A Point on Top Gun and Core Fantasies in Fiction

So I watched the movie ‘Top Gun’ for the first time with my friend recently. The movie was good. Dog-fight scenes were pretty tense and exciting despite being somewhat limited by the filming technology of the day. Plot is, while being a bit vague without clear goals for the heroes other than ‘try to be the best pilot”, emotional enough to spice up the action scenes while not too emotional that distract the audience from the actions. And of course, the music was perfect. ‘Danger zone’ is obviously a masterpiece, but a song that stuck with me was ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ When Tom cruise and his buddy sings it in the restaurant, it screams “We’re young and successful! We’re the cool guys! We’re on top of the world!” It is kinda cringy but I love it. So for me, Top Gun was a good action movie, or rather a series of great music videos with some cool airplanes…with one, massive flow. What’s that flow? Well, it is…the romantic subplot.
Now I admit, I have a bias here. I...I really, really don’t like spontaneous romantic subplots in fiction. I don’t enjoy them at all, in fact it annoys the hell out of me. Why? Well, because, often times, why those two characters are falling in love is not explained very well, especially in typical Hollywood movies. Usually, all it takes for two people to fall in love in blockbuster films is a 5 second starring contest with some gentle music playing in the back. It just doesn’t make any sense and kicks me right out of the immersion to the story. I mean seriously, how come this girl, who by all accounts is a competitive and confident military specialist with a red-hot body and a face that would send Mona Lisa running for her money, would fall for Tom Cruise, when all he did to win her over was second-hand embarrass her by singing really bad karaoke to her face in public, sexually harass her by following her into the bathroom and being a egoistic asshole? Also, how come Tom Cruise seem to be deep in love with her, when she is, after all, just a pretty girl he met at a bar. I mean OK, it’s not true, she turned out to be his instructor, but my point still stands. They are head over heels into each other before they know enough about each other to justify that. I realize it is weird and frankly makes me sound like pathetic incel loser to focus on the romance scenes in an action movie masterpiece like Top Gun. I knew it, but I couldn’t shake it off, so I just vent it out to my friend. After patiently listening through my rant, he said, “well, first of all you really should go get some therapy cause you clearly have some mental issues regarding romantic relationships. But secondly, if you are that sensitive when it comes to the romantic subplots in action movies being unrealistic, why are you able to be an Otaku? I mean, those cute high school girls loving you and being your waifu is far more unrealistic than a girl falling in love with Tom effing Cruise. Don’t you think?” OK, so first, he is a good friend. But much more importantly, I don’t think he understands my point, so let me explain it here. Now, he is right that, on it’s face, an woman randomly falling for Tom Cruise is much more believable than a high-school girl falling for me, especially when the woman is a fighter jet specialist, working with Tom Cruise who is an ace pilot, and I am a ugly short nerd with lazy eyes. But I do believe that, in a context of storytelling, the latter makes much more sense. Why? Well, key thing is this. ANY STORY HAS ONE CORE FANTASY. Doesn’t matter what genre it is, doesn’t matter what type of medium it is on, every story has one central fantasy in it. In Spiderman, the fantasy is that a teenager can turn into a human-spider hybrid just by being bitten by a radio-active spider. In Lord of the Rings, the fantasy is literally the existence of this fantasy world. Even non-fictions and memoirs have a fiction in them, which is a real-life events or people being simple enough to be put into a book or movie, which is never the case. And as audience, we have to accept that core fantasy to get into the story. For example, even though it doesn’t really make sense, in order to watch, or let alone enjoy Star Wars, you have to accept the force is a thing. If you shit on Star Wars by saying “it is a space fairytale full of space wizards dancing around with their flashy sticks, it is ridiculous,” while you might be right, you are also being an unconstructive asshole. When you watch Star Wars, you just have to accept its literal handwaving of the force and jedy, otherwise you are being an unnecessary contrarian. Now, am I saying that we have to eat up every single bullshit a story throws at us? Of course not. Ramming your ship into enemy ship in hyper space doesn’t make any sense even if you accept the force and the light sabers and so on... which brings us nicely back to Top Gun and Otaku culture.
In the kind of anime and videogames my friend was talking about, the heroines, cute girls who are often teenagers with some kind of extraordinal quality(super power, being a chosen one, or just plain hot) randomly falling in love with the protagonist, who is often a blank slate for the audience to insert themselves, is the core fantasy. Is it silly and pathetic escapism? Sure, absolutely. But it makes sense in that story, because it is the core fantasy. Calling it out as unrealistic is as meaningless as criticizing Star Wars for being unrealistic. Everyone knows Haruhi nor the force doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t matter, because if you can’t accept that, frankly you are not welcome to these stories.
Now, with that in mind, let’s go back to Top Gun. What’s the core fantasy here? Well, I would say, it is that a young pretty-face like Tom Cruise can hop into a fighter jet and do circus maneuvers. I don’t care if the movie is actually realistic, I’m not an airplane nerd, I don’t know if fighter jets can move like that in real-life. Even if they could, it would still be a fantasy that Tom Cruise can do that (don’t tell me about his extensive training on real airplane or whatever, he is a short scientologist who can’t read). So I will never whine about how unrealistic those planes move, or, how unrealistic it is for some rogue soviet pilots to wonder into American territory with long-range missiles out of the blue(again, don’t tell me “well actually~” I’m not a cold war nerd). But I will call out when the movie does something ridiculous outside of that core fantasy, aka the romantic subplot. In short, I can accept ridiculous escapist fantasy in Otaku culture because it’s their core fantasy, but I can’t accept Top Gun’s romantic subplot because it’s not the core fantasy.
Now…there is one counter-argument here. Which is that for Hollywood movies, a man and a woman falling in love just by a 5 second starring is actually a part of the fantasy. Honestly this is very likely to be the case but… I just can't accept that. See, Hollywood movies are so influential that they often shape the collective value system for the people around the world. So, If that kind of romantic-love-supremacy was indeed a part of the core fantasy of Hollywood, then it means it is also a part of the core fantasy, a shared understandings of of this entire world, and I can't breathe in such a world.
So in short, Top Gun is a shitty movie and I hate myself because I am an incel.