Oh yeah I know it’s just a movie, but I still wonder why?

What fun would that be? I saw the movie. I liked it.

I liked it to @chyna but still wonder why not throw a few Tomahawks at the SAM sites?

They probably wanted to build excitement and extra danger for the heroes of the story. “Will they make it out okay?” and stuff like that, ya know :)

Wild guess. The SAMs are smaller and harder to hit targets. A miss would make it more difficult for the team to reach the bombing site.

They assumed that it was going to be a chick flick & we wouldn’t notice. We’d be looking at the eye candy & NOT the missiles!!!

^And I was!

^^ I haven’t seen it yet; but, that was my complete plan!!! ;-}
Damnit @SQUEEKY2 Now I’ll be looking at those freakin missiles!!!
IF I miss one rippling muscle or one cute tush, I WILL SUE!!! HA

I did warn people of spoilers!
And don’t worry it is a good show!

No offense, I didn’t care IF you spoiled the storyline; however I draw the line at spoiling my eye candy!!! :-{ At my age, it is the ONLY excitement that I get!!! ; -]

Oh stop with the “Eye candy” people.

Okay, then let’s go with “Eye emetics”: how about tRump, Nude Gangreen, and the Rush Limbarfer zombie? ;p

That’s a good question. I would say that they could have, and probably would, if they knew exactly where all of them were.

They probably also would have got Cyber Command to hack their systems, as happened in the 2007 Israeli attack on the enricher in Syria.

And/or, just send cruise missiles to take out the enricher directly.

And/or use B-2’s that fly higher than SAMs can generally reach, and hit it with guided bombs.

i.e. It’s a good film, vastly better than most recent Hollywood action films (but that’s not saying much, but still, it’s good). But in many ways, it’s not very realistic. (In a few ways, it’s not utterly unrealistic . . . I am a super-stickler, and I was able to suspend enough disbelief while watching to immerse myself and have a good time, which I think is saying a lot, considering my reactions to so many other films.)

Oh, get over your entitled self!!!

I enjoyed the movie a lot. More than the original. I even thought the premise was solid, but even some of the best movies have plot holes. A quick line about how the SAMs are too small/difficult to hit (as mentioned above) would have covered it.

No, but I have seen videos of a fighter pilot reviewing the film’s accuracy:
https://www.youtube.com/c/CWLemoine/videos
Needless to say, the film is very, very inaccurate.

Saw it. Started out kind of odd but ramped up nicely by mid movie.
The mission was completely plausible. F-35’s could have been used to take out the SAM’s followed up by F/A-18 taking out the plant.
It was a Hollywood mission. I also didn’t see any candy as others have pointed out.

^When they were playing football on the beach. Shirtless.

It could have ended 10–15 minutes earlier. We didn’t need to resolve all the love story crap.

Even though it was jingoistic I thought it was terrific.

@chyna The football scene was just an homage to the volleyball scene of the original movie.

It’s not going into the annals of Great Movies but it’s better than the original and a helluvalotta fun.

@ragingloli…that video was hilarious!

@Dutchess_III
Which one? There are several.

I thought it was a covert mission so the target was in plain sight. That’s the only reason why they wouldn’t take the risk of alerting the enemy.

My husband gets very upset when I dissect movies with unrealistic plots, so thanks for this Question. :)

I saw no eye candy either.

This one

You know that is a link to the channel, not any particular video?

Not yet, may not get to. My wife doesn’t like the trailers of it and doesn’t care about seeing it. And I don’t care for going to the movies alone. B O R I N G. Maybe when it comes out on video I can check it out from Red Box.

So I just watched it, and it was okay-ish.
The flying scenes were fun enough, but everything else in between was badly written, cliché nonsense with paper thin characters that I could have done without.
And yeah, that mission was horribly contrived.
Since they are already bombing the airfield as a prelude to the attack, there was no reason to not also take out the SAM sites, and send in fighters as an escort to fend off any enemy aircraft, while the bombing team leasurely does its job unimpeded.
Typical Hollywood action schlock that is somehow hailed as the saviour of cinemas.

Also, the whole thing was literally just a complete ripoff of the Star Wars trench run, complete with the obligatory “shoot a missile into the narrow exhaust port”, but to not be completely unoriginal, make them shoot two missiles into the exhaust port.

I mean, if you REALLY want to criticize, the real question is: why wouldn’t you send drones or stealth aircraft to do this job? IIRC they gave a reason in the movie (I forget already) but I found it unsatisfactory. You could also send large numbers of cruise missiles to saturate the air defense blanket.

Ultimately though, it’s a pretty good movie. It’s probably the best third act of an action movie you’ll ever see, and they used the training bits to prepare the audience for that third act. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of random short cut together clips of airplanes. But the training gives the audience the context to string them together in a narrative.

My problem with the movie though is that I thought the character stories were all weak. The Rooster subplot was a great idea, but poorly executed and the actor they chose for Rooster did a poor job. We should have spent more time on this and gotten a better actor for the role…and not given him that silly moustache.

We wasted time on a romantic subplot that felt shoe-horned into the movie (though to be fair, the original’s romance subplot was also shoe-horned). The prologue with the speed test was a pointless waste of time. The Iceman callback was classy….but did it really add anything to the narrative? And does having Maverick as a 60 year old teenager who still disrespects authority really make any sense?

I think these subplots all should have been dumped except Rooster. We should have given that more time to breathe and added something where Mav became a family man and maybe became too cushy…lost his edge. And suddenly he need to rediscover it because of Rooster.

I’d also have liked more time given to the random assortment of pilots we barely met. Why not make me care about some of them as they die on the mission? They’re just cardboard cutouts.

Also…I think mav should have died. Maybe not as early as the SAM attack, when he got shot down, but later while fighting the 5th gens. But that moment when Maverick SEEMED to have died…even though I kind of knew they wouldn’t have the balls to do it…that was emotional A.F. Imagine that sacrifice, but while battling the 5th gen fighters. In F-18 super hornets, not in the tomcats. The entire tomcat thing…yeah, okay, I get why that was fan service, but honestly….not necessary and kind of undermined the realism.

But overall, good movie with an OUTSTANDING third act.

I watched it again last night, and I reiterate that they could have ended it 10 minutes earlier by getting rid of the Jennifer Connelly love story ‘fly away with me’ part.

And stealaing the F-14 piece – utter crap.

The movie could have ended 10 minutes after it started.
Maverick dies when he crashes the Mach 10 plane, and the ship launches its Tomahawk salvo to destroy the nuclear facility.

Shoulda coulda woulda. Fans loved and still love the original for its testosterone-fueled dog-fights. With Tom Cruise as the biggest testosterone sprayer inside those flying dragon-machines. Absolutely nothing has changed. Dramatic stories and logical narratives…what’s that? Lol

^^ Thank you…that was my original point!!!

Now remember I DID LIKE THE MOVIE ,but still wondered why they didn’t. the a few Tomahawks at the SAM sites that’s all.

Another piece of interesting trivia:
The only country that the F14 was ever exported to, was Iran in 1976.
In case you were wondering which unnamed country they were attacking in the film.

Thanks @ragingloli but does Iran have winter?
There was snow on the ground when Mavrick got shot down.

@SQUEEKY2
In certain regions, yes.

@chyna It did nothing for me.

I made an edited version of how I think the movie should have gone:
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/765089389

Not opening that Rraggy!

@Dutchess_III
It is totally safe, and only uses footage from the film!