The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 2GN 15
NEWS
This hasn’t aged well. The concept of
“getting” women does not fly any more:
using tricks to get a woman into bed,
while she pretends to be coy and resist-
ant. Flirtation, mostly, has equalised.
Eventually some women are allowed
to talk. “You’re a pilot,” says Charlie,
played by Kelly McGillis, to Maverick
when they meet. “That’s right,” he
replies, “a naval aviator”, which has got
to be the most irritating form of
mansplaining — a minor semantic correc-
tion, often of a job title. It happens.
I like Charlie. But I’m afraid when only
men write, produce and direct a film we
get their fantasy chick.
So Charlie is a flying instructor who
never leaves the ground. A kick-ass
teacher who wears a sexy secretary out-
fit, drives a fast car and has food on the
table for when Maverick decides he’s had
enough of playing sweaty topless volley-
ball with his friends.
On the surface, I liked their relation-
ship, it was flirtatious with a bit of tussle
and tension, though I found it a little tire-
some how desperate she was to help him.
“I’ll be here if you need me, OK,” she
purrs, begging to carry some of the emo-
tional burden after he loses his friend,
Goose, in action. Maverick won’t let her
help him. They have a fight. He walks out.
I’m bored with women translating
men’s feelings for them. We are made to
think it is a compliment — honoured that
we are trusted by a man to help him fig-
ure it all out — but it’s exhausting and dull.
Perhaps the worst lines are in the
“banter” between the pilots about who is
the best at flying planes, and which one of
them “nailed” which other “son of a
bitch” and who got a “hard on” when
they got close to the enemy in the sky.
Men distance themselves from locker-
room chat now. They don’t want any-
thing to do with it. What is considered
sexy has changed. Macho men in uniform
moving as a pack are no longer hot. Our
pin-ups are the emotionally tortured lit-
erature graduates of Sally Rooney novels
who can’t look you in the eye.
Overall, I thought it was jolly and
exciting and it made me laugh — but
mostly at the bits Tony, Jim, Jack, Warren,
Jerry, Bill and Don didn’t intend to be
funny.
@meganagnewEvery woman in Top Gun (1986) is there
to be shagged, impregnated or widowed.
They cook a nice dinner and don’t mind if
you’re late. They drape themselves over
you at bars, desperate for a whiff of petrol
and power. They cry when you die.
I watched Top Gun for the first time
this week, downloaded from Amazon
Prime for £5.99. I recognised the sound-
track, the aviator sunglasses and Tom
Cruise, the dinky little pilot Maverick, but
not much else. So I wanted to see how, in
the cold light of 2022, it held up.
At 27, I suppose I am part of Generation
Outrage. We refuse to watch movies or lis-
ten to music deemed offensive. But I find
hindsight-cancellation a bit pedantic.
Time moves forward. Films age. Charac-
ters, 30 years later, are clunky or insult-
ing. This is a sign of progress.
You can enjoy a show for what it is.
Still, it’s fun to slag things off. So let’s look
at the Top Gun line-up.
Directing, writing and production
credits go to: a Tony, a Jim, a Jack, a
Warren, a Jerry, a Bill and a Don.
The first appearance of a woman is a
photo of a wife and some kids, owned by
Maverick’s best friend, Goose, propped
up in the cockpit of his plane. The first
appearance of a living woman is a bare
thigh through the slit of a dress, while the
owner of the leg drinks at a bar. “This is
what I call a target-rich environment,”
says Maverick as they walk in, surveying
the ladies on a Friday night. They place a
bet: $20 for whoever has “carnal
knowledge of a lady in the premises”.
MEGAN
AGNEW
The fighter jets are back, with
Tom Cruise embarking on a
daring mission to blow up
America’s enemies and save
the world — but his co-star,
Kelly McGillis, is not.
While Top Gun: Maverick,
to be released on Wednesday,
brings back Val Kilmer, 62, his
voice enhanced by artificial
intelligence after throat
cancer, she is nowhere to be
seen.
