“Maverick,” my OLDER daughter, AND ME

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As some of you know, during the dog days of the Covid lockdown, my older daughter, Coach Lyle, gifted me one of the best presents I've ever received. She created the Daddy/Lyle Movie Club on a poster board and asked to watch, with me, the 20 most influential movies of my life.

The requirements were nothing too scary (no Jaws), nothing too intense (Saving Private Ryan) and nothing too adult themed, because, yuck.

So off we went.

Over six months in between her trips and while she worked at the gyms, we took in the likes of The Matrix, Swingers, Die Hard, and Usual Suspects.

We hit movies across different decades of my life, and of course it brought back lots of memories.

One night, we watched (Lyle) / rewatched (me) Top Gun.

I was curious as to how she would respond to the cheesiness factor.

She loved it, which surprised me.

Fast forward to when the first Maverick trailer came out almost two years ago, and I have to admit, I was pumped.

Lyle was pumped, too.

Allison, Lyle, and I finally went to see it on Friday.

It didn't disappoint.

I literally had goosebumps the entire movie and kept shoving my arm under their noses to show them, which, I’m sure, was fun for them.

As we drove home, I wrestled with the question of why I had loved it so much.

Of course, it brought back into focus all of the memories of 1986, and it also made me feel good about being middle-aged and still capable.

But there was something more.

The connection of having my kid and wife with me, maybe? The in-theater experience of a couple hours of escapism, which doesn't necessarily happen on the living room couch?

As I thought about it more and more, I kept coming back to wondering why Lyle enjoyed it so much. Well, since she's back eating our food and getting her laundry done, I gave her a summer homework assignment.

Lyle: Why did you like this movie when its prequel was made over thirty years ago? Here’s what she had to say:

“When my dad asked me to write about why I loved Top Gun so much, I had to take some time to pinpoint just exactly what it was about the movie that was so alluring, and in the end, I’ve decided that it was a combination of factors.

First, because of my background as an actor and my fascination with how movies are made, knowing that all of the stunts and flights were actually done by the actors made drew me in much more than I would have been drawn in had those scenes been made solely with CGI. In fact, on the way to the movie, my dad and I volleyed random facts about the Top Gun movie-making process. He wondered how they would incorporate Iceman’s character since Val Kilmer’s throat cancer took his voice, while I talked about how Monica Barbaro (Phoenix) trained as a dancer at NYU, which, in turn, helped her to train for the role.

Another reason I loved the movie as much as I did relates back to my pandemic-induced gap year movie-watching experience. As my dad mentioned, we ran through a lifetime of movies throughout my gap year, which brought us together in a time when I didn’t have as much social connection as I would have liked. Bonding with my dad over movies he loved was a huge positive for me, and the whole Maverick experience was a sort of continuation of that bond. We were totally geeking out throughout the entire movie, and occasionally I would look over and see my dad in awe of Tom Cruise’s Ninja 1000 or the dangerous flight sequences set to an endlessly inspiring soundtracks, and I could almost picture him at around my age, seeing the original Top Gun for the first time. In short, I got stoked about this movie, because it was a way for my dad and me to connect, and that was reminiscent of some bright times during a relatively tough year.

And then there’s the fact that Top Gun is just a good movie. It chronicles a group of people striving to reach a common goal, with funny quips, a romantic side plot, a slapping soundtrack, and a slightly homoerotic, oily football beach scene for those who like that kind of thing. It prompted a wide range of emotions and left me satisfied at the end, complete with the mirror image of the famous handshake—once between Maverick and Iceman, and now between Rooster and Hangman.

As it turns out, I’m not the only young person to love this movie. As one example, the brothers of a fraternity at my school rented out an entire theater, just so they (and their guests) could watch the movie in their own fashion, and they loved it! I didn’t attend that showing, because I had a pending date with my dad to watch it with him, first.

Just because, I’ll leave you all with one of my dad’s favorite quotes from the original movie: “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.” Fitting for a guy who owns a gym.