In the 35 years since its initial release, director Tony Scott’s Top Gun has become a classic of ’80s action cinema: the star vehicle that rocketed a then-24-year-old Tom Cruise to the top of Hollywood’s A-list, triggered a military-recruiting boom, and immortalized the line of dialogue “I feel the need — the need for speed!” But over that time, the action thriller has also developed a secondary prestige: the “gayest movie ever made.” With its lingering shots of cast members — including Val Kilmer, Rick Rossovich, and Anthony Edwards oiled up for a Bruce Weber–esque game of beach volleyball — the 1986 film lays bare the homosocial world of naval aviators and pulses with an undeniable homoerotic energy. The critic Pauline Kael called the movie a “shiny homoerotic commercial: The pilots strut around the locker room, towels hanging precariously from their waists.” Quentin Tarantino, for his part, riffed on Top Gun’s perceived “subversion” and pro-gay subtext in a cameo in the 1994 dramedy Sleep With Me. “You think it’s a story about a bunch of fighter pilots. It is the story of a man’s struggle with his own homosexuality,” Tarantino says in the movie.
