yeah yeah you listen to like you you have some offense to the k-pop fans

you're gonna be making fun of for it exactly you have some obscure pop song on your workout playlist and then next thing you know you're fanboy um and everyone's buying you backstreet boys uh posters or whatever to hang in your room hangman's a little bit tougher i uh i don't know that there's any explanation for that that is um publishable on this um on this podcast i don't know how many explicit tags you'd have to put on the podcast for this one i don't need the backstory yeah but let's just leave that one next uh coyote again i i can think of some explanations but none of them are acceptable i also think uh uh omaha might come out if you're if you're kind of a Peyton Manning looking dude, you know,

if you kind of show up and you look like Peyton Manning or you have, I mean, that's another possible big head call sign. If you're not, you could also be like Peyton Manning notable for having a very large cranium could be an Omaha guy. I can see that one. Those are some of the explanations I put out in addition to Cyclone and Phoenix. Those, those are my two favorite that I came up with. If you tear through a bar, a hotel room import somewhere, you could be a cyclone and if you just talk about where you went to school all the time you could

end up as a unit it'd be a university of phoenix but you could call her phoenix for short still sounds a little bit cool though yeah okay all right dq anything to add i wonder how the rooster uh uh call sign would have would have come to be because i would hope it'd be something more than just uh you know because his dad was goose but it you know there might be something there where a we knew your dad co level something like that you shall be i can see something like that happen i i could see that happen i think there's opportunities for shenanigans on a rooster call sign but it would it would um you know we we get into not safe for work territory pretty quickly that's the thing to remember with most you luck you lucked out with me and dq we're

we're pretty mild so far as some of that stuff goes yeah i would say you know what i would say rooster is probably that person who never shuts up in the morning you know and you're like you're too loud shut up please yeah oh keeps waking up his roommates on the on the boat oh that's that's not bad yeah makes a ton of noise and you know has a loud morning routine and you're just like you know oh man shut up man this is not gonna end well yeah no thank you graham thank you for having us close on this this is excellent this will give people something to hang in for as we talk about plot points. But unfortunately, that is all we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Graham Scarborough and Sarah Higgins. Sarah, where can we find you online and what's

your next project? So I'm exploring civilian life and it's pretty darn cool. I am at Business Executives for National Security, which is a nonprofit that's kind of blending the business world with national security issues. So just keeping a low profile otherwise and enjoying life. Graham, where can we find you and what are you working on? I write semi-frequently for the Naval Institute, so you can find a lot of my prior stuff there. I haven't written anything lately, but with this new change to all black tabs on the NWU Type 3, the Navy is baiting me into writing more about uniforms. So keep your eye on the Naval Institute blog and you may see my name there sometime soon. I look forward to it. Where do you stand on beards?

on beards i i love them let's do it let's do it officers in the 70s had beards am i more professional than them i don't think so in fact i know i'm not uh and they did just fine they won the cold war with beards they won we won the civil war with beards let's do it okay i'm sorry throw out there uh props to the uniform board because i just read yesterday that they got rid of pantyhose for women. I'm like, yes, never thought that would happen. And that is not a subject I thought I would bring up during this podcast. No, that's okay. That's a, that is a big win. And yeah, my, my uncle was a bearded Naval officer in the seventies. I have many pictures of him and his whites with a big fat beard, somehow able to still down a gas mask.

So I'm, I'm with you, Graham. I hope they change. Brits do it. The French do it. Giddy up. Let's go. Well, thank you both again for being here to listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. We'll be right back.