RIP Tony Scott

Quarto

Unknown Enemy
Being away to a place with no internet for the last couple of days, I only found out yesterday about the death of Tony Scott - director of Top Gun (and a bunch of other films).

There's really nothing worse than suicide. No other death is as horrible and painful for both the deceased and his family - not in the least because it's just difficult for them to deal with. The family is constantly going to be wondering what they had done to cause this. And at the back of anyone's head, there's gonna be the thought (or at least, an unconscious feeling) that this should not have happened and that the person who killed hmself had willingly inflicted all this suffering on those who were dearest to him.

So, it's not, so to speak, a good death. But the fact remains - someone who has influenced our lives hugely is dead. I don't know about everyone else here, but as far as I'm concerned, I can put it this way: a lot of people, playing Wing Commander, had this feeling that they were taking part in Star Wars. Others said it was World War II in space. Both are right, of course, but for me - above all, Wing Commander is Top Gun.

Top Gun made me fall in love not with aviation as such, but with military aviation. Obviously, I never became a fighter pilot (and in truth, I only very briefly wanted to - that phase passed quickly enough :)), but to this day I remain fascinated by air combat, above all because of the vision presented by Top Gun: you and your wingman fighting together in a chivalrous battle where one man makes a difference, but only a team can win. The influence of this vision is so obvious in Wing Commander, it hardly needs to be pointed out. Without Top Gun, maybe I wouldn't have loved Wing Commander quite as much - but more importantly, without Top Gun's influence, Wing Commander probably would be a much different, inferior game.

I remember very little of Tony Scott's other films. I saw Crimson Tide, and Deja Vu. Both were ok films, nothing special, and I've never chosen to buy or watch a film based on the fact that he had been the director. But it wouldn't have mattered if he had done nothing at all after Top Gun - that one film is more than enough for us Wing Commander fans to remember him by.

So long, Tony Scott. I'm very sorry to see you go this way... but thanks for Top Gun!
 
I'll admit that I was never a big Tony Scott fan - he seemed more commercial than his brother Ridley (at first, at least) and his stuff was usually fluff. Even things I found amusing like Top Gun and Crimson Tide didn't gel well with my tastes. Thats just me though.

That said, this is an awful thing to have happen. The man was certainly talented and beloved, if not by critics, then definitely with the people he worked with. I know Harry Gregson-Williams left a lovely message for him on Facebook in tribute.

(I'm "worried" about Ridley. He suffered badly when the eldest of the Scott brothers died in the late 70s (which is why he dropped out of developing Dune) and never entirely recovered. Now losing Tony and the man is in his 70s? )
 
I've seen several media adressing this, but I had to learn here that it was the guy who did Top Gun. Bruckheimer is the name I associate with Top Gun normally, and in our local media they simply said "a director who was the brother of the guy who directed Alien and Prometheus".

Anyone played "Top gun - Hard lock" yet btw? I looks great, but is to simple("press x to do an immelman"), much like HAWX2(I prefer 1)

Looking back on Top Gun(the movie) now is like watching Iron Eagle, great memories, but leave it to memories, since it does not hold up well these days.
 
Looking back on Top Gun(the movie) now is like watching Iron Eagle, great memories, but leave it to memories, since it does not hold up well these days.
I can't agree with that. To me, the great thing about movies from the 1980s is that they don't get worse over time - they were kinda bad to begin with, and they often feel corny now... but that's exactly how they were! The dialogues in Top Gun, for example, don't get worse. It's not like the movie has aged badly in that regards - rather, the dialogues were corny right from the start. Similarly, the acting was hit-and-miss immediately upon release, it's not like we suddenly realised recently that Tom Cruise's acting is, ahem, questionable. I suppose you could complain about the music being mainly 1980s synth stuff - but again, this hasn't aged. You either liked it or hated it when you first saw it. It's not as if looking back from 2012, we see that this was really weak synth music compared to what we could do today - no, this is the very peak of synth music.

Most importantly - no CGI to ruin the special effects. There's some movies of the 1990s that were impressive once, and utterly unwatchable now - remember how realistic those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park once seemed? :) What we have here, though, is a combination of real planes and model photography - you can see a few glitches here and there (and you could spot those back when the film first came out), but overall, the effects haven't aged.
 
It's not the specific things in the movie (I actually like the 80's only-cool-in-the-movie tunes), but the cheesiness in general, you remember it cooler as it actually was when you look back now.
 
Oh, yes, the third part of the theme really makes me want to walk up to the mixer board and pull mister zebrafur/leather/nuclearshampoo 's connection to the amp. Damn, the first part of the anthem is epic, but the rest... kill the poor bastard with fire :mad:
 
There's really nothing worse than suicide. No other death is as horrible and painful for both the deceased and his family - not in the least because it's just difficult for them to deal with. The family is constantly going to be wondering what they had done to cause this. And at the back of anyone's head, there's gonna be the thought (or at least, an unconscious feeling) that this should not have happened and that the person who killed himself had willingly inflicted all this suffering on those who were dearest to him.
From a certain point of view a suicide does indeed willingly inflict suffering on those left behind. Often a person contemplating suicide feels that those around him have ignored/rejected him and he feels powerless, so a lot of the thinking goes along the lines of "I'll MAKE them realize that they care! I'll MAKE them sorry for making me suffer all this time!" (saying this as one who has been suicidal before)
 
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