In Family Guy’s season 23 premiere, the long-running animated sitcom parodies a plot hole shared by both Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick’s similar storylines. By the time Top Gun: Maverick’s ending rolled around, it was clear that the beloved franchise had achieved something seemingly impossible. Even though it took over 30 years for 1986’s cult classic Tom Cruise vehicle to receive a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick was not only as good as, but even better than the original Top Gun.
While Maverick and Iceman’s final conversation was an elegiac, moving moment for the pair, the sequel’s action was more dynamic and impactful than anything in the original movie. Director Joseph Kosinski followed the iconic auteur Tony Scott’s original playbook to a tee, even recreating Top Gun’s iconic credits sequence for the beginning of Top Gun: Maverick. However, decades of improved visual effects, Cruise’s poignant performance as an older, more mature Maverick, and the story’s ability to build on Top Gun’s more straightforward plot all combined to make the sequel a marked improvement.
Family Guy Season 23 Episode 1 Made Fun Of Top Gun’s Unnamed Enemies
Family Guy’s Top Gun Parody Saw Brian and Peter Rail Against A Nameless Nation
That said, Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick do share a few notable plot problems. Family Guy season 23, episode 3, “Fat Gun,” took aim at all of these, ruthlessly spoofing both movies in the blockbuster series. One of the most pointed gags from “Fat Gun” saw Brian implore Peter’s Maverick stand-in to return to flying after Goose’s death, since the Navy needed him to help in their battle against a nameless enemy nation. Family Guy mocked Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick for never identifying their enemy country, with Peter exclaiming “I hate that thing that they did!”
In reality, the Top Gun movies have been criticized for what some reviewers called an uncritical, jingoistic portrayal of the military, and the Top Gun franchise’s nameless villains are central to this critique. The argument is that any named country would have real-life citizens and viewers of the movie would be more likely to empathize with them or humanize them as a result, whereas a nameless, faceless enemy can be branded as inherently evil without any evidence.
By not identifying the enemy nations in question, the movies avoid feeling dated and politically questionable in the future.
The flip side of this argument is that, by not identifying the enemy nations in question, the movies avoid feeling dated and politically questionable in the future. The shifting geopolitical landscape means that an enemy nation can eventually become an ally and vice versa, so the Top Gun franchise’s decision to never name the countries that the US is at war with is an investment in future re-watchability. Of course, Family Guy’s gag makes the problem with this logic impossible to ignore.
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The Belated Sequel Didn’t Name The Enemy Nation Either
It is tough to root for Maverick, Iceman, and Rooster when viewers remember that they don’t even know who they are fighting, and the franchise needs to work hard to avoid this issue becoming noticeable. Brian and Peter agree that their unnamed, faceless enemy nation did some unidentified terrible thing. This proves how much the Top Gun movies never justify the villainy of their antagonists, but instead just present them as generic baddies. Subplots like Hangman and Rooster’s rivalry take up more screen time than the question of whom the US is at war with, and why.
The Top Gun movies aren’t war movies in the traditional sense.
This highlights the real problem with the Top Gun franchise’s military action stories and the real reason that the series never names its villains. As evidenced by Top Gun increasing the Navy’s recruitment mᴀssively in the year after its release, the Top Gun movies aren’t war movies in the traditional sense. They are, in tone and structure, sports movies where the sport is flying fighter jets. From holding classes in empty air hangars instead of classrooms to inventing rankings and trophies for the school’s best pilots, Top Gun’s creators intentionally glamorized its depiction of the Navy until it scarcely resembled reality.
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The Top Gun Movies Have Never Really Been About War
The Top Gun movies are sports movies in disguise, and this is why the series is as popular as it is, despite how contentious the topic of international warfare is. Top Gun: Maverick isn’t a war movie, and it is a stronger story as a result, taking the same escapist approach as its 1986 predecessor and side-stepping any relation to reality by never even naming the name country in the entire movie’s runtime.
Family Guy’s joke is a solid jab at the series that implies the Top Gun franchise’s refusal to name its villains is a bug in its storytelling. However, in reality, this is a feature of the movies. Neither Top Gun nor Top Gun: Maverick would feel like harmless fun if they depicted a real-life war, which is why Family Guy can mock the series for failing to identify its villains.
