The first flight of Top Gun (and two other reasons to visit the cinema) in 1986
CBC film critic also liked Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and had even higher praise for Aliens
Whether they are reboots, origin stories, book adaptations, distant sequels or live-action remakes, there's often something familiar about new movies these days.
"Since 2010, [Disney] has increasingly banked its box office prowess on new versions of treasured classics," wrote the CBC's Eli Glasner in 2019. And it's not just Disney. More recently, Glasner wrote: "In today's high-concept Hollywood, if a movie isn't a sequel or a remake, it may as well be a biopic."
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CBC Entertainment l Eli's movie picks for 2022: Superheroes, sequels, animation — and lots of Brad Pitt
One of the first movies to kick off the summer of 2022 in cinemas is Top Gun: Maverick, which the Associated Press described as "a new chapter" that picks up 30 years after the events of the original Top Gun. Like its predecessor, it stars actors Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, who reprise their characters from the 1986 film.
Top Gun was just one of the movies critic Tom New reviewed for CBC's noon-hour current affairs program Midday as 1986 warmed up. CBC Archives looked back at that segment and New's review of two other films: Aliens, itself a sequel that has since spawned several related films, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Top Gun
New didn't pretend to know what the future held. But when he discussed Top Gun on May 23, 1986, just a few days before it opened, he had a prediction.
"You are looking at scenes from a movie that, in the next couple of months, will make $100 million," he says in the video above.
New was right. Set in an elite pilot training program for the American navy, and starring Cruise, Kilmer and Kelly McGillis, Top Gun earned the highest domestic gross of 1986. New gave it seven stars out of 10.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Actor Matthew Broderick wasn't a teenager anymore: he turned 24 in 1986. But he played a teen onscreen as the eponymous lead in that summer's Ferris Bueller's Day Off — "yet another teen coming-of-age movie," noted Midday host Sue Prestedge on June 10, 1986.
"The best thing about this movie is that it mixes the laughs with a very real sensitivity to a youthful audience," said New during a review that played several clips from the movie, as seen in the above video. That was enough to earn it seven stars from New.
"I'd done The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, which were really about all the problems of that age," director John Hughes told the Globe and Mail upon the new film's release. "I thought maybe I should create someone who can handle all the problems. Here's a guy who can take life and youth in stride."
Aliens
In the summer of 1986, moviegoers could see another notable film: Canadian director James Cameron's Aliens. Its main character, warrant officer Ellen Ripley, would go on to be named number eight on the American Film Institute's list of cinema's greatest heroes.
"Sigourney Weaver debuted the role of Ripley in Alien, released seven years ago," New told viewers. "In that movie, she barely survived a close encounter of the unpleasant kind."
New had strong praise for the way Aliens leveraged "one of the most basic of human emotions: fear," as well as "the maternal imperative of protection of the young."
Aliens earned eight stars from New and went on to earn the fifth-highest domestic gross of all movies released in 1986.
