YMMV / Apocalypse Now

• Adaptation Displacement: This movie is considerably more well-known than the book it's based on. It helps that it gives a Setting Update that merely follows the same beats as the novel (which is set in 19th century Africa).
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Kurtz's philosophy combines with this and Alternate Aesop Interpretation. Kurtz makes a lot of statements about how they just have to abandon all restraint to destroy the enemy but everything Willard encountered so far doesn't show the United States showing any restraint. Also, Colonel Kurtz isn't making any positive inroads in fighting the Viet Cong because he's fighting in Cambodia (which famously was a major strategic error of the war). A decent argument is victory comes at too high a price and the only way to "win" is to stop fighting.
    Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
    Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.
  • While Coppola created the character of Colonel Kilgore to be an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight, 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 affecting 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 Obfuscating Stupidity Bunny-Ears Lawyer.
• Award Snub:
  • The film lost the Best Picture Academy Award to Kramer vs. Kramer. Granted, Kramer vs. Kramer is regarded as one of the best legal/courtroom dramas ever and was the highest-grossing film of 1979 in the United States and Canada, however, nowadays, Apocalypse Now is frequently ranked as one of the best films of all time and the best war movie ever in polls such as the American Film Institute and Sight and Sound, and tends to be far better remembered than Kramer vs. Kramer. Many also see this film a victim of timing, given that The Deer Hunter had won Best Picture the previous year, and the Academy likely wanted to avoid giving the prize to two Vietnam War films in as many years — a situation that would happen again a few years later when Platoon won big at the 1986 Academy Awards, only for Full Metal Jacket to be almost totally ignored at the following year's awards.
  • Robert Duvall's loss for Best Supporting Actor could also be seen as this. Granted, Melvyn Douglas was great in Being There, but Colonel Kilgore has unquestionably become a more iconic figure in American cinema (with some referring to it as the best performance of Duvall's career). Duvall winning a Golden Globe and BAFTA for his performance makes his Oscar loss even more jarring.
  • Martin Sheen also failed to earn a Best Actor nomination.
  • Despite being nominated for a Grammy Award, a BAFTA and winning the Golden Globe, the film's score was not nominated at the Academy Awards.
• Awesome Music: "The End" by The Doors, and of course Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
• Broken Base: 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). The original cut of the film ended with Willard answering the radio, using the codeword he'd told Chef was necessary for calling in the airstrike followed by the jungle temple set being destroyed by explosions. This was universally interpreted by the audience as Willard fulfilling Kurtz's last request, "Drop the bomb, exterminate the brutes" by calling in US airpower to annihilate Kurtz's followers. However this was never Coppola's intention and the Redux version was re-edited to imply that Willard simply turned off the radio.
• Crazy Is Cool: Colonel Kilgore shrugs off explosions and his major concern is clearing a beach site... in order to surf. Enough said, he has a trope named after him.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The helicopter attack scene. The usage of the Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" was intended to invoke the Nazis, but since the scene is cinematographically awesome the carnage tends to be overlooked and much misaimed fandom ensued.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Kurtz receives a disturbing amount of apologetics from some in the fandom.
  • Colonel Kilgore may be awesome, but people conveniently forget that the whole point of the attack he orders (with the "Ride of the Valkyries" and the "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" monologue) is to clear a populated area of both civilians as well as enemy combatants because it was home to a beach that he thought would be a great place to surf.
• Franchise Original Sin: On a meta-level, this film's notorious Troubled Production was the first major sign that the New Hollywood era was heading for a crash. Because it was a critical and commercial success that seemed to justify the faith that United Artists put in Coppola, the warning signs of what happens when studios hand out Auteur Licenses and Protection from Editors too freely were ignored, and problems continued to fester in the late '70s until they reached critical mass.
• Hard-to-Adapt Work: The story is pretty much hard to adapt beyond its movie form. A Tie-In Novel would have expanded the story unnecessarily.
