"Top Gun: Maverick": Is beefcake enough?

 

Remember the shirtless volleyball scene in Top Gun (1986)?  Who doesn't?  In an era when you rarely saw men's bodies on screen, except maybe a glimpse of chest while they were schtumping ladies, we got closeups of perfectly chiseled men, with no women anywhere around.  The Daily Beast says: "If you were a certain kind of teenage boy in 1986, the beach volleyball scene spoke directly to you.  And what it said was 'You're gay now.  Good luck.'" 

Of course, the guys themselves are written as straight; the main plot is a hetero-romance; Tom Cruise is aggressively homophobic.  The queer code was all in the beefcake.  Decider says that it "encompasses the sexual repression of the decade."

In 2022, a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, featured some of the original cast and actors playing their children.  The guys are still written as straight, with a hetero-romance as the main plot, and Tom Cruise is still aggressively homophobic.  Nevertheless, The Daily Beast calls it the "gayest movie of the year," due to a shirtless football scene.  40 years have passed, and we still get nothing but beefcake?

Ok, then, let's look at the beefcake.

1. Tom Cruise as "Maverick," the focus character in the original, now a flight instructor teaching other Top Guns.

2. Miles Teller, left , as "Rooster," son of his best friend in the original.

Miles sock dick

3, Jon Hamm as "Cyclone," the commander.

4. Glen Powell, left, as "Hangman," a pilot

5. Ed Harris as "Hammer," Maverick's superior officer. 

6. Val Kilmer, left, as "Iceman," Maverick's former rival

More butts and bulges after the break

Rocky High: My job as an athletic trainer

When I was a kid, I hated sports -- who would willingly submit to having hard round projectiles hurled at them? -- but my parents wouldn't believe me.  "You're a boy!  Boys like sports!" they kept insisting as I unwrapped Christmas presents of basketballs and baseball bats.

Denkmann Elementary School didn't offer gym classes, so they insisted that I choose something from the Parks & Recreations Department "Kids' Sports" program.  So I took judo for three years, stopping only when the dojo moved across the river to Davenport.

Washington Junior High offered a full range of team sports, so they began pushing me toward baseball, basketball, or...shudder...football. I compromised with wrestling, but dropped out after an unfortunate penis incident during a match. 

When I was about to start tenth grade at Rocky High, home of the Rocks, the litany began again: play a sport, play a sport, play a sport.  With even more urgency, since a boy with an aversion to athletics might be a "swish."  My Dad even forced me to try out for junior varsity football!

Noticing my dismay, my gym teacher, who was also the football coach, came up with another idea.  He asked if I had my Red Cross First Aid certificate.  I did. Then he suggested that I might like a job as an athletic trainer.

What do they do?

Duties after the break