Top Gun Blu-ray Disc (Tony Scott, 1986)

Paramount (USA)
2.35:1 1080p
109 minutes
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English; DTS MA 6.1 English; DD 5.1 French; DD 5.1 Spanish
Subtitles: Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Extras: audio commentary; making-of featurettes; Best of the Best: Inside the Real Top Gun; storyboards; Behind the Scenes; Survival Training; Tom Cruise Interviews; music videos; TV spots

Released: 29 July 2008
Blu-ray case

Top Gun was one of a handful of titles (the others being the Jack Ryan flicks) that Paramount decided to release on HD DVD without any extras even though plenty were commissioned for the SD DVD versions. There was considerable consternation given that some people don’t like one title hogging precious storage space, so Paramount has made things right. Top Gun is now on Blu-ray with all of the “Special Collector’s Edition” bonuses offered by the two-disc SD DVD set.

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Top Gun won an Oscar for the song “Take My Breath Away”. While the song is about falling in love, the title could just as well describe the movie’s sound design. To me, Top Gun has always been a rather slight action movie as much of the “action” takes place during flight training sessions. Having airplanes booming from one end of the room to another isn’t as impressive as what you get with on-the-ground battle sequences. Yet, to be fair, most guys just love having low frequencies rattle their bones (either for real or by a subwoofer), so despite a history of shaky video presentations, Top Gun has remained demo material for many home-theatre enthusiasts (even if it has never been reference material).

By now, Top Gun is a take-it-or-leave-it deal. The jingoism was so appalling to Paul Newman that he mentored Tom Cruise away from such scripts while they worked on The Color of Money, but most people who saw this in theatres before they turned eighteen just remember how cheesy, over-the-top, and campy the movie can be. Top Gun may be one of cinema’s greatest ironies--the Navy used it as a recruiting film even though it is filled with (unintentional) homoeroticism.

Truth be told you, I don’t have a special place in my heart for Top Gun like many other red-blooded American guys of my generation, but I do like that Oscar-winning song. “Take My Breath Away”, indeed. Damn.

Video:
The video looks very similar to the HD DVD’s, so any differences can probably be attributed to the way that the machines output the picture.

On Blu-ray and HD DVD, Top Gun exhibits some wear-and-tear. Colors are not as strong as with recent movies, and several shots have light sprinklings of dust. The stock footage and second-unit photography can be fairly grainy. Nevertheless, the 2.35:1 1080p transfer reveals a remarkable level of detail that is frequently breathtaking (no pun intended).

Audio:
The Top Gun Blu-ray Disc sports the same dynamic Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English track as the HD DVD as well as a DTS MA 6.1 English mix. The DTS MA encode comes on rather strong (and may be uncomfortable for some viewers, especially those who live in apartment complexes such as myself). Then again, one watches Top Gun in large part for the sonics, right?

It is quite possible that this busy mix never rests. Even the “quiet” moments are filled with songs. The rears are very aggressive, though discrete directionality effects are limited to fly-bys across the front soundstage. The pulsating synthesizer music score pings stereo pulses from left to right with such ferocity that your head starts bopping after a while to keep up with the separation.

You can also watch the movie with DD 5.1 French and DD 5.1 Spanish dubs. Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles support the audio.

Extras:
Well, fans can now get rid of all of their previous copies of this movie as the Blu-ray has it all (until the next Special Edition comes along, of course).

You get a spliced-together audio commentary (skippable), six featurettes that function as a long-ish documentary, storyboards, vintage featurettes (“Behind the Scenes” and “Survival Training”, vintage Tom Cruise Interviews, music videos, and several TV spots. The disc even includes “Best of the Best: Inside the Real Top Gun”, a featurette comprised of interviews with the personnel at the real flight school. (This was available only as a Best-Buy exclusive when the two-disc SD DVD was first released.)

There aren’t any trailers, though this has been a common omission from many home-video optical discs for some time now.