• Ho Yay: The photojournalist's worshipful admiration of Kurtz can easily come off as this.
• Improved By The Recut: The 2019 Final Cut is widely considered a major improvement over the 2001 Redux edition and even the 1979 theatrical cut, taking the content that was added in Redux and trimming it down by shortening some scenes and removing others outright. Consequently, while the theatrical and Redux versions respectively hold critics' scores of 98% and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes (with audience scores similarly coming in at 94% and 91%), the Final Cut holds a solid 100%.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Many of the film's Signature Lines are now popular / internet culture.
    • "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
    • "Charlie don't surf!"
    • "The horror, the horror..."
    • "Terminate with extreme prejudice" (not invented by the movie, but popularized by it)
    • "I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor..."
  • Kurtz's facepalm◊ has become synonymous of epic fail.
  • Willard's underwear dance in the beginning to The Doors' "The End", and much of his narration in that scene.
    Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon.
• Misaimed Fandom: The helicopter attack scene. The use of Wagner music was actually intended to invoke The Birth of a Nation, yet some still mistake it and the carnage as something positive.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • What the helicopter raid on the village was intended to be. What some viewers took it as, however... The village qualifies as a legitimate military target, as it's stated outright to be a Viet Cong outpost, then seen to be heavily defended, and even has several female combatants — in civilian clothing, no less — throwing a grenade into a medivac chopper, but then again the actual reasons for the attack (Colonel Kilgore and his bloody surfing) demean it all. Tellingly, Willard speculates afterwards that for the military brass to put a contract out on Kurtz, Kurtz must've done something to make Kilgore's hedonistic strike look anywhere near perfectly acceptable.
  • The Viet Cong's mercifully offscreen hacking the limbs off children who received vaccines from western doctors. Kurtz' recounting of it suggests the sheer evilness of their actions set in motion his Start of Darkness.
• Music to Invade Poland to: The Ride of the Valkyries scene.
• Older Than They Think: The premise of the movie, as well as the famous line, "The horror... the horror...", are taken directly from Heart of Darkness.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • 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 Mutations.^note He's played by Jerry Ziesmer, the film's assistant director.
  • Roach, a soldier who single-handedly kills a VC soldier in the dark distance with a grenade launcher, without being able to see him.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • The film's Troubled Production - so infamous that 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.
  • Marlon Brando's performance tends to be overshadowed by his on-set behavior - showing up overweight, not having read the book or script, refusing to be on set with Dennis Hopper, his drunkenness resulting in the ending being changed. This is usually the first film mentioned if the topic is brought up of how difficult he could be on set.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Harrison Ford filmed his part right before A New Hope made him a household name (although American Graffiti had given him some positive attention, too). He was much better known by the time the film actually came out.
  • Laurence Fishburne of course would go on to have a significant career as an adult, most famously as Morpheus in The Matrix.
  • Scott Glenn is Captain Colby. He has one scene in both the theatrical cut and the Redux version, but has more screentime in the workprint.
  • R. Lee Ermey has an uncredited role as Colonel Kilgore's helicopter pilot during the assault on the village, years before he achieved international fame with his role in Full Metal Jacket.
• Signature Scene: The Ride of the Valkyries scene
• Special Effect Failure: The helicopter missiles in the helicopter attack look very much like fireworks, not actual missiles.
• Spiritual Adaptation: To Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Coppola was very much aware of this; the book was required reading for the entire cast (though Marlon Brando infamously slacked off on this), and Shout Outs abound, from Kurtz's name to his "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner.
  • Also, Cracked claimed in its article that the film is an adaptation of the 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
• Tear Jerker:
  • 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 what's 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. What was the girl running at him for? To protect a puppy she had hidden in one of the cargo containers. Worse still, Chief sees that the girl remains 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.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: As noted, many of the people involved in this film were drunk or high during production.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The helicopter attack. Actual bridges, houses, helicopters, and trucks spanning an entire shoreline were blown up for this scene.
• The Woobie:
  • 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.

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