McGillis, 64, who played
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s
flight instructor and love
interest, Charlotte “Charlie”
Blackwood, in the 1986 film,
was asked if she had been
approached for the sequel.
“Oh my God, no. I’m old
and I’m fat and I look age-
appropriate for what my age
is, and that is not what that
whole scene is about,” she
told Entertainment Tonight in- “I’d much rather feel
absolutely secure in my skin
and who and what I am at my
age, as opposed to placing a
value on all that other stuff.”
Jerry Bruckheimer, the
producer of both films, said
that they did not consider
bringing McGillis back for the
sequel, which stars Jennifer
Connelly, 51, as Penny,
Maverick’s new love interest.
“That was a previous thing
and we wanted to do the
Penny thing. It never entered
into the discussions,” he said.
Asked if this was because
Maverick was unlikely to
have spent 30 years
with one woman, he
replied: “Exactly.
He’s a loner.”
Hollywood has
long had an issue
with casting older
women. Maggie
Gyllenhaal, 44, the
Dark Knight
actress, told The
Wrap celebrity news
site that when she was
37 she was told she was
too old to play the
lover of a man who was - “It was astonishing
You can be my
wingman at any age —
but where are the
older love interests?
to me. It made me feel bad,
and then it made me feel
angry, and then it made me
laugh.”
Dame Helen Mirren said in
2015 that film casting
decisions were “f***ing
outrageous”. “We all watched
James Bond as he got more
and more geriatric, and his
girlfriends got younger and
younger. It’s so annoying.”
While half of male
characters in last year’s top
Hollywood productions were
aged 40 or above, only 30 per
cent of female characters
were, according to the Center
for the Study of Women in
Television and Film at San
Diego State University. Eleven
per cent of male protagonists
were over 60 compared with
6 per cent of female leads.
After Top Gun McGillis was
touted as Hollywood’s next
big star but she struggled
with alcoholism and was in a
succession of flops. She left
Hollywood after the birth of
her daughters, Kelsey, now
31, and Sonora, 29.
In the wake of #MeToo,
actors are more aware of age
disparities. Laura Dern was
23 and Sam Neill two decades
her senior in Jurassic Park in- In an interview in
today’s Culture magazine
about their new film, Jurassic
World Dominion, Neill, 74,
said that at the time it was “a
completely appropriate age
difference for a leading man
and lady”. He only realised it
might be a problem later.
“Well, it felt completely
appropriate to fall in love
with Sam Neill,” said
Dern, 55. “It was only
now, when we
returned in a
moment of
cultural
awareness about
the patriarchy,
that I was like,
‘Wow! We’re not
the same age?’”
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the new filmAs Top Gun’s sequel soars into cinemas, our
writer, 27, watched the original and found
it very funny... where it didn’t mean to be
Macho banter and passive
women just don’t fly today
Acceptable in the Eighties, Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise in the original Top GunPARAMOUNT/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKThe bestselling author Simon
Singh is putting £1 million of
his own money into creating
the world’s biggest maths
circle to help develop a new
scientific elite in the UK.
“I want to be the Joe Wicks
of maths,” says Singh, who is
launching the venture next
week with Junaid Mubeen, an
Oxford maths graduate and a
past winner of the TV quiz
show Countdown.
Having made a fortune
from his books, Singh, 57,
who wrote the bestseller
Fermat’s Last Theorem, wants
to transform attitudes to
mathematics in Britain,
where it is seen as acceptable
to joke about being useless at
the subject.
Maths circles started in
Bulgaria, then spread to
Sian Griffiths
Education Editor
Russia, where children queue
to join them in the evenings,
and mathematicians are
treated as stars.
Called Parallel Circles, the
scheme will offer free online
sessions that will involve
children getting together with
a mentor to solve problems.
Anyone anywhere in the
world can join, says Singh,
and the aim is to boost
children’s mathematical
curiosity and develop a love
of maths in everyone.
Singh’s online maths
circles will be hosted on a
website (parallel.org.uk) each
Sunday and Monday evening.
There will initially be four
circles each week, aimed at
students aged from nine to 18.
