The theatrical cut is significantly better. There are some interesting scenes in Redux, although the cumulative effect is to make the film feel bloated.

The dinner scene kills the intensity a bit. The other scenes are fine. It's one of the best films of all time so if you didn't enjoy it you probably just have shitty taste

The final third is a bit muddled regardless of cut. Redux is interesting for the hardcore fan, but doesn’t really warrant repeated viewing, that stuff was cut for a reason. I prefer original release, the first two thirds being just about perfect.

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Just stick to the Theatrical Cut. Every other cut just makes the movie laborious.

Do yourself a favor, forget the movie and watch "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse", a doc about the nightmarish making of this movie, narrated by his wife. It is, to many, far more engrossing than the actual movie

I love that scene for how it breaks up the intensity. Feels like the drinking scene in Inglorious Basterds a little bit.

You definitely watched the wrong cut for your first viewing.

But it's purposeful muddling. As it approaches the climax, things get more confusing. It's a statement about how fucked up the Vietnam War was and how fucked up Kurtz' state of mind was.

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>forget the movie and watch "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse"
>
>It is, to many, far more engrossing than the actual movie

This is such a film school answer.

It's also not wrong.

Lol, I was gonna say the same thing… this is the one occasion where it’s absolutely the better choice of viewing though… Hearts of Darkness is great

Guess who has TWO thumbs and really needs to see 2019 version: back story- I saw the original at a drive-in with my parents. Loved the film my whole life, loved the redux for other reasons and felt it changed NOTHING in the film except the pacing. The redux is for the person that saw the film a bunch of times, knows the history of the film, the conflict and wants to bask in all that detail for, what’s the runtime? 202 minutes? Damn!!! It’s like the LOTR of war movies at that point.

I am a big fan of the scene where they encounter the bunnies a second time. So disturbing.

“Ever see Hearts of Darkness? Wayyy better than Apocalypse Now.”

Probably not

I did the same thing. The french plantation scene really starts to make the film drag.

I also dont get the praise for Brando in this film. His laziness really shows in this film. Like he couldnt be bothered to act. FFC does his best to make it seem like Brando's character is suppose to be like this but I just dont buy it.

The film is still good but that 3rd act almost ruins the film.

Like others have said, the theatrical cut is the best. I didn't mind the other two versions but redux was a bit of a chore at times.

I'm not sure how you watch films, but Apocalypse Now is one of those films you should watch super loud with either a good sound system or headphones. It has imo the best sound design ever.

What happens the second time?

You absolutely made a mistake.

When I first watched Apocalypse Now, I watched the Redux. I didn’t really enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong, I love long, epic movies and I don’t mind long scenes that add little to the story. For instance, I’m someone who honestly loves the wedding segment in The Deer Hunter.

But Apocalypse Now: Redux felt like a slog. The additional scenes fucked up the pacing for sure, as I was getting really into it up until the plantation scene. It was almost like they stopped the flow of the movie to focus on it. I never watched the Final Cut, but I’ve heard it described as “a mix between the theatrical and the Redux” and really, you just don’t need any of the plantation scenes.

I think the original Apocalypse Now is perfect. It’s already a long movie to begin with, there doesn’t need to be anything added. It’s also a truly incredible masterpiece in it’s original form and the pacing is fine as it is. If you watch the OG cut, I honestly believe you’ll develop that train of thought immediately.

Finally, I’ve come around on the Redux. The theatrical helps you appreciate it more. I get it and enjoy it now. That being said, if I watch Apocalypse Now, 9 times out of 10, it’s going to be the original theatrical version.

It’s at a crazy, almost deserted fire bass. The bunny chopper is there.

Spoiler: It’s so crazy that it’s nearly surreal. The dancers are sleeping in helicopters, the ground is incredibly muddy from the constant downpour, and the men are given access to the women. They each are a bit crazy in their interactions. It’s not clear the women have consented to what’s happening. Lots of WTF

Just like in the book Heart of Darkness, which inspired the movie. It's a descent into madness. That being said, I've rewatched probably 7-10 times but I usually skip the last 45 minutes.

