Top Gun features a fictitious set of pilot rankings and trophies prominently in its plot, but why did the movie add this made-up detail to the real-life flight school? Released in 1986, Top Gun was a huge hi that made an overnight star of leading man Tom Cruise. Directed by action cinema legend Tony Scott, Top Gun was the propulsive tale of Maverick, a high-flying test pilot with a dangerous tendency to disregard the rules in favor of seeking potentially lethal thrills.

Top Gun was a blockbuster success thanks to its fun, fast-paced tone and engaging story, as well as the beautiful high-contrast visuals. However, to make a story set in the world of the Air Force and Navy fun for casual cinemagoers, the filmmakers did need to twist the truth in some vital areas. Top Gun may be a beloved classic, but what the movie is not is an accurate depiction of life in the real-life institution in which it’s set.

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Throughout the movie’s production, keeping Top Gun fun was more of a concern than accuracy to real-life Navy protocol. For example, the Navy offered Tony Scott access to their classrooms for filming according to a WBUR retrospective, only for the filmmaker to shoot in an air hangar instead as it looked more dramatic and impressive. In another case, early on in the action of Top Gun, it is established the pilots are vying for all-important rankings and trophies, but no such commendations exist in TOPGUN. It’s a pass-fail institution that doesn’t rank pilots, so why was this detail added in the movie’s version of events? It’s so that Top Gun could ape the feeling of an inspirational sports movie like the then-recent hit The Karate Kid.

To avoid being bogged down by the grim reality of military service, Top Gun constantly added touches like the fictional pilot rankings to make life as a test pilot look more thrilling than boring. Real pilots would risk being discharged if they “buzzed the tower,” an impressive but potentially lethal stunt that the denizens of Top Gun enact with impunity throughout the movie. This relaxed attitude toward the truth let the film turn the often difficult and unglamorous work of life in the Navy into an inspirational story more akin to Rocky than Platoon.

This focus on the fun tone also likely explains why the country of origin of the film’s barely-glimpsed villains is never properly disclosed. As one of Top Gun’s potential directors John Carpenter noted, an American-Russian dogfight in the middle of the Cold War would have likely led to World War III, a brutal reality Scott’s film had no interest in dwelling on. Thus, viewers got trophy rooms that don’t exist for the same reason they got MiG-28s manned by enemy combatants from an unknown country – because the glamorous facade was more important than reality for Top Gun.

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  • Top Gun: Maverick/Top Gun 2 (2022)Release date: May 27, 2022
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Cathal Gunning
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Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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