TOP GUN 2: THE SUPERGUN, Or "SDI-Punk" Continues...

As we are all aware by now, there's a long-delayed sequel to the 1980s military adventure film Top Gun, currently slated to premiere during the summer of 2021. In the present day, Maverick is a test pilot and doing his best to avoid advancing in rank to the point he wouldn't be flying anymore or getting pushed out due to not advancing in rank. However, as my regular readers know, I recently hosted guest posts from author Ken Prescott on a proposed new genre called "SDI-Punk" and films and especially books that would fit. I also wrote a post of my own that emphasized the "punk" elements. When I shared the posts online, Baen author Christopher DiNote suggested that Top Gun would fit in the genre, but I didn't think it was speculative enough--it doesn't have the sort of advanced versions of period technology the way steampunk (Babbage engines, more dirigibles) or dieselpunk (rocket packs, Nazi or Soviet super-science) do.

However, a more elaborate and more "period" Top Gun sequel might fit the bill. There were several incidents in the 1980s where the United States engaged in combat with the forces of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi--one in 1981, two in 1986, and one in 1989, in addition to two incidents of Libyan-sponsored terrorism. During Operation El Dorado Canyon, Gadhafi retaliated against U.S. airstrikes by firing SCUD missiles at a US base in Italy--although they didn't do any significant damage, they scared the stuffing out of the local Italians and the Italian government planned but ultimately didn't go through with a retaliatory attack of their own.

So here's an idea for a Top Gun sequel that includes "SDI-Punk" elements. It could be released in the late 1980s or early 1990s to capitalize on the Libyan incidents or the Gulf War or later, so long as Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer look young enough that it's not a "next generation" film like the upcoming sequel (featuring Goose's son) is. The gist of my idea is that Gadhafi's attack on Lampedusa is more effective--more (and/or more effectively used) SCUD missiles or, to be even more fun, Gadhafi has borrowed the services of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's mercenary scientist Gerald Bull and built one or more "superguns." In real history the project was sabotaged and Bull himself assassinated by Israeli agents, but if Saddam loans Bull to Gadhafi, the Israelis might not view him and his project as a threat since a Libya-based supergun couldn't hit Israel.

So Gadhafi builds one or more doomsday mountains with superguns able to strike targets in Chad (where Gadhafi had been fighting wars already) and Italy. The film starts with Maverick and company participating in the 1986 air battles with the Libyans, but while they're recovering from their mission aboard the carrier or on shore leave in Italy, the Libyan attacks on Italy are much more severe than in real history. We're talking more effective SCUDs, attacks by the supergun that can't be intercepted by Patriot missiles, and with Western casualties and significant physical damage, the US and Italy now have to respond. The climax of the film involves the US Navy pilots escorting an Italian strike package to destroy Gadhafi's mega-guns and mobile SCUD launchers (easier said than done given what happened in real history in 1991). This features a series of air battles more impressive than the climax of the original Top Gun, since the NATO forces would be fighting over enemy territory (i.e. antiaircraft fire that wasn't an issue in the original film) against much larger numbers of enemies. The Mig-28 of the original film might reappear, with the lessons learned from the first film making Maverick's tricks less likely to work. The possibility of capture and torture by Libyan forces would be a realistic possibility, unlike the South Yemeni or whoever the enemy was in the first film. And with a much larger crisis that clearly won't be over in one or two days, Maverick and friends might see antiwar protests on CNN or encounter protesters while on shore leave.

(That's the "punk" element, as 1986 is a little over a decade after Vietnam and the Gulf War hasn't put those ghosts to rest. The so-called "anti-imperialists" will be out in force for this.)

This wouldn't be nearly as happy-go-lucky as the original film, but something more akin to the 1976 film or 2019 film about the Battle of Midway. Shore leave in Italy means romantic subplots or fun scenes, but this will be primarily a war film.

You all like? I'm sure this could make for an interesting fan-fic, or a "serial numbers filed off" original novel. Also, here's a podcast episode on the original Top Gun that I'm part of.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Under Siege (1992)

One of the movies I'd wanted to see when I was a kid but wasn't allowed to was the original Under Siege, starring noted martial artist Steven Seagal. Like most movies I wasn't allowed to see I ended up losing interest in it, but thanks to the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood and Amazon Instant Video, I had the chance to see it again.

Here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

The U.S.S. Missouri, the venerable battleship that accepted the surrender of Imperial Japan in 1945 and was upgraded to fight in the Gulf War, has finally been retired. It's making one last cruise from Hawaii to San Francisco to be decommissioned. Aboard the ship is cook Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), personally chosen by Captain Adams (Patrick O'Neal) but disliked by the cranky executive officer Commander Krill (Gary Busey).

Krill throws a surprise birthday party for Adams, led by apparent musician William Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones), but it turns out it's all a scheme to seize control of the ship and sell its Tomahawk missiles (including several tipped with nuclear weapons) to the highest bidder. With most of the crew killed or welded up in the ship's forecastle, it's up to Ryback and some unlikely allies to save the day.

