BUCK: The Top Gun 2 — I guess they’re calling it Top Gun Maverick — the trailer is out. Clay and I are right at about the age, you know, I’d say, what, maybe late thirties to late forties right now. So let’s call it maybe, you know, 37 to 47 or so. Top Gun was life changing when you saw that.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: That movie was the coolest thing you had ever seen up to that point. Probably some people would say Star Wars or whatever, but it was a really, really cool movie, the music and everything. Tom Cruise, his best movie all time? He’s made some good movies, but I think that’s arguably his best all-time movie from just a pure entertainment and cultural relevance perspective.
CLAY: Oh, man that’s a great question. So we were talking off air about who would you buy stock in, just for purposes of, without even seeing an advertisement, you’re like, “I trust that guy or that girl to make a good movie.” And the guys that… It’s mostly guys that immediately come to my mind over the last 20 years or so. Pre-slap, maybe even post-slap, Will Smith is on that list.
BUCK: Yes.
CLAY: But for me Matt Damon has tended to make really good movies. But Tom Cruise, to me — Denzel Washington also really good movies. To me, Tom Cruise is number one on the list of, “I trust this guy. I will pretty much go see whatever movie he makes.” I think, Buck, Risky Business may be my favorite Tom Cruise movie.
CLAY: Have you watched Risky Business recently?
BUCK: No. I mean, I’ve seen it. I mean, wow. By the way, by the way, Producer Charlie here is giving me… He loves Risky Business. He’s giving me thumbs up here in Florida.
CLAY: I watched it on a flight recently, and I was like, they had the old school movies, which I like, by the way. I don’t know when they started doing this, but they have, like, classic movies now. It’s not just all new movies. And I was like, you know what? I need to watch Risky Business. And so I watched it probably three or four years ago and I was like, man, this is a great movie.
BUCK: I would have put Harrison Ford on that list —
CLAY: Oh, Harrison Ford. Oh, yeah.
BUCK: — and probably among the five or 10, you know, greatest box office-draw actors of our generation, although he got kind of curmudgeonly as he got older.
CLAY: I’m excited for the new Indiana Jones, by the way.
BUCK: There’s a new Indiana Jones?
CLAY: He’s doing a new one, yeah.
BUCK: Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls destroyed my childhood. I’m still upset about it.
CLAY: I’m pretending it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen.
BUCK: Wait. I think I have a secret magic power that I’m sure everybody listening thinks they have, too, which is that I can watch a trailer and I’d say with, like, a 97% accuracy tell you whether or not this movie is worth seeing. That’s my… I think if I watch the trailer —
CLAY: That’s a pretty bold call. You realize that’s the job of the trailer is to make you want to see the movie.
BUCK: Right. I mean, when I watched the Ghostbusters all-female reboot trailer, I was like, “This is going to be an assault on my eyeballs,” like, “This is gonna be the worst thing that’s ever,” and it was.
CLAY: (laughing)
CLAY: Yeah. It doesn’t cost any money.
BUCK: I’m talking when they spend $200 million. Will Smith, Wild, Wild West. People have already been making the joke. If you go back, that movie is wow-level bad. That was one of his rare big swing and miss.
CLAY: Like Kevin Costner with West World. Remember, Kevin Costner was undefeated.
BUCK: Waterworld.
CLAY: Waterworld.
BUCK: Waterworld, yeah.
CLAY: Yeah. West World is the television show, which is pretty good, right?
BUCK: Waterworld is not that bad. I disagree with the Waterworld thing.
CLAY: It’s okay.
BUCK: Not great.
CLAY: But back in the day… By the way, Russell Crowe had a stretch there where he couldn’t miss. Right? I mean, he was on fire.
BUCK: And then all the sudden he’s just like a pudgy British guy who’s making movies about how he’s over the hill and, like, maybe falls in love/maybe he doesn’t. Who cares? He’s gonna drink. I mean, it was like not really — he went off the rails. He was amazing in the early 2000s.
CLAY: Hugh Grant had a good run where he couldn’t miss, and then, you know, he kind of got… Eh. (chuckles) Well, you know.
BUCK: Then he had some problems. We promised you the trailer. Here is the trailer of Top Gun Maverick.
BUCK: I mean, Clay —
CLAY: I got, like, chill bumps, like, just thinking Top Gun Maverick. I wanted to be a fighter pilot like a lot of kids out there after Top Gun came out. You remember that? Like, you were like, “Oh, I’m going to grow up and be a fighter pilot,” ’cause of how bad ass Maverick was in Top Gun.
BUCK: Yep. Yep. I think Top Gun was —
CLAY: There’s guys listening to us right now that are fighter pilots because of Top Gun, I guarantee you.
BUCK: Are you kidding me? I bet there’s some guys out in F-22s at Dulles Air Force Base who are doing barrel rolls ’cause they listen to the podcast. Oh, I guess that would be hard ’cause they have to listen to podcasts later. You get what I’m saying, though. We’re gonna have some pilots, airline pilots, combat pilots writing in being like, “We’ll do a flyover for you guys sometime in the radio studio.”
CLAY: That’s why they’re pilots ’cause of that movie, I guarantee you., especially if they’re around our age.
BUCK: Air Force Academy and Naval Academy had big increases in applications after that movie you came out, like 10 or 15%. Yeah. All right. So we got excited about Top Gun Maverick. We’ll do the movie review after it comes out. We’ll go see it.
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