"Top Gun: Maverick": Is beefcake enough?

  

Link to the NSFW version

Remember the shirtless volleyball scene in Top Gun (1986)?  Who doesn't?  In an era when you rarely saw men's bodies on screen, except maybe a glimpse of chest while they were schtumping ladies, we got closeups of perfectly chiseled men, with no women anywhere around.  The Daily Beast says: "If you were a certain kind of teenage boy in 1986, the beach volleyball scene spoke directly to you.  And what it said was 'You're gay now.  Good luck.'" 

Of course, the guys themselves are written as straight; the main plot is a hetero-romance; Tom Cruise is aggressively homophobic.  The queer code was all in the beefcake.  Decider says that it "encompasses the sexual repression of the decade."

In 2022, a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, featured some of the original cast and actors playing their children.  The guys are still written as straight, with a hetero-romance as the main plot, and Tom Cruise is still aggressively homophobic.  Nevertheless, The Daily Beast calls it the "gayest movie of the year," due to a shirtless football scene.  40 years have passed, and we still get nothing but beefcake?

Ok, then, let's look at the beefcake.

1. Tom Cruise as "Maverick," the focus character in the original, now a flight instructor teaching other Top Guns.

2. Miles Teller, left , as "Rooster," son of his best friend in the original.

3, Jon Hamm, left, as "Cyclone," the commander.

4. Glen Powell  as "Hangman," a pilot

5. Ed Harris as "Hammer," Maverick's superior officer. 

6. Val Kilmer, left, as "Iceman," Maverick's former rival

More beefcake after the break

7. Lewis Pullman, left, as "Bob," a pilot.

8. Charles Parnell as "Warlock," the Big Boss

9. Bashir Salahuddin as "Hondo," Maverick's friend.

10. Danny Ramirez as "Fanboy," a pilot.

11. Jay Ellis, left, as "Payback," a pilot

12, Greg "Tarzan" Davis, left, as "Coyote," a pilot.

13. Manny Jacinto as "Fritz," a pilot.

14. Chido Nwokocha as Mission Control.

15.  Raymond Lee, left, as "Yale," a pilot

16. Jake Picking as "Yale," a pilot 

Bulges and butts on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

I got tired of searching for nude pics and finding only butts, usually while the guys are sexing ladies.. No dicks.  And the only beefcake in the actual movie is in the shirtless football scene.

Sorry, it's been 40 years, and I'm not a teenager anymore.  I want to see some gay romance.