The station they land at is non-functional. They can't find a leader, and the grunts are acting completely crazy. One of the soldiers trades some supplies with the boat in exchange for sex with two of the bunnies. One of the soldiers has a disturbing drugged out conversation with one bunny while the other is trying to dress his bunny up to look like a specific foldout he obsessed over. Meanwhile, baby Lawrence Fishburn is pounding on the outside of the helicopter, demanding to be let in, because he wants a turn.

Apocalypse Now has been my favourite movie for over 30 years. That being said the Redux is terrible and adds too much “whimsy” to the original film. The theatrical cut is perfect.

I hated the long dinner scene.

That’s been some folks opinion since film’s release, others do not agree. I think it’s more the well documented circumstances that lead to Coppola’s own decent into a little madness during production and there were just far too many loose ends in what was shot to make the narrative as compelling as it was the first two thirds or so (Francis was never the same director after this for sure).

Prior to Brando screwing the pooch, he did a great job with the madness/fog of war feel.

Imperfect as the ending is, It’s still one of the best movies ever made. I think we can all agree on that.

Best to you.

The original release. Redux and directors cuts are interesting but the original release is about as good as it gets.

Thank you all who have commented. I just bought a copy of the theatrical release. I’ll provide an update after I watch this version once it gets delivered.

Does it work without the payoff of seeing the film and understanding what the artistic vision was going for though? I’m not sure, not to say the documentary isn’t engrossing.

The original could have been slashed by an hour. The first half is interesting but the last is a muddled mess with Marlon Brando blathering psychobabble. The film was influenced by Heart of Darkness by Conrad.

“I loved you in Wall Street!”

Yes. I found the "director's" or "restored" version of Apocalypse Now to be totally unwatchable. When I first saw the movie in theaters, I loved it (even though I hated it) and I found it a very powerful, disturbing movie.

But adding in all the cut footage only goes to show why that footage NEEDED to be edited out in the first place. It's instructive to see why those scenes were left out, and I feel that there's nothing to be gained by putting them back in.

When I saw the "restored" version of Alien, I hated the footage that was added back in. All it did was water down the narrative and make the film unnecessarily sloggy and and long.

There's a reason editors snip scenes from movies, even if the scenes are well shot or expensive.

When I was in film school (in the 80s) we learned the ratio is 6 to 1; you end up with 1 finished reel of film for ever 6 reels you shoot. That MUCH film is ultimately left on the cutting room floor, which makes movie making an extremely expensive undertaking.

But now things are shot digitally, so I'm not sure how all that works. At least there isn't as much celluloid getting tossed into landfills.

Watch the documentary of making this movie, it’s quite the watch

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I think its a fair adaptation of the Joseph Conrad book. It was also the first big movie that HBO had the rights to ergo it was on a couple times a day. Me and my prurient junior high bros had the dialogue pretty much memorized. We mostly spoke in "Apocalypse Now" lines for an entire summer.

The playboy bunny scenes made me feel very tingly.

Colonel Killgore was our hero because he surfed (we live in a coastal town).

For these reasons alone, Apocolypse Now will always hold a special place in my heart no matter which cut is being viewed...

I've never seen this movie and assumed this referred to bunny-bunnies.... :(

Your interpretation may be darker than the scenes as they were. I mean, we haven’t even gotten to the water buffalo yet

Personally I feel like you could watch the documentary without seeing the film and still have a superior experience, but that’s just based on my own experience. To me, watching the chaos happen during filming felt way more satisfying than the film itself.

Honestly, I find even the theatrical cut to be more a sequence of amazing scenes than a coherent narrative. Don’t expect too much from this movie in terms of story. That’s not what’s great about it.

