Preguntas Frecuentes

They were given to them the night before at the bridge. Willard's commanders were sending him a new document for his Kurtz dossier and sent the mail along with it.

The movie is influenced by "Heart of Darkness" but it isn't a "movie version" of it, so they didn't deem it necessary need to mention Joseph Conrad's novel.

The Redux version adds in the following which increases the run time to about 3 hours and 15 minutes: 1) Extended scenes with Kilgore including a scene where the surfing conditions are flattened by the napalm strike. Shortly after, the boat crew steals Kilgore's surfboard.

2) A scene where the crew meets the Playboy Bunnies again and Willard trades fuel for some time with them for the boys to keep morale up

3) A fight between Clean and Chef on the boat (we can hear this fight in the background in the Theatrical Cut however we cannot make out what they are saying)

4) An extended sequence where after Clean's death the crew stops by a French plantation and Willard has an affair with one of the women

5) An additional scene between Willard and Kurtz where Kurtz reads Willard a couple of magazine articles about the war

6) Also the Redux version moves the scene where Lance waterskies from before the crew meets Kilgore to after

The Final Cut once again removes: (2), (3), and (5) while keeping (1) and (6) and it trims (4) by about 5 minutes. The final cut runs a little over 3 hours.

Throughout the movie, Willard narrates and gives a lot of backstory to the events of the movie and explains character actions, as well. As to who he is narrating to, it's not officially confirmed.

Potential theories include Willard is giving testimony at a military debriefing after the events of the film. Also possibly his memoirs, if he wrote a book about his time in the war.

Apocalypse Now is based on Heart of Darkness (1899), a novella by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]. The screenplay was written by American filmmakers John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola (who also directed the movie). The script also draws elements from (1) Lord Jim (1965) (1965), the film version of a novel of the same name, also written by Joseph Conrad, (2) Dispatches (1977), a memoir of former war correspondent Michael Herr, and (3) the film Aguirre, la ira de Dios (1972) [ Aguirre, Wrath of God ] (1972).

No precise date is given however, Chef receives a care package late in the film that contains a news clipping about the Manson Family murders, which took place in August of 1969. We can therefore assume that the article was sent to Chef within a few weeks of it being clipped.

No. The water buffalo was slaughtered by the Ifugao people you see on film for their own (ritual) purposes. They are a tribe that were used as the extras in the Kurtz compound.

Yes. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is in the public domain in the U.S. and may be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.

Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier is a special DVD release of Apocalypse Now containing both the theatrical and Redux versions of the film. It was released August 15, 2006, five years after the Redux edition debuted in theatres. In October 2010, the film was re-released on Blu-ray/DVD in a 3-disc "Full Disclosure" version which includes both versions of the film plus the documentary on the making of the film, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991), partly directed by Francis' wife Eleanor Coppola.

Kurtz reads from two Time Magazine articles. The second one has no date but the first one does: September 22, 1967. That article, titled "On the Horizon" is a real article. When Kurtz reads from it, he gives the title "War on the Horizon", but the original title does not have the word "war" in it. Without a date attached to it, the validity of the second article can't be confirmed. The first article can be read here.

When Kilgore orders the jungle near the village to be napalmed, it creates a wall of heat that disrupts the breeze coming in from the ocean. Since the breeze creates the waves necessary for surfing, the waves die out. Essentially, the firebombing Kilgore ordered has altered the weather conditions themselves.

To be totally accurate on this, an offshore breeze is required to build surf and "hold up" the waves so that they are surf-able. The napalm strike (were it real) would have sucked in a lot of the surrounding oxygen (air) and basically killed the offshore breeze that was creating the surf in the first place. The surf was rubbish anyway and not suitable for riding...as Kilgore points out.