Release Year: 1979

Genre: Drama, War

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola

Stars: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando

Which do you prefer waking up to in the morning: Folgers in your cup or napalm burning in a jungle?

The correct answer, of course, is Pop Tarts.

But Apocalypse Now is a film about people who prefer the napalm option, with a bottle of whiskey on the side and Richard Wagner blasting on the speakers. They're professional warriors trapped in the nightmare of 'Nam. It's the rumble in the jungle, the battle on the beach, the quiver on the river, the….

Okay, okay, we'll stop.

Apocalypse Now is based on Joseph Conrad's famous novella Heart of Darkness. Conrad's story is Belgium's exploitation of the Congo in the early 1900s, while Coppola's movie is about the U.S. fighting in Vietnam. Both deal with the same big themes—the nature of evil and power, suffering and redemption…you know, the usual light film fare.

Both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now depict a journey down a river in search of a man named Kurtz, who represents the darkest recesses of the human heart. And it's not a fun and games, Huck Finn-type journey either.

No, it's a descent into hell.

In the movie, Colonel Kurtz is an Army Special Forces officer who's gone off the grid over the Vietnamese border, terrorizing the Viet Cong with torture and murder. He's raised his own private army of tribal people who worship him like a god and has a kind of gruesome Survivor: Cambodia thing going on. After hearing rumors about Kurtz's brutality, his superiors decide he's gone totally insane and want Captain Benjamin Willard, a trained assassin, to find the colonel and "terminate [him] with extreme prejudice." This turns into one very demented jungle river trip, involving Playboy Playmates, various psychoactive substances, surfing, and a battle set to Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."

Heads roll—literally. Lots of them.

Legendary screenwriter and fan-of-war John Milius started writing the script way back in the 1960s, when the Vietnam War was still happening. The screenplay was stuck in development for years and years, but eventually Francis Ford Coppola signed up to direct it. He'd recently made some films about an Italian family's business called The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.

Yeah, the guy knew how to make epic movies.

Making Apocalypse Now drove everyone insane. Lead man Martin Sheen had a heart attack (at age 36), and director Coppola thought about suicide more than once. At one point, the set was destroyed by a typhoon; costs were out of control; it took two years to edit all the footage.

But when the film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, everyone recognized it was a masterpiece. It won the Palme D'Or (like the Best Picture Oscar but classier in French). It scooped up an Oscar nom for Best Picture, and you'll find it on just about everybody's list of best war movies of all time. It took in about $150 million in global ticket sales. (Triple that number for the present-day amount.) No Star Wars, for sure, but not bad for a complex, disturbing, psychological war flick.

Along with Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now has become one of the all-time classic Vietnam War movies. It's a dark parable of the brutality of human nature, and a seriously trippy river ride into the heart of darkness.

Wake up, Shmoopers, and smell the napalm.

War—what is it good for? Apparently it's very good for the movie industry. From Birth of a Nation to American Sniper, hot wars to cold, it's a tale as old as time and Hollywood's been telling it a lot.

The risk, of course, it that it's easy to glamorize war, especially when the cause seems just and stories of sacrifice and bravery can inspire and reassure. The exciting action of battles and dogfights can keep you on the edge of your seat trying to contain your urge to shout, "USA! USA!" and toss your popcorn at the Nazis or Martians on the screen.

Coppola says, "Slow down. War is hell, not a real-life version of Call of Duty 4."

Apocalypse Now is a classic anti-war movie, like All Quiet on the Western Front or The Grand Illusion. It suggests that much of war isn't really about high ideals or righteous causes. In the case of the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now doesn't make the war look like it was about defeating communism. It depicts it as senseless slaughter without justification, embodied in the brutal and irrational Colonel Kurtz.

The movie doesn't really hit you over the head with its anti-war theme. It's not really a political film; it's a psychological one. It tries to give you a sense of what the war was really like for the people fighting it, piling absurdities onto a sense of doom. (If that sounds like a description of High School Musical 3—yes, you are correct.)

As a psychological thriller, the film explores a horrifying premise: that given the right set of circumstances, any of us are capable of descending into brutality. It's a study of what happens to people when they're forced into situations where death and terror are the norm, and where they've lost faith that there's any rationale for what they're doing. Both Willard and Kurtz have been damaged by their wartime experiences, and while Kurtz might seem the more extreme, Willard knows he's seen the heart of darkness, too.

Many returning vets are haunted by what they had to do in battle, things that violated their own personal morality and left them with a crushing sense of guilt (source). Apocalypse Now says that war has its own unique morality and it's not up to us to judge what people had to do under those punishing circumstances.

As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Apocalypse Now would agree: the real jungle is on the inside.