I actually think the theatrical cut is better than the Redux or Final Cut. Sometimes less is more, and the original cut is a perfect cut of a near perfect film.

The drinking scene is the most intense part of Inglorious Basterds lol

Kurtz
We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

The Final Cut is different from Redux, it slims the film back down a bit although it keeps things like the French plantation in the movie.

You should have start with the Workprint Edition.

Agreed. Coppola's reimaginings, while interesting to see for fans of the film, don't really make it much better IMHO and in many sequences actually make it worse.

For example, the Kilgore sequence with Robert Duvall is absolutely PERFECT IMHO in the theatrical cut. It starts, goes on, and ends just perfectly with Duvall's "Some day this war will end" line, which leaves viewers wondering if he'll actually miss the carnage or realizes -crazy though he is- that war needs to eventually end and with it, people like him.

It's such a freaking great scene and Coppola unwisely chose to return footage in the expanded versions which carried that scene further into... slapstick?! It involved stealing Kilgore's surfboards and... yikes did it not work, IMHO.

Wow that's dedication for you. I find I can only watch it once every 7 to 10 years and every time I realize that I've forgotten how utterly bleak it is by the end. It then takes me 10 years to recover from the trauma and forget how harrowing it is. Not one to watch on a first date that's for sure.

I like giving movies another chance in circumstances like this. I figure because this movie is so highly rated and loved by many that I really should give it another chance and watch the version that nearly all the commenters are saying to watch.

If for whatever reason I still don’t like the movie, I can at least say I watched the version that most people agree I should have watched.

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You are asking for a nice clean ending to a story about how nice clean endings and war don't go together.

I knew this movie wasn’t going to have the ending people normally would want. My issue revolves around the movie being sluggish with scenes like the French plantation.

Hot Shots Part Deux. Fine Quality

Redux would have been fantastic if not for the French scene, that just dragged and was boring but the rest was great.

It helps if you've read Heart of Darkness before seeing the movie.

The theatrical release is a better movie. Redux is putting back all the cut stuff. I don’t like it.

That version is a bit too long and disjointed. That being said, AN is suppose to leave the viewer a bit uncomfortable, depressed, pointless, frustrated and confused. It is a movie about war. Scary movies should scare you, romcoms should make you laugh and feel romantic, war movies should . . . well, make you feel like you were in war - which I am told it sucks ass.

The French plantation I thought was necessary at least to show the burial of Clean

Managed to see the final cut on release in Imax. Seeing that film on a big screen like that is transformative. That would have worked as a first viewing because of the lack of distraction across the whole run time.

It's also the ghost of colonialism past rearing its head. I think it makes the film much richer

I couldn't agree more about the scenes being cut for a reason. I found Redux to really change the movie in a bad way.

I would say that it actually does end up being surreal considering the way the Redux version sits. It goes from being firmly grounded in sanity and reality and works towards the madness of Kurtz.

Theatrical is a solid version to watch and probably the right one. That said I own the Redux version since it had some additional content. Of course the way that it was placed into the film disrupts the flow a bit, but does fit in with the various messages and metaphors in the film. Also, the effect of those additional scenes makes the film a bit spookier and adds to the feeling of things progressing from reality towards insanity the closer they get to Kurtz. It's by no means a bad cut, just really, really long and definitely not something to watch on a whim. I can't truly speak about the Final Cut version since I haven't personally watched it, but I've heard that it's shorter, but still a more difficult watch than the Theatrical version.

First time please don’t watch the extended cut. That’s for those who love the movie.

The shortest cut is still long and though I love it some will find lulls.

Sorry it ruined your experience. Please do not listen to the people who specifically recommended this cut

I haven’t watched any cut of the film yet, but I did watch the documentary on the making of it. Quite interesting.

I wish you better luck on your second try. Bear in mind though that it's always going to be uncomfortable to watch, particularly as it progresses through the second half. It is, after all, supposed to represent the descent into madness.