Excitement Builds for New Top Gun Movie, Musk Sees Millions on Mars

BUCK: Apparently, the new Top Gun, which is gonna come out here in a couple weeks, the review of it is that —

CLAY: I can’t wait.

BUCK: Well, here you go. This is on Drudge. “Cruise Brings Fresh Excitement of Throwback Studio Hit Top Gun,” and people are saying… I mean, I saw a video from someone who got a sneak peak ’cause they invited former Top Gun instructors —

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: — Merlin, for those of you who watch those guys, they invited them to go check it out, and they said it was really good and people are excited about it. It’d be great to have a really excellent theater, popcorn movie, now that people I think are moving back toward going movies more regularly. I mean, not on Broadway yet. You still have to wear a mask, but at least the rest of us go to movie theaters and not worry about things.

CLAY: How about one where American soldiers are heroes? Like, I mean, just America is a good guy. Right? I mean, they pulled Cops off television, for goodness’ sakes — I think it’s back at Fox Nation now — because everybody decided two years ago that cops were the worst human beings on the planet. When’s the last really great cop or soldier movie to be made in America where you leave and you’re like, “Man, I’m glad that that police officer or that soldier is an American”? I can’t even remember. Like, there’s no… You know, the end of Top Gun —

BUCK: World War II movies where we’re fighting Nazis, basically.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Hollywood’s okay with us being the good guys when we’re fighting Nazis. That’s the good news.

CLAY: But remember when you left back in the day when Top Gun came out, Buck? You were like, “America, yeah! What a great place to live.” Everybody was super pumped.

BUCK: Where are all the…? I mean, look at all these people are talking about Ukraine all the time, and I want to say where are the Rocky IV memes?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You’re not seeing a lot of them right now because that movie was — you know, there’s a lot of strong political messaging in that movie. I’ll be honest I remember that Rocky movie where first off Apollo Creed squares off against Ivan Drago — not Russian, by the way, Swedish. Kind of funny. But anyway. Dolph Lundgren.

But, you know, then obviously Rocky fights him. I remember that movie better than any of the Rocky movies. It’s the one that is most vivid in my mind. I mean, I’m a little… It came out a little later; I was a little older. But I saw the first Rocky movie. I went back and saw it. It’s a great movie. But Rocky IV, in some ways, is the one that really sticks with you.

CLAY: Well, I just hope… I hope we’re gonna see a pivot swinging back the other direction. We started off the show talking about this, Buck. It’s impossible not to notice the overall murder rate skyrocketing in this country. And if you remember the eighties and the nineties, police officers tended to be heroes, right? They were the people who were… You had the buddy cop movies, certainly the Lethal Weapon-type era where the cops were not morally perfect, but they were the heroes of the film. And you walked out of to Rocky IV. I’m looking forward to seeing Top Gun: Maverick ’cause I hope I’m coming out being like, “Yeah, America! We’re back.”

BUCK: Do we know who the bad guys are? Because in the first Top Gun movie, as you’ll recall — and I’ve had people challenge me on this; then I’d say, “Go back and watch it.” They never established who the bad guy pilots are. They’re just flying around with a red star on their planes.” Now, the clear Soviet allusion is there, but they’re not speaking in Russian.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They don’t actually —

CLAY: Good question. You don’t know who the bad guys are.

BUCK: They don’t ever show you who they are, which actually makes it a little bit more timeless in some ways in the sense that you just can watch it now and it doesn’t feel like it’s in any way outdated. But I’m excited to go check that out.

And the other thing that caught my eye here, Clay, before we dive back to the news of the day in a moment here is Elon Musk is saying that he thinks that millions are gonna live on Mars in 25 years. Now, what is the Mars movie that you…? Most people I think would say, The Martian. The one that sticks out in my brain the most is Total Recall, do you remember that?

CLAY: I didn’t even remember the Mars connection to Total Recall.

BUCK: Total Recall. It’s on Mars.

CLAY: Oh, okay.

BUCK: I can say the A-word, right? “Get your a-s-s”?

CLAY: Yeah, yeah, “Get your ass to Mars.” I didn’t know it was on Mars. I knew it was in the future.

BUCK: I love how I ask permission and Clay’s like, “Boom!” He just throws it down.

CLAY: I just say it. What are they gonna do?

BUCK: That’s all on Mars. So that’s a Mars movie.

CLAY: I didn’t remember that it was set on Mars. I knew it was set in the future. I didn’t remember that it was there.

BUCK: The whole movie takes place on Mars, basically. That, I gotta say, I’m… I don’t know about that. Elon’s brilliant guy. I hope he saves Twitter and saves free speech with it, but what would it take, Clay, if you were a young guy — put aside all the professional stuff and everything. If you’re 22 years old, what would it take for you to be like, “Yeah, I’m gonna go check out Mars for a few years”? I just don’t see how that’s possible.

CLAY: Well, it would take, first of all, knowing that you could come back from Mars. (laughing) That’s the big thing. A lot of these people who go to Mars first are maybe never going to be able to return from Mars. So, I’m not that excited. I’m not a space travel guy. I understand there’s some people out there who are like, “I would give anything to go into space,” and whatever. I’m not begrudging anybody from that.

But there’s lots of places on our globe that I haven’t been. I haven’t been to Australia. I’d much rather go to Australia right now than go to suborbital space to be able to look at the globe, right? So, until I’ve seen everything that I want to see in America, I’m not too concerned about going to another planet. I think probably most people are the same as me, but at a minimum, to go to Mars, you would have to be able to guarantee me that I could easily return from Mars if I decided I didn’t want to be there anymore.

BUCK: I don’t even like being on a boat that isn’t in sight of shore; so I don’t think Mars is in my future. That’s my rule, by the way: If I can’t see land, I’m not happy; I don’t like it.

CLAY: I’m not a boat guy but I lived in the Caribbean on an island for a while and I didn’t mind living there. I got my law license in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I didn’t mind living on an island, but even there, eventually you want bigger places. So, like, we would hop a plane and go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is like New York City to us.

BUCK: I’m pretty sure that is almost exactly like a nineties sitcom screenplay, by the way: Clay in flip-flops and shorts is like “The Island Lawyer.” I think there was a veterinarian that went down to the Caribbean and then he’s like… Anyway, so it sounds like that.

CLAY: Yeah. No. Hundred percent. I would wear flip-flops into the office and then I kept real shoes underneath my desk. So, I was a flip-flop lawyer, indeed.