TAMPA – Three fighter pilots entered a bar on Wednesday night. This was especially the neon watering hole in the lobby of the AMC Veterans 24 multiplex. Dozer bought a portion of cold for Rock and Ratzo. They had met minutes earlier, but they had already had an easy conversation about where they had been and who they knew.
The occasion: an early screening of “Top Gun: Maverick”, the recent summer blockbuster reviving Tom Cruise as the most impudent Navy pilot ever seen on screen, 36 years after the original “Top Gun” made him the biggest movie star on earth . These boys were waiting for that day.
“Just looking at excerpts online, I found things about flying maneuvers that are technically more correct than the first movie. It’s like “This guy really makes Split-S,” Brandon told Dozer Sellers, a neat, 46-year-old salesman for a technology company. He wore a custom-made Bremont watch for his squadron, and he had a bright face that looked clean, even with a beard.
Chris Rock Petrok had a quarterback jaw and looked at least a decade younger than his 51 years. “I will say without shame that I was part of the Top Gun generation,” he said. He had six days left in active service, but had just begun civilian work with a defense contractor. He was in high school during the premiere of the film. “For me, he was a driver who went to the Naval Academy.
Mike Ratzo Cariello, a 61-year-old American Airlines pilot, had his hair cut one by one with probing eyes. He had brought his TOPGUN business card. “I was at Flight School in Beaville, Texas when he came out. Yes, it was a big deal. “
All three flew F / A-18 fighters such as those in the new movie, Dozer and Rock with the US Navy, Ratso with the US Marines. Rock graduated from the elite military program Strike Fighter Tactics, known as TOPGUN, in 2000. Ratso went through TOPGUN in the early 1990s and later returned to teach. He was there for the last class in San Diego, where both films are being developed. Dozer was not a TOPGUN, but an F / A-18 pilot instructor. Everyone lives here now.
Left fighter pilots Mike “Ratzo” Carrielo, Brandon “Dozer” Sellers and Chris “Rock” Petrok. [ Mike “Ratso” Cariello, Brandon “Dozer” Sellers and Chris “Rock” Petrock ]
In the dark of the audience, Cruise’s Maverick and Miles Teller’s Rooster orientated themselves in their rocky connection and their dangerous mission to destroy a nuclear facility in an unnamed desert nation. Dozer leaned back and wrote down what he had done.
The language of communications is great. Attack with a dagger. No, don’t ride the elevator with your jet.
When an extra on the bar scene thanked Maverick for buying each round (an epithet for the sin of putting his phone on the bar), Dozer said aloud, “I know this man.”
Are you planning your weekend?
Subscribe to our free newsletter Top 5 things to do
Every Thursday we will provide ideas for going out, staying at home or spending time outdoors.
You are all registered!
Want more of our free weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s start.
Explore all your options
Rock watched Rooster’s Star Wars fly through screen canyons and recognized a real Navy training course. As the credits revolved, Cariello counted the names he knew.
All three men smiled as they stepped back into the foyer.
“I almost felt my hands move, as if I wanted to grab the controls.
“How many fucking learning violations can you fit in one movie?”
None of these boys would fly again.
Laugh. They walked through the parking lot to another bar and another courtyard tour. Drinks were the focal point of both films. Realistic?
Definitely. You are away from your family, in an isolated place, Ratzo said. Many connections take place in the bar.
What about speed? Is there really … a need?
“My wife absolutely hates the way I drive,” Dozer said.
Ratso estimated that the film depicts “pulling the Gs” and shows a character who loses consciousness due to intense gravitational force during the ascent. This type of pressure physically pushes blood out of the brain. “We’ve all lost friends who are G-locked, unfortunately,” he said. The men nodded.
Flying this time was much more realistic, they agreed, probably because the actors were filmed in real fighter jets (although they didn’t control them). The jargon was almost in place.
Of course, there were criticisms: turns during climbs that would tear apart the F / A-18, pilots flying with their masks off, and a seemingly endless supply of fuel. Maverick himself would not only be disliked, but arrested.
And they didn’t keep memories of volleyball or beach soccer, but Tom Cruise wearing jeans. Instead, they recalled a pilot game called crud, which included pool tables and lots of elbows, or activities with higher adrenaline such as rafting and downhill skiing. Even golf, which was agreed to be loved by fighter pilots, has always been in intense competition.
During the aviator’s career, every aspect of every flight from takeoff to landing is evaluated and each name is ranked daily on a board in the finished room that everyone can see. “From the moment you get to flight school, it’s all competition,” Dozer said. Another moment about the realism of “Top Gun”.
Less authentic, Rock said, are call signs. Everyone in Top Gun: Maverick has a cool guy like Phoenix, Coyote and Hangman. “In fact, it’s not even close. … It is usually related to some nonsense you have done. In fact, the thing that locks into the call sign is if the person doesn’t like it. “
“That’s right,” Dozer said. “There aren’t a bunch of Mavericks flying around.”
“I actually knew a real Iceman,” Rock said, nodding at Val Kilmer’s character.
“Really?” said Dozer. “Did he give it to himself?”
The Dozer was won overnight in the Pacific, including a bottle of whiskey and a bulldozer. There is a story, “but I do not want to shame the nation of Japan in any way, form or form.”
In “Top Gun: Maverick”, Cruz calls his crack squadron the best in the world in high-altitude bombing, but complains about their inexperience in dog fighting. That, Dozer said, tells the true story of modern air combat.
He, of course, trained in air-to-air combat, but never took part in it during his previous deployment from 2001 to 2004. The US Navy’s F / A-18 shot down a single Syrian Su-22 in 2017 marking the first American air-to-air killing in decades, but the last time American fighters really did what is seen in Top Gun was Desert Storm.
Dozer thought about it, and for the first time all night he seemed a little embarrassed about what he meant. “Is it great to be able to travel 35,000 feet, drink from your water bottle, drop things with zero threat?” Sure. But maybe you wanted a little opposition? I do not know. It’s very easy to say that sitting here in 1 G. “
The night weakened. Plans were made to have a drink sometime. It turned out that everyone lives in the same neighborhood. Dozer had a ticket to see Maverick again in a week. Ratzo had one two days later.
Add Comment