User:Stephenfisher2001/sandbox/ApocalypseNow

AUTHOR's NOTE: This is a sandbox intended to be for a major revamp of the page for Apocalypse Now, with the WIR and BQ sections will be mostly redone. I will not revamp the page until I feel that it is ready.

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic psychological Vietnam War film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by Coppola and John Milius, starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, and Martin Sheen. It was loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness. It was originally going to directed by George Lucas, but he later became unavailable Coppola took over directorial control and was influenced by Aguirre, the Wrath of God in his approach to the material. It was supposed to be a five-month shot, unfortunately, these problems included expensive sets being destroyed by severe weather, Brando showing up on set overweight and completely unprepared, and Sheen having a breakdown and suffering a near-fatal heart attack while on location. Problems continued after production as the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited over a million feet of film.

When the film was finally released on August 15, 1979, it received mixed-to-critical acclaim and it was widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, if not to be the best Vietnam War film ever. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards at the 52nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Supporting Actor for Duvall, and went on to win for Best Cinematography and Best Sound. In 2001, an extended cut, Apocalypse Now Redux, was released that restored 49 minutes of deleted scenes, though in 2019, it was released as The Final Cut that removes much of French plantation scenes. The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2000.

Plot
It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him. Willard sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group that eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The film stays faithful to the spirited of the novel, Heart of Darkness.
 * 2) Very dark, and an edgy story that it managed to fit extremely well in a Coppola's war film.
 * 3) The film gave amazing performances as Vietnam War characters in Vietnam War-era standards, such as Marlon Brando, who is played as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who is a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces officer with the 5th Special Forces Group who goes rogue. He runs his own military unit based in Cambodia and is feared as much by the U.S. military as by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
 * 4) Francis Ford Coppola still gives a lot of amazing directing experience in a war-theme era.
 * 5) The cinematography is very breathtaking (and oftentimes disturbing).
 * 6) Tons of amazing action sequences, such as a very iconic scene where a group of allies
 * 7) Lots of iconic dialogue and scenes. Some of the dialogue, especially Kurtz's, was notably ad-libbed.
 * 8) It has a very eerie and haunting soundtrack that boosts the film's atmosphere. The movie also makes great usage of "The End" by The Doors and Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".
 * 9) All around excellent sound design, which showcases many surround sound systems beautifully.
 * 10) The uniforms, weapons, and vehicles used are very much accurate and feel authentic that it fits the Vietnam War film, at all.
 * 11) The film has very memorable quotes such as "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." and "The horror... the horror..."

Bad Qualities

 * 1) As iconic as the helicopter raid scene is, it ended up polarizing audiences because of its cinematography and usage of "Ride of the Valkyries". To this day, people are divided over whether the film is pro-war or anti-war because of this scene.
 * 2) The rather long French plantation scene in Redux was also met with polarizing reception. The Final Cut remedied this.
 * 3) The movie used to have an end credits sequence, but it got removed because the audiences misinterpreted it as Kurtz's compound getting blown up by a U.S. airstrike, which wasn't Coppola's intention (the film was shot in the Philippines and the government required that the set be destroyed; Coppola decided to capture footage of the set's demolition and chose to use it as a graphical background).

Original version
Apocalypse Now has received critical acclaim, with a 98% based on 94 reviews, with an average rating of 8.97/10. The website's critics consensus reads: 'Francis Ford Coppola's haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.'. On Metacritic, it has a 94/100 based on 15 critics, indicating 'universal acclaim'. Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, added the film to his Great Movies list and considered it to be the finest Vietnam War film ever made.

Redux version
The Redux version received similar critical acclaim from critics, audiences, and fans of the original version, though some critics that the Redux version is deemed inferior to the original cut, it has a 93% rating based on 82 reviews, with an average rating of 7.78/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "The additional footage slows down the movie somewhat (some say the new cut is inferior to the original), but Apocalypse Now Redux is still a great piece of cinema. On Metacritic, it has a 92/100 based on 39 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Roger Ebert wrote: "Longer or shorter, redux or not, Apocalypse Now is one of the central events of my life as a filmgoer."

Box Office
The film also performed well at the box office, grossing $150 million worldwide out of a $31 million budget.

Awards and nominations
The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, and has won two Academy Awards, Best Sound (for Walter Murch, Mark Berger, Richard Beggs and Nathan Boxer) and Best Cinematography for Vittorio Storaro.

It also won three Golden Globe Awards: Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Duvall, and Best Original Score for Carmine and Francis Ford Coppola, not to mention two British Academy Film Awards (Best Supporting Actor for Robert Duvall and Best Direction for Coppola) and earning a spot on the AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies list, ranking at #30.

Videos
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Redux reviews
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Trivia

 * The usage of Ride of the Valkyries was supposed to invoke that the gunship crew were the villains, as Wagner's music was a favourite of Nazis and was often blasted through concentration camps (Wagner himself was not a Nazi, as he died before Hitler was even born)
 * Due to there being no film processing laboratories in the Philippines at the time, Coppola did not see a single second of the film before he returned to the States, meaning he shot the film blind. He had to sort through hundreds of hours of film, and post production took two years.
 * The reason The Godfather got a TV adaptation was because Francis needed the budget for this film.
 * The film had a notoriously troubled production, during which Martin Sheen suffered a near-fatal heart attack, Dennis Hopper got Laurence Fishburne addicted to heroin, and Francis Ford Coppola attempted to kill himself, amongst other setbacks. Coppola even said during the film's premiere in the Cannes Film Festival that "my film is not about Vietnam; it is Vietnam". The production and its problems were chronicled in the 1991 documentary film, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.
 * Laurence Fishburne was only fourteen years old when the shooting began in March 1976, as he had lied about his age in order to get cast in his role. The film took so long to finish that Fishburne was seventeen (the same age as his character) by the time it was released in 1979.