Discuss Top Gun: Maverick
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Who was the enemy country?
posted by Reb_BrownSTAFFMOD on June 5, 2022 at 9:09 PM
The movie (wisely?) decided to keep the identity of the enemy nation obscured, but being a geography, political, and history geek, I wanted to try and figure out who the bad guys were supposed to represent. With the primary reason for the main target being a uranium enrichment facility, I figured "oh, it's supposed to be Iran". However there are some issues with this - Iran would not have a snowy and tree-lined coastline unless the planes were flying in from the north. I find that very unlikely as that'd mean they'd have gone over Russian, Kazazk, or Azeri airspace and the maps show the planes as going straight from the carrier over the water toward the coastline in a North-East manner. Also I don't think that the Iranian air force has much in the way of "fifth generational fighters" but certainly has plenty of old leftover American ordinance such as the F14.
The only other candidates would be Russia, China, and North Korea, but all those beg the question of why the U.S. would care that they're enriching uranium (because they all have plenty already), and none of them would have any old American fighters in their air forces.
My assumption then was that the WRITER of the movie envisioned that the enemy was indeed Iran, but the Director and Production Designer thought it would be more interesting to vary up the geography and make things set in a snowy forest (contrasting from the earlier training sequences) and just made the enemy troops and planes indistinct.
Anyone else have thoughts on this? I'm a little frustrated by both Top Gun movies as they are 100% unconcerned with the geopolitical implications of the dogfights they both depict.
Reply by Innovator
on June 11, 2022 at 7:15 PM
They did the same thing with the first Top Gun movie, in that they never named the country of origin of the planes they fought. Even the MIG-28s they faced were fictional planes (and were just F-5s painted black).
Reply by DRDMovieMusings
on July 11, 2022 at 11:05 PM
Yes, I think it's smart business for the producers. Not naming any country as "the bad guys" avoids banning release, increases global revenue streams.
Fair enough.
If you're right, I think it's because they were making a fictitious feel-good movie and didn't want to any real-world geopolitical implications to alienate a global fan base. It's not a documentary, nor a docudrama, or an expose, or anything with a serious edge like, say, Syriana, Traitor, or movies of such.
Having mentioned those titles, consider these ROI numbers:
Syriana paid $1.88 revenue for each budget dollar
Traitor paid $1.07
Top Gun: Maverick, thus far, has paid $6.62
Top Gun paid $23.79
Generally speaking, avoiding geopolitical implications and just having fun pays more.
Don't get me wrong, making money on a movie with geopolitical implications can be done:
But, note that, even though these movies (except Michael Clayton) all have showcase, feature crazy action and stunts, they also name real countries (and not even as bad guys in every case) and attempt to make the espionage seem realer than Top Gun, and they don't generate anywhere near the average profit that the Top Gun franchise's two installments have together paid back - $8.02
Reminds me of a great quote from the movie The Player - "We're trying to make a movie, not a film"!
Reply by Karakenio
on August 20, 2022 at 3:04 PM
Hey mate, I would love to hear more about this. Nice info you got there. Where could I check that? thx
Reply by DRDMovieMusings
on August 20, 2022 at 3:56 PM
Thanks!
It's in Excel (I'm not a programmer). I try to make comments throughout TMDb in order to share some of my findings, the numbers, with movies that I've managed to pull in. If you have any particular movies or franchises that you want data on, let me know!
It's a shame we can't post images in TMDb threads - sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words!
I do have a blog, just haven't gotten around to posting there of late. That could be a place to add more media to posts on interesting topics.
Reply by Karakenio
on August 20, 2022 at 4:06 PM
What's your blog? Heres's mine: https://karakenio.wordpress.com
Is in spanish, but you might dig this one: https://karakenio.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/las-mejores-peliculas-de-los-ultimos-15-anos/
You could use Google Spreadsheet, as I do, if you want to share some data. Maybe you could do a blog just for that kind of info, like what you commented up there, that was interesting.
Reply by DRDMovieMusings
on August 20, 2022 at 4:58 PM
http://drdmoviemusings.blogspot.com/?m=1
Nice!
Interesting!
If you have any requests, tag me in your comments. :-)
Reply by DRDMovieMusings
on September 2, 2022 at 8:05 PM
Here's the official position, which we were able to correctly derive on our own anyway...
https://screenrant.com/top-gun-maverick-enemy-identity-who-director-response/#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16621633487596&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fscreenrant.com%2Ftop-gun-maverick-enemy-identity-who-director-response%2F
Reply by CheekyMonkey
on September 7, 2022 at 4:19 AM
It's clearly Russia, imo
Reply by Reb_Brown
on September 7, 2022 at 2:36 PM
well the counter to that would be why would the USA need to be stopping them from refining Uranium (seeing as Russia already has plenty) along with why would they have old F-14's in service? Only Iran fits those two parameters (though I am pretty sure Iran has no Mi-24 Hind helicopters).
Reply by DRDMovieMusings
on September 7, 2022 at 4:53 PM
Here's a juicy quote from the director in the article to which I linked above, saying basically what we reasoned out here amongst ourselves:
"While speaking with The New York Times, Kosinski was asked who the enemy in Top Gun: Maverick was meant to be. The director stated that they kept the idea of a faceless, unidentified enemy from the first film, which allowed them to make a fun action movie without getting bogged down in politics. While Kosinski never mentions what country the enemy hails from, he does state that it almost allowed the film to feel like an alternate reality. Check out Kosinski's comments on the enemies from Top Gun: Maverick below:
"We had that great guidance from the first movie — it’s this faceless, nameless bad guy, which is perfect because, again, we didn’t want to make a movie about politics. You can’t really connect it to any real-world enemies. The mirrored, masked pilots also contribute to this feeling of this being a little bit in an alternate reality. That was a fun exercise as a director, to create a non-traceable enemy."
In other words, no point speculating - they very deliberately, intentionally did not specify the enemy's identity.