So this movie has been my white whale for a long time. Back when Netflix first existed as a company that shipped red envelopes full of plastic around, it was one of the first movies I put into my queue to watch. And yet in October 2004, I wrote:

I’m just going to have to admit that I really don’t want to see Apocalypse Now. It’s been sitting at #1 on my Netflix queue for the last eight discs we’ve had out, and I just bumped more stuff in front of it because I don’t feel like it just yet.

Three years later, in May 2007, I followed up:

At some point, I’ll be forced to admit that I’m never going to watch Apocalypse Now. Seriously, it’s been in my Netflix queueueueueue for like three years now, and every time it gets near the top, I push it back down. It is this infuriating mix of being ostensibly good while being TOTALLY UNINTERESTING TO ME. Like, I expect I’ll enjoy it if/when I ever see it, but I don’t want that time to come any time soon.

Four years later, in February 2011, near the end of the era of the Netflix disc, I still held out hope:

Six plus years later, Apocalypse Now is still on my Netflix queue, and I’m still not admitting that I’m never going to watch it.

And now, after like 12 years from when I first intended to watch it, I actually have, and I can say:

it’s okay i guess

As much as I’d love to end this right there, I actually do have things I want to say about it.

  1. So this is the first Big Hollywood Movie (in the modern sense) that I’ve seen on my journey through this list. And it’s almost like those other movies have been training me to watch movies differently. Like, having watched so many movies that are notable because of photographic or editing techniques, that’s something that I’m just noticing and paying attention to more.

  2. I watched the “Redux” version of the movie, which adds in 49 minutes(!) of footage cut from the original film. Looking at what’s included in it, it’s a lot of rando stuff — like an interlude where the soldiers boink some Playmates that comes off really really weird — and I have the suspicion that the original cut was probably the better one, but I guess I’ll never know.

  3. Young famous actors are always weird. Like, objectively it’s clear that Martin Sheen had to have been young once, but it’s weird to actually see him looking like Charlie Sheen’s brother. And I guess Harrison Ford is no younger here than in Star Wars, but he seems younger.

  4. People have said at many times over the years that, oh, it’s not really a movie about Vietnam, it’s a retelling of Joseph Conrad etc. It might well be the latter, but it is absolutely 100% a movie about (a phantasmagorical version of) the Vietnam War.

  5. Overall, this was clearly a well made movie, but it’s also a movie about horrible people doing horrible things in horrible ways. This would probably appeal to the sort of people who watch shows about serial killers. Recommended if you like horrible things, but not to my taste. I’m glad to get the monkey off my back, but I will never, ever be tempted to watch this again.