Infomercial for America

The timeless appeal of Top Gun

- Megan Garber

In 1983, the Swedish aerospace and auto company Saab ran an ad with an old premise—sports cars are sexy—and a new twist: Saab’s cars, the ad suggests, are as sexy as its fighter jets. The spot makes its case by splicing slo-mo shots of a car and a plane emerging from their respective hangars. The soundtrack is orchestral, the effect vaguely voyeuristic. The crescendo comes when the car and the plane meet on a shared runway, the jet hovering over the car, each pulsing with raw power.

The ad was the handiwork of the British director Tony Scott. On the strength of it, he was hired to create another ode to high-velocity machismo, this one at feature length. Top Gun premiered in May 1986, when the pain of Vietnam had receded, the Cold War was on the wane, and people had embraced the hope that it was morning in America. Scott’s film answered the moment by attempting to sell not a car, but a country: Love the U.S. again. Buy the U.S. again.

Top Gun marked its 35th anniversary this spring, and its decades-in-the-making sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, originally set to be a summer blockbuster, is now scheduled to premiere later this year. While we wait, I rewatched the original— and promptly experienced the whiplash that comes when a dated movie feels, somehow, utterly timely. Advertising strips away the world and its complications until all that’s left is want. Top Gun, an ad with a 110- minute run time, retains its allure in part because it is selling a desire that remains, all these years later, unfulfilled: an America that proves worthy, finally, of its immense power.