The Good

*The movie is entertaining and moves along at a pretty brisk clip. It's never boring, which is the major reason one sees these movies. :) In TVTropes terms, there are several Crowning Moments of Awesome, including one involving the Missouri's main guns.

*Tommy Lee Jones does a good job as the brilliant but deranged Strannix. It reminds me a lot of his later performance of the manic Two-Face in Batman Forever. And as befitting someone with military command experience (he references attending the War College, which colonels and lieutenant colonels apply to enter) he avoids, as TVTropes puts it, the infamous Villain Ball. Instead of sending out individual goons to be killed, they're to patrol in groups, not pursue Ryback into unsecured areas, check in regularly, etc.

*There's the theme throughout the movie of political-hack superiors throwing fighting-men under the bus. Although one would like to think our military is immune to CYA and other such bullshit, that's not the case. Although I'm violating the Servo Rule about invoking good movies in one's crappy movie (okay "mediocre" is more accurate), the novel Once An Eagle (later adapted into a miniseries) features a slimy politically-savvy staff officer Courtney Massengale and the battle-tested Sam Damon who has to fix or take the fall for his screw-ups.

*The opening scene in which the executive officer is the hard-ass and the captain more mellow reflects something I remember reading about how a well-run Navy ship operates. The captain is supposed to be the "good cop" and the XO the "bad cop." The XO is also more involved in the day-to-day hands-on stuff than the captain is. Commander Krill getting on Ryback's case about his uniform reflects that.

*I'm pretty sure that's really President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush in the movie.

*The terrorists' scheme to get aboard the ship actually makes a lot of sense. After all, Cher filmed the music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time" on the USS Missouri when it was docked in California.

*There's a really creative henchman death involving an I-beam.

*A first-time killer (who starts out the film as a pacifist no less) reacts with all the emotional trauma one would expect when they have to kill a terrorist.

The Bad

*The amount of skill required to hijack a U.S. Navy battleship is the kind of thing Soviet special forces or some other high-end military force would have. The terrorists seem like a bunch of mercenaries initially recruited for a CIA black-ops scheme or even a multinational criminal gang (there's a Eurotrash-looking guy, a Japanese guy, what sound like some Italians, a British guy, etc) led by what seems like a disgruntled U.S. Special Forces officer rather than a coherent unit. The recruiting effort needed to collect the people with all the necessary skill-sets from different nations, armies, etc. would raise all kinds of red flags, especially given the villain's immediate back-story, and then there's getting so many different people to actually work together.

It would make more sense if the perpetrators were some Soviet military or KGB die-hards who know they're on the way out (if this is in the fall or winter of 1991 the coup against Gorbachev has already failed and the USSR is clearly doomed) and are looking to secure their retirement if not take revenge on the Yankee capitalists. They'd be a coherent unit trained and working together for years with espirit de corps rather than a bunch of mercs who might balk at something so extreme and dangerous as taking on the U.S. Navy and simply take the money or some other goodies and run at first sign of trouble or before they even go through the mission. Mercenaries have historically not been very reliable soldiers..

Of course, given how dangerous a company or even a platoon of Spetsnaz would be, it'd be a much different and probably much shorter movie if the baddie rank-and-file were professional soldiers and not thug and merc types.

*Steven Seagal is a capable fighter, but he's not a very good actor. His delivery isn't very strong most of the time. Since he's the lead actor, this kind of presents a problem. :(

*Ryback gives a gun to a character who's an incoherent and frightened mess and expects them to be able to use it intelligently after having a couple of the gun's functions explained to them. One would think a trained soldier would know better. Of course he promptly uses this person as an ammo mule, so maybe he only intended them to actually use the weapon as a last resort.

*Do any of the terrorists have grenades? If they had grenades to use themselves, or if Ryback managed to snag a couple off the terrorists he kills, a lot of those gunfight scenes would be very difficult. Given how Strannix is a black-ops type, I would imagine his people would be carrying a bit more than small arms just in case.

*At one point Ryback basically abandons a bunch of his allies to go gallivanting around with only one other character, never mind that the terrorists still have at least half their numbers.

*A major plot point involves Tomahawk missiles having self-destruct codes the captain of the ship can trigger. I'm pretty sure those don't actually exist in real life--if an enemy got hold of them, they could use them to prevent a ship from effectively using its weapons. It'd be better if they were still relying on targeting data from the Missouri's radars or satellite inputs and could be redirected using the ship's fire control, but even that would be a problem.

*There's a love-interest plot involving Ryback, but there's no foreshadowing of it or any depth to the relationship. Some kind of weird trauma-bonding perhaps? It'd be more interesting if they avoided it completely, since a lot of action films have a token romantic plot and this would be different.

The Verdict

Fun, but more than a little bit nonsensical. See it once. 7.5 out of 10.