The motto is ‘be there or
be a regular quadrilateral’,
and the founders hope to sign
up one million children by
the end of the first year,making it the biggest maths
circle in the world.
Singh said: “What we are
failing at miserably [in
Britain] is we do not have
many strong students.
“Qualified maths teachers
are like gold dust here. We do
not nurture that concept of
excellence. We are bad at
inspiring every kid who gets
excited by pi, or who thinks
googolplex is amazing.”
Singh’s was the first
generation in his family to go
to university. His mother,
Swaran Kaur, 92, is illiterate.
Hannah Fry, the TV
presenter and associate
professor in the mathematics
of cities at University College
London, said the new maths
circle was “a great
opportunity for students to
go beyond school maths and
really stretch themselves”.
@SianGriffithsWe get their
fantasy chick
It started nearly a decade ago
in New York, when a
croissant met a doughnut and
the world went wild for their
lovechild, the cronut.
According to experts, this
was the beginning of our
obsession with “hybrid
foods”. Now we might have
the most extreme mash-up
yet: cheese and onion crisps,
in a bar of milk chocolate.
The crisp brand Tayto
manufactured a limited
edition of 480,000 bars,
which sold out in shops in
Northern Ireland in just three
weeks. The £1 bars are now
being sold on eBay for £5.
for two — a mark-up of almost
300 per cent.
“It’s genius,” said
Professor Barry Smith,
taste researcher at the
University of London. “The
human brain likes
contrast in taste and
texture — this has both.”
Megan Agnew and onion crisps because in
1954, it invented them. It was
the first company in the
world to put the flavour —
otherwise found in pies and
sandwiches — into a powder
form and on to crisps.
Then there’s the texture.
“Crisps are really the only
ingredient that has an
immediate quick and noisy
crunch, because they fracture
in a number of ways and
shapes, which you can go on
chewing,” continued Smith.
“Your tongue will be
chasing down all those little
bits of crunchy crisp,
alongside the smoothness of
the chocolate across your
tongue, which feels like
you’re being stroked.
“So there will be a lot of
activity in your mouth.”
Sadly, there is a catch. One
50g Tayto chocolate bar
contains 16.95g of
fat, and a total of
225 calories.
Its secret ingredient, said
Greg Tucker, a food
psychologist, is the “yuck
factor”. He said: “What’s
exciting is that the two
flavours are almost 100 per
cent known, which is
comforting to us, but you
have no idea what they’re
going to do together, which is
thrilling.”
New flavours stimulate a
dopamine response in us
“because it’s a risk-reward”,
Tucker said. “Your reptilian
brain thinks: this could be
poisonous, I don’t know what
this is. Then you like it and
you survive, so the threat
goes away. It is a frisson of
risk, which gives you a
wonderful rush.”
It is also great for
marketing. “Consumers get
curious,” said Lisa Harris,
from Harris and Hayes food
and drink consultancy. “It is a
stunt product which gives
them permission to indulge.”
Editorial, page 22Cheese and onion
chocolate has a similar sweet-
salt mix to peanut butter and
jam, pineapple on pizza and
salted caramel.
“First you get the fatty
sugar of the milk chocolate,”
said Smith. “Next the onion, a
bright note, a sharp stinging,
a nippiness, which actually
comes through your nose,
and finally you have the
umami of the cheese, a deep,
rich meatiness. All those
different flavours are so
different that they match.”
Tayto is known for cheeseWorldwide maths circle adds up to fun
ggggggggggggggggg yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyThe bars are being sold
online for £5.95 for two1 Using the numbers 100,
75, 50, 25, 6, 3 and the
standard operations
(addition, subtraction,
multiplication and
division), make 952.
2 What is the only positive
whole number that lies
immediately between a
square number and a
cube number?MATHS PUZZLESSolutions100 + 3 = 103 1(6 x 75) ÷ 50 = 9103 x 9 = 927927 + 25 = 952If you list the squares 2and the cubes then youcan see that 26 is rightabove a square number,25, and right below acube number, 27Choc and awe: chocolate bar with
cheese and onion crisps inside