Top Gun

"Top Gun" (Widescreen 2-disc Special Collector's Edition)

Reviewer: Ben Kenber

Studio: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action/Drama

Special Features: Commentary with Jerry Bruckheimer, Tony Scott, Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. (the screenwriters), & Naval Experts. 4 music videos: Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone," Berlin "Take My Breath Away," Loverboy "Heaven In Your Eyes," Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens "Top Gun Anthem." TV Spots, Danger Zone: The Making of Top Gun (6-part documentary), multi-angle storyboards with optional commentary by Director Tony Scott, behind the scenes featurettes, survival training featurettes, Tom Cruise interviews, production photography.

"Top Gun" was the start of a lot of things for the people involved in it. It certified Tom Cruise as a major movie star, it turned producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer into a formidable team who produced the first of several major hit movies with this one, and it was the first big movie for a lot of other actors who we recognize more these days: Anthony Edwards ("ER"), Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan, Michael Ironside, Rick Rossovich, and Tim Robbins among others. It also initiated a Simpson/Bruckheimer formula of the cocky hero who is a hot shot who ends up getting broken down by a horrible tragedy, but later finds what a great person he is and saves the day by the end of the movie. This formula has been used and abused over and over by many producers, and Simpson & Bruckheimer ended up bringing this formula along with Tom Cruise into "Days of Thunder." That film quickly came to be known as "Top Gun with wheels."