So remember how when Apocalypse Now came up, I mentioned that I don’t really like Vietnam war movies, and that everyone said that Apocalypse Now wasn’t really one, but then it turned out that it was really one, and that was v. disappointing?

Well, now that I’ve seen Platoon[1], I understand where they were coming from, because compared to this trite piece of shit, Apocalypse Now is not a war movie at all.

So this is literally like every fucking Vietnam war movie cliche in existence, strung together pointlessly and hateably. I hated it. It was awful.

  1. Strictly speaking, I have not seen Platoon. So here’s the deal: I started streaming it on Hulu, and over like four sittings, managed to get, idk, 60-70% through it, brutally psyching myself up for the awful experience every time, because of how hateable it is.

    And then I let it lie fallow for a few weeks, because I couldn’t bear to bring myself to watch it, but today I kicked it back into gear… only to discover that it’s gone from Hulu. And indeed every streaming service. So to finish watching this movie (that I hate), I would have to deal with the annoyance of non-copyright-respecting libraries’ bad UI or pay $3 to rent it. AND THEN I would need to try to figure out where I was, which realistically probably means rewatching 20 minutes of the movie in little segments before I could be like “oh yeah, I remember this part, further than that.” And then at the end of all that, my reward is more fucking Platoon to watch.

    And so this broke me. I couldn’t make myself do it. I resolutely watched all seven hours of Sátántangó. I sat through the incomprehensible Armenian troubadour allegory of The Color of Pomegranates. But here at last, I have come to a movie that I just will not finish, because it’s too goddamn sucky to watch.

    Anyway, though, I feel like I get the point that the movie was making, and probably got it long before I started watching the movie, so I figure it’s okay. ↩︎