A Three-Day Battle At Pearl Harbor? Check Out "The Battle at Dawn"

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum, but logged out I can still view the public sections. In the Post-1900 forum there's a new thread entitled "The Battle At Dawn: The First Battle Between The United States and Japan Dec. 7-10, 1941."

The divergence from our history is that Admiral James O. Richardson, who vocally opposed moving the U.S. Pacific Fleet from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor and was relieved of his position as commander in chief of the U.S. fleet as a result, is summoned to Washington by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who persuades Richardson to keep his mouth shut. Knox, Richardson, and Roosevelt meet and agree that although the Pacific Fleet must remain at Pearl Harbor, the base's defenses will be strengthened.

(Richardson thought the fleet too vulnerable to air-sea attack where it was, a position that was ultimately vindicated.)

Richardson is given a partial demotion that ends up being better for everybody--he's placed in direct command of the Pacific Fleet in preparation to face the Japanese threat. Admiral Husband Kimmel, who was relieved of command of the Pacific Fleet in actual history due to Pearl Harbor, is sent to command the Atlantic Fleet in the undeclared naval war against Germany.

As a result of Richardson--who helped create War Plan Orange to deal with a possible war with Japan--commanding the defense of Hawaii, the U.S. is much more prepared for the Japanese attack when it comes. This might not be an unmitigated blessing, however--if the U.S. fleet left Pearl Harbor to face the Japanese in deep water, every sunk ship would have been lost for good (many ships sunk at Pearl were raised afterward) and many more lives would have been lost. The situation could have gotten so bad that Admiral Chester Nimitz said the fleet not sortieing was "God's blessing."

At this point in the timeline the bloodied but angry Pacific Fleet is about to face the Japanese Combined Fleet near Midway Island (the Battle of Midway is coming early this time, but there's no guarantee who'll win), so we'll have to see how that goes...

Another Pacific War Timeline: A Different Leyte Gulf

Here's another timeline from my alternate-history message-board for your entertainment. It's entitled "A Different Leyte Gulf."

In our world, the Battle of the Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle in World War II and possibly the largest naval battle in history. After this battle, the Imperial Japanese Navy was a spent force and according to the Wikipedia, the survivors spent most of the war in their bases out of fuel.

However, the battle featured one of the most dramatic incidents in the war, the engagement off Samar. A group of U.S. Navy ships, including a bunch of lighter carriers, were ambushed by a Japanese force that included the Yamato, one of the most powerful battleships ever built. Usually the aircraft from a carrier can kill any big-gun ship before they get close, but if a battleship gets close to a carrier, it's the carrier that's in trouble. Thanks to the heroism of a group of destroyer crews who certainly suffered for it, most of the carriers were able to get away and the Japanese retreated before they could attack the American landing grounds.

This time around, thanks to Admiral Takeo Kurita being replaced by Nobutake Kondo before the battle begins--and as a result, some ships and units being configured differently--the battle will go rather differently. In particular the engagement off Samar, one of our luckiest breaks in the war, has the potential to go epically wrong.

Although sometimes it's hard to keep track of such a large battle, it's still a very interesting story. It's definitely worth a read. And he updates quickly, so there's always something new.

Some Good Pacific War Timelines For You

I'm in the first semester of graduate school and I've got a lot on my plate, hence the decline in my blogging. However, to tide you over before I upload my third batch of notes from DragonCon 2013, I'll supply you with a couple interesting Pacific War timelines from AH.com

The first one is A True and Better Alamo: The Battle for Wake Atoll. I'm not as familiar with our world's Battle of Wake Island, but based on the author's comments, efforts to fortify the island begin much earlier than they did in our history, making the island MUCH more defensible. Based on the title it doesn't look like things will go well for the defenders in the long run, but considering how the Japanese campaign in the early days of the Pacific War was run on a shoestring on a very tight timetable, a prolonged and bloodier resistance at Wake Island is going to cause them problems in the long run. After doing some more research, he decided to change some earlier events in the timeline and started writing an updated version, which you can find here.

The second one isn't really a timeline per se, but an attempt to war-game a second Japanese carrier assault on Hawaii in early 1942. Instead of assisting in operations in Rabaul, Borneo, and Java, the First Air Fleet (the major Japanese carrier battle group) is dispatched east for a second attempt to destroy U.S. carrier forces in the Pacific and (possibly) tear up Pearl Harbor and Oahu some more.

Behold IJN Carrier Attack on Hawaii-January 1942.

There's a lot of gamer talk, but as you scroll through, there's narrative depicting the results of the dice-rolling, including a B-17 bomber hitting a ship (something that happened very rarely). Given how it was the U.S. that ground the Empire of the Rising Sun to ashes, it seems to me that hitting the U.S. harder when they'd already hurt us (Pearl Harbor and the aftermath) would have been a better strategic decision that going overkill on some battles they would have won anyway, but that's with hindsight.

On the other hand, if they end up getting gutted like they did at the Battle of Midway, the war in this timeline might end up being shorter.