Cruise Lines (Take My Breath Away)

Watching Top Gun: Maverick last year came with an unexpected ‘Take My Breath Away’, delivering a scene where typography played a starring role. On reflection, in the air-conditioned cinema on a warm Amsterdam July Midday with my visiting Dad, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to collapse the time and space of my being. At the half-way mark of the movie (where time and space went their separate ways again) Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell [Tom Cruise] is summoned to a conversation with his arch frenemy, Admiral Tom ‘Iceman’ Kasansky [Val Kilmer]. Things aren’t going well at Top Gun¹. A reluctant and pig-headed Maverick has been ordered to train a group of young hot-shot pilots—including the still-bitter son of his deceased wing-man—for an ostensibly impossible mission: To destroy an underground uranium enrichment plant situated below the surface of a crater, only accessible only through a steep valley that is heavily defended by ground and air weaponry. The ensuing conversation with Maverick takes place in Ice’s home office, where an ailing Ice is still managing to pull the Navy’s strings (he’s the one that got Maverick the job in the first place). Where art imitates (or catches up with) life, both Ice (in the film) and Val Kilmer (in real life) have contracted throat cancer, an operation on his trachea has damaged his vocal cords to the point where he has extreme difficulty speaking. Sitting in the dark, next to Dad eating ‘Maltesers’, projected in IMAX scale, at approximately 5000pt type², we watch Ice conducting their conversation via typed words on his desktop computer display. Ice’s sentences are economical, precise and provocatively conventional³.

*

FADE IN:

Tom ‘Iceman’ Kasansky’s [ICE] Home Office – Day

Pete ‘MAVERICK’ Mitchell quietly, nervously and respectfully enters ICE’s office. It is filled with memorabilia, photographs and books. A computer display and a telephone sit on his huge desk. MAVERICK sights ICE, who is reading a report of some kind, sitting at his desk. ICE’s breathing can be heard as a strained wheeze. He lightly coughs, it looks painful. ICE turns to acknowledge MAVERICK, he looks happy to see him. ICE, who has difficulty speaking, uses a computer to type his words, which appear on the display: White type on a black background, centre aligned. MAVERICK asks a question, ICE begins to type in reply…

MAVERICK

Admiral. How’s my wingman?

ICE

(In type)
I want to talk about work.

MAVERICK

Please, don’t worry about me. What can I do for you?

ICE (Insistently points back to the computer display, redirecting MAVERICK’s gaze)

I want to talk about work.

MAVERICK

Alright. (Pause)

Rooster’s still angry with me about what I did. I thought eventually he’d understand why. Hoped he’d forgive me.

ICE

(In type)
There’s still time.

MAVERICK

Mission is less than three weeks away. He’s not ready.

ICE

(In type)
Then teach him.

MAVERICK

He doesn’t want what I have to give. Ice please don’t ask me to send someone else to die. Please don’t. Don’t ask me to send him. Send me.

ICE

(In type)
It’s time to let go.

MAVERICK

(Long pause)
I don’t know how. (Exhales)

I’m not a teacher Ice. I’m a fighter pilot. Naval aviator. (Crying)

It’s not what I am, it’s who I am. How do I teach that? Even if I could teach it, it’s not what Rooster wants. It’s not what the Navy wants, that’s why they canned me the last time. The only reason that I’m here is you. If I send him on this mission, he might never come home and if I don’t send him he’ll never forgive me. Either way, I could lose him forever.

ICE

(In type)
It’s time to let go.

MAVERICK

(Exhales)
I know, I know.

ICE

(Quietly, strained, speaking)
The Navy needs Maverick. The kid needs Maverick.
That’s why I want you. That’s why you’re still here.

Both Maverick and Ice, in mutual respect, form an embrace.

MAVERICK

Thank you Ice.

ICE

(Quietly, strained, speaking)
One last thing, who’s the better pilot: You or Me?

MAVERICK

This is a nice moment, lets not ruin it.

Still in embrace, the camera pans out, ICE and MAVERICK’s conjoined silhouette is centred in shot.

CUT TO TOP GUN ACADEMY BRIEFING ROOM:

*

In nerdy excitement, as well as witnessing typography so visibly connected to a leading character’s ‘lines’ in a film, I also wondered what the font was. In the Navy pilot world most interactions happen through call-signs (Iceman, Maverick, Rooster, ‘Bob’…) and, like typography and fonts, they create a proxy for which information can be exchanged in both objective and subjective ways; communication is encoded in and carried by type, its object a relic of events and their reckoning. In this case (after some searching, help from a colleague and Reddit) I learned the font is Ibarra Real Nova (Semibold), published on Git Hub and Google Fonts in 2018 with an SIL Open Font License.

