Boy Movies #1

An introduction, and an ode to Top Gun: Maverick

Hello and welcome to the inaugural issue of Boy Movies, a space where I will finally make good on something I’ve been threatening to do for years and go long on one of my favorite topics of all time: movies for boys.

Until now, my thoughts on boy movies have lived almost exclusively in silly tweets and pithy, semi-frequent “reviews” on Letterboxd, a platform I am addicted to. While Letterboxd is good for many things (reminding me of the fact that I have logged twenty Zac Efron films, for example), I feel a sense of crushing humiliation every time I make a post that exceeds ten words, or, god forbid, verges on earnestness. But I am long-winded by nature, and these thoughts must go somewhere, and I’ve always dreamed of running a small business that, fingers crossed, someday gets bought out by Disney, so here we are.

At the urging of my unpaid producer and close personal colleague Sarah¹, I decided to see how far I could take a goofy idea: What if I, a girlie, watched boy movies and wrote about them through the lens of understanding that they were made with absolutely zero interest in catering to my viewing experience? What discoveries could be made? Could I learn anything about this subsection of film that I have cherished and privately examined for so long? I’m going to attempt to answer those questions, and hopefully more, here.

As a concept, “boy movies” is inherently thorny, which is in part why it appeals to me. Classifying a work of art as “for boys” is, in my opinion, one of the funniest things a person can do, because it’s nonsense. The readers of Boy Movies are, I’m aware, an esteemed group of great intelligence, and I know we all understand that anyone can derive any kind of meaning from anything; in my circle, The Social Network is a formative text on gay betrayal, but to my 55-year-old mother, it is simply a movie about how bad the Facebook guy sucks. People who aren’t men can get just as much out of a boy movie as men can get out of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! (A girl movie if there ever was one.) But none of that changes the fact that such distinctions do exist, and that Michael Bay is still making films. (Boy Movies is a pro-Ambulance organization, by the way.)

I can’t help who I am, and who I am is a person fascinated by that binary. For a while, I even saw it as a challenge. I only started watching the Fast and Furious series on a dare with myself, a sinister mindset based around the question of, “Wouldn’t it be subversive if a woman watched these movies?” No, it wouldn’t. I’m not Olivia Wilde, and I have no desire to submerge myself in the river of 2015 feminism she seems eternally doomed to float around in. It’s not interesting or disinteresting to be a non-boy who watches boy movies, though I think there is something to be said about perceived levels of intelligence and quality, and how those factors affect the way we view certain pieces of pop culture. Where there’s a boy movie, there’s a boy TV show, a boy song, a boy book. Where there’s boy media, there are the rest of us trying to make sense of it.

Which begs the question central to this newsletter: What constitutes a boy movie? It’s hard to say. A boy movie is a movie about and intended for boys, traditionally heterosexual and cisgender. A boy movie pulses with testosterone. A boy movie should spotlight sweaty eight packs, unless it’s spotlighting the powers of the male brain. Boy movies can have explosions, but they may also simmer with masculine brooding. In a boy movie, a boy might literally go to war, or he might be at war with himself — equally as harrowing. A boy movie is a movie that a boy in your life may have, at one point, emphatically described as the fucking best. A boy movie may inspire feelings of, “Huh? What? That was it?” in anyone who does not identify as a boy. A boy movie is in the eye of the beholder, but (not to be a cop) there are right and wrong answers.

An easy one is [fill in the blank with literally any Marvel movie here], but I sort of reject that. Boys love Marvel, I would never deny such a fact (I see too many men on the cursed Hinge app expressing their reverence for the MCU to possibly deny it), but they’re also the closest things we currently have to monoculture. Those movies have become so soulless and devoid of any real perspective that, in effort to be for everyone, they end up being for no one. This is not in the spirit of Boy Movies, which in my wildest dreams will feel cerebral, but never cynical.

And that brings us to Top Gun: Maverick.

I am good, Rooster

While discussing the inception of this newsletter with the aforementioned Sarah, she mentioned that I should write about Top Gun: Maverick for the Boy Movies debut. I recently saw it for the second time in the most heinous manner possible: the Regal Cinemas experience known as ScreenX. I won’t get into it here, and I could honestly start a spin-off newsletter about all the cuckoo experiences I’ve had at various Regal theaters (I’m an AMC girl at heart — if I don’t see Nicole Kidman before a movie, I’m not living, mama!!!), but what I will say is that even such a distractingly ugly feature could not ruin Maverick for me. I hooted, I hollered, I laughed, I cried, I cheered. I expect the Church of Scientology’s recruiting department to reach out any day now, and I may just answer the call. Oh baby, I love Top Gun: Maverick.

