Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now takes place in the midst of a real conflict, but its narrative seems too surreal and outrageous to be based on a true story. After a notoriously troubled production, Apocalypse Now emerged as one of the most ambitious efforts in cinema history. Although initial reviews were mixed, Apocalypse Now has since been widely praised as one of the greatest movies ever made. To this day, it is considered a landmark in the war genre. At times, Apocalypse Now plays like a horror film, which is what makes it such a poignant portrait of the harrowing psychological impact of warfare.
Set at the height of the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now stars Martin Sheen as Captain Willard, who is sent on a black-ops mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz (played by an enigmatic Marlon Brando), who has gone rogue in the jungle. John Milius’s screenplay — bolstered by voiceover narration written by war correspondent Michael Herr — takes an episodic approach to the storytelling. On his way to Kurtz’s compound, Willard meets all kinds of colorful characters and witnesses all kinds of horrible events. But the movie leaves audiences in the dark as to whether any of those characters or events have any basis in reality.
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Apocalypse Now Isn't Based On A True Story
Apocalypse Now is not based on a true story in the sense that Dunkirk and Hacksaw Ridge are; its characters and storylines are inventions of the filmmakers. However, there are elements of the movie that are taken from reality. Milius told CNN that he included surfing in the script because he noticed “how many California surfers went to Vietnam and how many didn’t come back.” Kurtz, the movie's perfect antagonist, is similar to Anthony Poshepny, a CIA operative who raised a secret army in Laos (via The Wall Street Journal). However, the tale of the U.S. military sending an assassin to terminate one of its own colonels is pure fiction.
While Apocalypse Now isn’t directly adapted from a true story, Coppola has described it as “an anti-lie film” (via the Guardian). The director explained, “The fact that a culture can lie about what’s really going on in warfare – that people are being brutalized, tortured, maimed, and killed – and somehow present this as moral is what horrifies me.” A scene like U.S. military helicopters flying over a Vietnamese village, blasting Wagner from their speakers and gunning down innocent civilians for fun, might not have really happened in the literal sense, but it’s symbolic of the disturbing truths that the American government hid from the public during the Vietnam War.
Apocalypse Now Is A Reimagining Of Heart Of Darkness
The plot of Apocalypse Now was inspired by the acclaimed novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. In the book, a sailor named Marlow is sent on a voyage up a river in the Congo to meet a mysterious man named Kurtz, who is said to have “gone native.” John Milius’s script took the basic setup and structure of Conrad’s novella and recontextualized it into a Vietnam War setting. He turned Kurtz from an ivory trader into a disgraced colonel but explored the same themes of power and morality. The book also inspired the movie Ad Astra, which places its story in space, and the video game Far Cry 2.
