" Top Gun isn't just about falling in line with the military. Hell no! It's about rebelling against it, too! Because that's what real men are like, you see. A real man isn't a pencil pusher - he's the lone wolf, the renegade, the MAVERICK. Real men ride their motorcycles against a sunset into the danger zone. Women have sex with the mavericks, but men ARE the mavericks. High five low five! Yeah! And just in case that isn't entirely clear in the script, Tom Cruise's character's name is, of course, Maverick (real men also don't bother with fey subtlety). "

― Hadley Freeman , Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies (And Why We Don't Learn Them From Movies Any More)