Top Gun gets a lot of love as an ’80s nostalgia machine and big-time popcorn action flick pumped full of testosterone and bombast, and deservedly so.
It was released in May of 1986. I mention this because four months earlier, on January 17th, a movie called Iron Eagle hit theaters.
Mostly forgotten these days, Iron Eagle was as important to my pop cultural upbringing as Top Gun, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or anything else.
Even though Iron Eagle predates Top Gun, it’s not completely inaccurate to describe it as “what if Top Gun but with a high school kid?”
The stuff of a 12-year-old ‘80s kid’s dreams, in other words.
It’s fun and ridiculous and is jam packed with action scenes – and perhaps just as importantly: training sequences that lead up to action scenes in adherence to ’80s Filmic Movie Requirements.
But it’s grounded enough that you actually care about the as noted super ridiculous plot: Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick), with his guy Chappy’s help (the great Louis Gossett Jr., who gives Iron Eagle just the right dusting of gravitas that it needs), is gonna “borrow” an F-16 and rescue his dad from the clutches of the bad guys in some vaguely Libya-ish country.
So it has all that going on, and it’s the kickass soundtrack that helps the movie take flight, shall we say.
A huge reason for that is the inclusion of Queen’s soaring and rocking “One Vision.” How did one of the most successful rock bands of the era allow what’s arguably a Top 5 song of theirs on the soundtrack of a popcorn flick that might affectionately be called a poor kid’s Top Gun?
Find out more about the Iron Eagle soundtrack, #567 of the best 1,000 albums ever.
We mustn’t trouble ourselves with such head bending brain queries and simply accept the gifts that the Pop Cultural Sky Wizards bestow upon us sometimes.
The important thing here is that triangulating Iron Eagle and “One Vision” pulls me back to my 12-year-old self. A world where a day’s most important quest might be digging up a sufficient amount of cash (read: quarters) to bike down with my friends to the Huntington Square Mall in East Northport, Long Island so that we could play as much of the arcade game Mercs as our budget would allow.
If we were feeling rich and spendy, we’d also squeeze in some massive Slurpees at the 7-Eleven on Elwood Road before posting up at a friend’s house for a dip in the pool or Atari 2600 session.
And when all else failed, time to dip into the VHS collection, where another visit with Doug, Chappy, and friends might be awaiting.
What’s fascinating about “One Vision” is that it’s both incredibly serious and yet not serious at the same time. It’s a lot like Iron Eagle in that way. The beginning of the song gives you the feeling of being in an F-16’s cockpit, taking off to blue skies and missions of adventure and import.
The song throttles up expertly, so to speak, and by the time it’s fully in flight with an epic Brian May guitar riff and Freddie Mercury playing off the music expertly – a staccato verse flowing into a rousing and ‘80s power guitar chorus – we’re completely caught up in one of the better rock songs you’ll ever experience.
But it’s also fun as hell at the same time; it’s clear that this thing is a ride, dig?
And what punctuates the end of the roller coaster ride, the F-16 flight within our imaginations, is Mercury flipping our expectations entirely. We’re fully primed to land on the song title, ONE VISION, but instead we get this:
Just gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken
I always got such a kick out of that, and still do.
Fried chicken.
There’s something comforting about that turnabout, looking back, that clever twist of expectations from a dusty soundtrack to a nearly forgotten popcorn flick from 1986.
I’ve long been obsessed with wordplay, turns of phrase, cleverness in general. It’s one of my true passions, and something I’m sure pushed me in the direction of writing even when no one was telling me to.
Like right now.