Apocalypse Now: Film Comparison

Paper 2 I chose to compare these two films after noticing Apocalypse Now on our suggestion list. I had heard of Platoon but had never had the opportunity to see it. I am interested in films about the Vietnam War because my Grandfather served two tours in Vietnam as a pilot. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1987) both are very powerful films that have their separate and distinct ways of interpreting warfare. These films both present unforgettable visual images of the dark side of war and of the human soul. In Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola tells the story of U.S. Special Forces intelligence officer Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) the protagonist, who is ordered to travel to Cambodia via a Navy patrol boat for the purpose of assonating U.S. Special Forces Colonel Walter Kurtz the antagonist who is a highly decorated war hero that has gone insane and has established his own little kingdom in the jungle of Cambodia just across the Vietnam border murdering the native population indesinently without cause or orders. We learn Willard has assonated others in the past and this is why he was chosen for this mission.

The film Apocalypse Now was filmed using an expressive almost quasi-documentary style. Many of the film's scenes

The main theme of Platoon is also good vs. evil. Who should Taylor follow, the savage Colonel Kurtz-like Sergeant Barnes or the more humanistic Staff Sergeant Elias? Taylor is impressionable, and certainly not immune to the horrors he sees. He witnesses Barnes cause the unlawful massacre of villagers and get away with it. This injustice starts him down a path of drug usage with another platoon member to escape the horrors of war. There are several horrific battle scenes portrayed in this