The copyright cops will be on the alert.

Saw an interview with the guy who was the consultant on the original Top Gun. He was asked how realistic TG2 was, and he said the same thing he says he told people about the original – They’re movies, not documentaries.

I feel like there was ALOT of pointless plot threads in TG2. Nonetheless, I think it had one of the most engaging third acts of any action movie I’ve ever seen and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

But yeah, it wasn’t super worried about realism.

Good job.

Dayum! He di-i-i-ies?! Well that sucks.

Does that plane actually exist? Is it the Stealth Bomber or a newer plane?

I do hafta say though, at 57 he’s still hot! and in shape! whewww that’s his age when he filmed it

Good job, btw!

@smudges – The plane depicted is a SCRAM jet, and that technology definitely exists. The performance and nature of the movie’s Darkstar is almost certainly based on NASA and DARPA programs using the technology which achiever speeds right around Mach 10 for brief moments..

The look of the jet also feels very SR-71 inspired and they are working on an SR-72, a successor to the SR-71 that reportedly will reach Mach 6 and use scramjet technology. You’ll note that’s considerably slower than the prototype scramjets. That’s to be expected since the production model isn’t just a research prototype.

I question whether a successor to SR-71 is a good idea given that multiple countries are claiming to have hypersonic missiles, the speeds of which have estimates between 5 and 10 times the speed of sound. And while Russia is almost certainly exaggerating it’s achievements (they have a long history of doing just that), I believe China’s claim.

But more relevantly, I felt this entire story arc added nothing to the narrative. Why does Maverick have to still be acting like a 20 year old when he’s 60? That story angle took alot of time and… kind of makes Maverick feel a bit one dimensional. It was a main story element in the original, but it felt out of place here. One of many substories that I felt added little to the movie.

Great! Very well done. I’d like to see old 1950s and 60s monster movies that way. It would save so much time.
By the way, in real life there would be no reason to put a meat sack inside such an airplane. The plane would fly autonomously during the test mission and would be transmitting data continuously to base. It would certainly not need a person to push the throttle lever forward.

Wow. So did I just see the whole movie in a nutshell?

Great work. Love it!

@Entropy Thank you for that explanation!

@Dutchess_III No, you saw a “what would really happen” edit. The rest of the published film has an elaborate drama about preparing to do the strike you saw at the end, except the writers pretend they can’t just use cruise missiles as shown in the edit you saw. No, they need to basically get legendary veteran Luke Skywalker to train some younger pilots to fly a near-impossible attack run in jets, and play volleyball on a beach (some not wearing shirts), and there’s various drama related to the characters from the original film. (And . . . it’s actually quite well done.)