Toppest Gun

The funniest line in Hot Shots, the unnecessary Top Gun spoof, comes when a bunch of pilots climb into their jets for a training session and one of them yells "Come on guys, let's see who's the best!" It's the way he says it that kills me. You could have had just that one scene and it would have effectively mocked Top Gun all that it needed to be mocked. I mean, all it needed to be mocked other than the now well-recognized fact that it was far ahead of its time in terms of mainstream homosexual eroticism.



I think I know a generation of Republican congressmen who grew up watching that movie...you know, for the fight scenes...yeah...the fight scenes. Get excited, closeted self-haters, because MTV.com recently spoke with suddenly struggling super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Prince of Persia flopped, Confessions of a Shopaholic flopped, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is just sitting there, waiting to flop). He more or less said that if someone can come up with a reasonable way to do it, there's nothing stopping a Top Gun 2. Considering that Knight and Day was supposed to be the final determining factor of whether or not Tommy boy got his Mission Impossible 4 greenlit (which I so, so, so badly hope happens because I loved the last one and I can't wait to see Brad Bird directing actual humans), and considering it semi-flopped, there's reason to believe the time may be perfect for the two flopping floppers to reunite and correct their floppage. I have to say, I'd be all in favor of a Top Gun 2 (and not just to see how far they could take the volleyball scene in the modern era). The effects have come so far, and it's not like the story was so brilliant, the characters so endearing to us, that we can't imagine sullying them by bringing them back. I say do it. I say Maverick redeems himself and gets his rugged, manly game of topless volleyball on to once more save us all!

Maybe these robots will be testicle free?

When I first read the headline from Variety, "Bruckheimer gears up for 'War'", I was really proud. I mean, Jerry Bruckheimer has a lot of money and is really old and yet he still feels so passionately about the freedom of this country (which has afforded him the right to make largely socially irresponsible films and profit greatly from them) that he is willing to serve in our armed forces. Then I realized that the author of the press release had just cleverly disguised the fact that the new movie that Bruckheimer is producing is based on the graphic novel "World War Robot," which is about the struggle of oppressed children in a third-world country who find the strength within themselves to throw off the shackles of their tormentors and run to freedom. I'm kidding, it's about robots and humans fighting one another (sometimes even on the Moon and on Mars). Now, I know what you're thinking: Ryan, didn't we already endure a savage wet willy in the form of the robot opus Transformers 2: Racism Is Almost As Funny As Robots With Balls. Yes, yes we did. But Bruckheimer believes he can do better than that, as racist robots with balls have not yet appeared on Mars. The movie has not yet had a writer assigned to it, but I'm positive that there is a 2nd grader being tasked for the job as we speak. On a personal note, having battled through a terrible ordeal against the growing robot army this week (in the form of a blog server that was a total son of a bitch), I find the subject nothing to glorify or laugh at. When the robots come for us, and trust me they will come for us, we will not be able to turn to Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer to save us all, as they will be the first casualties of war.