Just like Top Gun: Maverick, Ibarra Real Nova is a revival—a tracing of the past and a superimposition of the present. The opening scene of Top Gun: Maverick revives that of the original (music and all), of various activities—in cinematic twilight—on an aircraft carrier, with all the taking off and landing of fighter jets, communicative gesturing of crew, high-fiving and self-congratulatory adrenaline. The rest of the film, with slight narrative deviations and updates, pretty much follows suit⁵.

Ibarra Real Nova is a revival of a moveable type (Ibarra Real) designed originally for a luxury edition of Miguel de Cervantes epic Spanish novel Don Quixote, and printed in 1780 by Joaquín Ibarra for the ‘Real Academia de la Lengua’. Ibarra Real Nova celebrates ‘of one of the best examples of Spanish writing and Spanish printing’(6). Begun in 2015 Ibarra Real Nova is designed by José María Ribagorda and Octavio Pardo, it is one outcome of a larger project to revive Spain’s typographic heritage from the 18th Century. A revival (in film and in type) takes the context of the past and places it, through today’s technology, into the present. The 1700s were a century of prosperity for the Spanish Empire, however the century’s end sat on the cusp of its slow demise. The 300 year gap between Ibarra Real and Ibarra Real Nova result in a precise and thoughtful tracing of the original, augmented to support 390 languages and published on publicly accessible software, available to all who wish to use, as well as modify, it. Its design credits are supplemented by a litany of names, who have added to its character set, creating ornaments, etc. Technology enables and drives this heritage project while culturally, it’s design, and power dynamics, remain (albeit selectively) frozen in place.

In the, much-less-but-still-significant, 30 year gap between Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick present day’s technology introduces a catalytic narrative for the development of un-peopled aircraft; the future of warfare has no need for pilots/soldiers that need to eat, sleep, train or make impulsive decisions. “The end is inevitable Maverick, your kind is headed for extinction.” says Rear Admiral Chester ‘Hammer’ Cain [played by a gruff and chiselled Ed Harris]. This statement is Mavericks anathema, a threat to his kind and his ideology. Maverick counters: “Maybe so sir, but not today.” [guitar solo]. The possibilities (and threat) of automation exist, also, in the discipline of type design. Top Gun: Maverick also is credited for reinvigorating another fading empire—that of the Hollywood Studio system⁷. The use of Ibarra Real Nova here illustrates an interesting paradigm, under an SIL Open Font Licence the studio likely didn’t have to pay for the rights to use the font in the film, the main beneficiary here being Google Fonts⁸. Google (and companies of the like) also operate and are run a bit like Empires. On a relative scale buying a type license is peanuts for a film who’s reported production budget was $152 USD million, but we can revel in the $1.493 USD billion in return the movie has grossed since its release. Over at Google Fonts I see that their API (Application Programming Interface) shows Ibarra Real Nova being served nearly 5 million times last week⁹, its biggest audience being in the US of A.

A revival (in film and in type) might well both flatten and doggedly carry the latency of its past. In regards to the context of Empire in the time of Ibarra Real’s creation, we are now engaged in a Decolonial discourse, where notions of good/bad, right/wrong, benevolence/profit are being questioned to reveal conditions of sustained—systemic—exploitation. In turn our actions tend to reproduce the past (what we already know), making it hard to give other systems a chance to prove themselves. Ibarra Real Nova doesn’t mention this discourse in its description, probably not by any intentional omission but simply because its publishing sits adjacent to its benevolent narrative.

Likewise, the absence of a truly identifiable ‘enemy’ in Top Gun is poignant here, we can only guess who it could be—its a bit like no one could easily tell ‘on whose side Cervantes was’ on the publication of Don Quixote: its modern story-line being part social commentary, part tragedy—a persistent idea still underpinning much of our entertainments and designs. Ticking off the list of real-world nations that it might be,¹⁰ its outcome is more a patchwork of nations, ideas and perhaps aesthetics (geometric shapes, faceless pilots that never deliver dialogue) that threaten US hegemony—including those explored on the home front. There are much American flags, in all scales, in both films. In the exhilarating bubble of Top Gun, this leads us to conclude that the real enemy in the Top Gun movies is probably Maverick (and Tom Cruise) themselves. Herein lies a perverse kind of tragedy, *spoiler alert* Maverick never becomes a good teacher, instead he doubles down and leads the mission himself. It’s the only solution he knows, and is capable of delivering. As an audience, as a consumer, as a being, we zoom out from movie-world and are reminded: We are our own worst enemy. All this, leaving me—in the cool cinema (next to my Dad who is softly crying at the films happy ending/I have a lump in my throat)—merely trying to fill in and understand the vectors of my intuition (what is the font?). While simultaneously I’m confronted with the idea that my thoughts and operations are happening in a context where the contingency I search for falls apart, levelled in all-confused desire. I realise I’ve become captive of my own designs, or have cast a net that is too big to contain them¹¹. It’s pure entertainment and privilege, an affordable catharsis (Dad paid for the tickets).

“Maverick is Maverick, you can’t change Maverick. He is that guy. Period.”¹²

References