This development has shocked, alienated, and even upset some of my loved ones. Let me explain: I have spent years tirelessly and repeatedly going on record as an active hater of both Tom Cruise and Miles Teller. Until last month, I had never even seen a Tom Cruise movie (I know), and I wore my dissension like a badge of honor (Anne Rice vibes!). On principle, I did not see Maverick when it came out in May. I had no connection to the original, and I wrote this sequel off as nothing more than flagrant U.S. military propaganda. I resented everyone who spent the summer crowing about it. I stuck to my guns (ha) until September, when my curiosity got the better of me, thanks in no small part to my friend and noted Maverick head Lusi. I was encouraged to watch the 1986 Top Gun to prepare with the caveat that it was, at best, super gay, and at worst, not very good.

Both of those things are true. The original Top Gun — a warmongering slog starring Tom Cruise as the most annoying man in the world who spends his time arguing homosexually with his flight school classmates and seducing a blonde lady into being his girlfriend — is bloodless. That gay-ass volleyball scene and the way Val Kilmer chomps his teeth are its only saving graces. Top Gun is a boy movie in its purest sense, overflowing with relentless displays of machismo and dialogue that is incomprehensible to anyone unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Navy.

I’m obsessed with the comments section under this video of the Kilmer bite, filled with men writing short essays analyzing character motivations. To me, Top Gun’s main redeeming quality is how much the pilots want to suck and fuck each other. To those guys, Top Gun is a stirring tribute to manhood and the military, the kind of movie it’s okay to cry at. While I rewind each scene four times trying to figure out what “MiG” means, they’re on the edge of their seats every time a plane takes flight. I’m only kind of kidding when I say that I believe the 1986 Top Gun created the gender binary.

So I had many reasons to feel hesitant about Maverick, the Top Gun sequel in which Tom Cruise reprises his role as that annoying man (who I now love and find charming since he’s been humbled by age) and is tasked with training a very sexy, very tan group of fighter pilots for a special assignment (they have to take down an anonymous enemy known exclusively as The Enemy). One of whom, played by Miles Teller, is the son of his dead bestie(/boyfriend). Another is played by an inexplicably under-used Manny Jacinto; another by Glen Powell (slay).

Turns out everyone I know was right! Maverick is exceptional. It corrects every mistake of the original, smoothing out the military jargon into something even idiots like me can understand. Its action sequences are textured and breathtaking. Its screenplay is airtight. It ups the emotional stakes, adding layers of meaning to events I didn’t give one shit about when I watched the first film. It’s as much about Maverick the character aging as it is about Tom Cruise, our last remaining movie star, aging. Teller and Powell cannot stop antagonistically flirting. Lady Gaga is there, presiding over it all. During my first viewing, I openly wept over a scene between Cruise and Teller (!). Maverick is Top Gun with a personality transplant. I’m not saying anything anyone who hasn’t seen it doesn’t already know, so for the purpose of this newsletter, I’ll just quote Lusi, who so succinctly tweeted, “top gun (1986) is for men and top gun: maverick is for the girls.” 

It’s interesting to discuss Maverick for the Boy Movies launch, because it and its predecessor are, in a way, perfect examples of what we mean when we talk about boy movies. If Top Gun is an example of an alienating boy movie, Maverick is a boy movie with crossover appeal. Teller said as much in his recent SNL monologue, calling it “a movie that’s loved by both the military community and the gay community.” (Lol at “military community.”) Obviously the whole thing is one big Go Army ad, but like, no shit, and also, to quote Sarah Hagi, “guys i feel so so so sick with this revelation that top gun is military propaganda. i thought this was all made up...i didnt know these planes existed irl.”

It’s like someone saying they watch Succession because they love business. I don’t have to stan the actual Navy to cry my eyes out when Tom Cruise clenches his jaw and says to Miles Teller, “But you are here.” It’s rare that a boy movie contains the specific, potent combination of glistening biceps, daddy issues, and undeniably moving scenes needed to reach across the aisle. It rules. I hope they get MUNA to do the theme for Top Gun 3.

Girl talk

And we’ve reached the end! In future issues, I’ll use this section to tie up loose ends, drop in links to things that didn’t have a place elsewhere, and whatever else. In today’s, I’m just using it to say goodbye for now.

• You can (probably) expect future issues to be shorter. Consider this beast your Boy Movies indoctrination.

• Invite your friends, families, and homoerotic rivals to subscribe so we can keep the lights on over at Boy Movies HQ, will you? Reminder that selling to Disney is the ultimate end goal, but in the meantime I would also like to justify offering a $30 per month paid subscription tier. ($10 for the newsletter itself and $20 for me to come to your house and give you a big ol’ smooch.)

• If you have boy movie suggestions for future issues, I’m all ears. You can reach me via email, Twitter DM, or by flying a fighter plane over my home with your estranged step dad who loves you so much that he’d literally die for you.

• More from me: Over on TV Guide, I reviewed the new Interview with the Vampire series, which is a horny, bloody triumph. This is also relevant because the 1994 film was my first-ever Tom Cruise movie. Every single person I’ve mentioned this to has replied, “Okay, banger.”

*Sarah also designed the gorgeous Boy Movies banner in like, under an hour. She is a genius and a hero and a woman of incredible renown.

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