History YMMV / ApocalypseNow

* TheWoobie: Clean. He's the youngest of the crew, who is shot to death- all while listening to a recorded message, sent to him from his family back at home.
** The puppy, who is presumably shot to death (offscreen), shortly after losing its original owner.

%%* TrueArtIsAngsty

* BrokenBase: ''Redux'', which is either loved or hated by fans of the film. In particular, the long interlude at the French plantation causes extreme disagreement among viewers. It either messes with the pacing and makes the film overlong, or else gives much needed context for what's going on (Coppola didn't want to cut it for this reason).

* CrazyIsCool : ColonelKilgore [[StrollingThroughTheChaos shrugs off explosions]] and his major concern is clearing a beach site... in order to [[SkewedPriorities surf]]. Enough said, he has a trope named after him.

* TheWoobie: Tyrone. He's the youngest of the crew, who is shot to death- all while listening to a recorded message, sent to him from his family back at home.

** The movie gets summed up as Creator/RobertDuvall showing up with his Wagnerian helicopters and other crazy antics, and then Creator/MarlonBrando emerging from the shadows and monologuing. But there are two legitimate one-scene wonders:
*** Jerry, the civilian in Willard's briefing, has only one line of dialogue, but it makes your blood run cold: "Terminate...with extreme prejudice," which has become one of the movie's {{Memetic Mutation}}s.[[note]]He's played by Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director.[[/note]]
*** Roach, a soldier who single-handedly kills a VC soldier in the dark distance ''with a grenade launcher, without being able to see him''.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: On a meta level, this film's notorious TroubledProduction was the first major sign that the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era was heading for a crash. Because it was a critical and commercial success that seemed to justify the faith that Creator/UnitedArtists put in Coppola, the warning signs of what happens when studios hand out {{Auteur License}}s and ProtectionFromEditors too freely were ignored, and problems continued to fester in the late '70s until they reached critical mass.

** Willard's underwear dance in the beginning to The Doors' "The End", and much of his his narration in that scene.

* MisaimedFandom: The helicopter attack scene. Use of the Wagner music was actually intended to invoke ''Film/{{The Birth of a Nation|1915}}'', yet some still mistake it and the carnage as something positive.

** The movie gets summed up as Creator/RobertDuvall showing up with his Wagnerian helicopters and other crazy antics, and then Creator/MarlonBrando emerging from the shadows and monologuing. But there are two legitimate one scene wonders:
*** Jerry, the civilian in Willard's briefing, who has only one line of dialogue, but it makes your blood run cold: "Terminate...with extreme prejudice," which has become one of the movie's {{Memetic Mutation}}s.[[note]]He's played by Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director.[[/note]]
*** Roach, a soldier who single handedly kills a VC soldier in the dark distance ''with a grenade launcher, without being able to see him''.

--> Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon.

* MusicToInvadePolandTo: The aforementioned ''Ride of the Valkyries'' scene. See MisaimedFandom above.

** The Viet Cong's [[OffstageVillainy mercifully offscreen]] hacking the limbs off children who received vaccines from western doctors. Kurtz' recounting of it suggest the sheer evilness of their actions [[HeroicBSOD set in motion]] his StartOfDarkness.

*** Jerry, the civilian in Willard's briefing, who has only one line of dialogue, but it makes your blood run cold: "Terminate... with extreme prejudice." Which has become one of the movie's {{Memetic Mutation}}.[[note]]He's played by Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director.[[/note]]
*** Roach. A soldier who single handedly kills a VC soldier in the distance ''with a grenade launcher, without seeing him''.

** The film's TroubledProduction - so infamous it spawned a documentary about just that - is what has helped it go down in history. Some people forget that the film was a major critical success despite the hell that the filmmakers went through.
** Creator/MarlonBrando's performance tends to be overshadowed by his on-set behavior - showing up overweight, not having read the book, refusing to be on set with Creator/DennisHopper, his drunkenness resulting in the ending being changed. This is usually the first film mentioned if the topic of how difficult he could be on set is brought up.

** Creator/HarrisonFord filmed his part right before ''Film/ANewHope'' made him a household name (although ''Film/AmericanGraffiti'' had given him some positive attention too). He was better known by the time the film actually came out.
** Creator/LaurenceFishburne of course would go on to have a significant career as an adult - most famously as Morpheus in ''Film/TheMatrix''.

** Also Website/{{Cracked}} claimed in [[https://www.cracked.com/article_28857_8-classic-movies-that-unintentionally-remade-other-ones.html its article]] that the film is an adaptation of the 1972 film ''Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod''.

** [[spoiler: The deaths of all three of Willard's companions are depressing. Chef never wanted to die in such an evil place, Chief lived just long enough to be torn apart by what's happened to the group. But especially heart-wrenching is Clean's death. The recording of his mother plays, telling him to be careful and that his family misses him, as his corpse just lays there while Chief mourns him. There's also the puppy's immediate disappearance afterwards, which further adds salt to the wound.]]
** The sampan massacre. The teenage girl runs toward Chef while he's inspecting the sampan, spooking Clean and leading to him gunning down all of the boat's occupants in a panic. And what was the girl running at him for? [[spoiler:To protect a puppy she had hidden in one of the cargo containers]]. Worse still, Chief sees that the girl is still barely alive and wants to bring her to friendly territory for medical care, but Willard coldly puts another bullet in her and simply says "I told you not to stop, now let's go". An already-distraught Chef breaks down completely.

** Jerry, the civilian in Willard's briefing, who has only one line of dialogue, but it makes your blood run cold: "Terminate... with extreme prejudice." Which has become one of the movie's {{Memetic Mutation}}.[[note]]He's played by Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director.[[/note]]
** Roach. A soldier who single handedly kills a VC soldier in the distance ''with a grenade launcher, without seeing him''.

** While Coppola created the character of Colonel Kilgore to be an AxCrazy BloodKnight, there's an argument to be made he's doing his job as an officer to keep his men's morale up and keep the defeatist attitude hanging over other units in the movie from effecting them. The location he attacked was an actual Viet Cong outpost after all and he attempted to get the survivors medical attention. In this case, he's just a ObfuscatingStupidity BunnyEarsLawyer.