Obviously an incredible cinematic achievement, but ultimately it fails in its surface promise to be an anti-war film. It's most poignant anti-war scene, or at least what it should have been, is the helicopter attack scene on the village. A line of Huey helicopters massacres an entire village of people fleeing to the epic diegetic soundtrack of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. On it's face, the scene should make one think of Nazis mowing down civilians from passing troop carriers, but instead the music overpowers the scene and it turns into a celebration of the violence one assumes the scene originally intended to condemn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QzJKCUekQ
I think the proof is in the pudding, look at the comments and try to find someone expressing horror at the scene. Everyone's having a great time watching the village get massacred because the whole scene is edited like a Wagner music video. FFC had a choice here, he could have made a horrific scene of brutality or an epic exhilarating battle scene and he tried to be too clever by half and do both, but instead we got an exhilarating depiction of a war crime that has influenced millions of soldiers who have seen the film since.
I think Jarhead is more of an anti-war film than Apocalypse Now because it makes war look stupid, boring, randomly horrific, and overall a complete waste of everything, at the end everyone just gets a call that the war is over and they all expend their ammunition into the sky since they barely used it in combat. Jarhead has a scene depicting how soldiers react to Apocalypse Now's massacre scene and it's exactly what you'd expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7XfFQVMgs
A true anti-war film cannot be mixed with rock and roll and also be cool. You cannot make war cool in your anti-war film or it ceases to be an anti-war film. You can make a fun film, you can make an anti-war film, you cannot make a fun anti-war film. The greatest anti-war films of all time all treat war the same way; it's boring, senselessly cruel, and leaves everyone broken or dead. This is how it's depicted in Come and See, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of War, etc.
I agree with almost everything you said, however I would push back on using YouTube comment sections as representative of the full spectrum of audience response to a film :P
Obviously an incredible cinematic achievement, but ultimately it fails in its surface promise to be an anti-war film. It's most poignant anti-war scene, or at least what it should have been, is the helicopter attack scene on the village. A line of Huey helicopters massacres an entire village of people fleeing to the epic diegetic soundtrack of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. On it's face, the scene should make one think of Nazis mowing down civilians from passing troop carriers, but instead the music overpowers the scene and it turns into a celebration of the violence one assumes the scene originally intended to condemn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QzJKCUekQ
I think the proof is in the pudding, look at the comments and try to find someone expressing horror at the scene. Everyone's having a great time watching the village get massacred because the whole scene is edited like a Wagner music video. FFC had a choice here, he could have made a horrific scene of brutality or an epic exhilarating battle scene and he tried to be too clever by half and do both, but instead we got an exhilarating depiction of a war crime that has influenced millions of soldiers who have seen the film since.
I think Jarhead is more of an anti-war film than Apocalypse Now because it makes war look stupid, boring, randomly horrific, and overall a complete waste of everything, at the end everyone just gets a call that the war is over and they all expend their ammunition into the sky since they barely used it in combat. Jarhead has a scene depicting how soldiers react to Apocalypse Now's massacre scene and it's exactly what you'd expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7XfFQVMgs
A true anti-war film cannot be mixed with rock and roll and also be cool. You cannot make war cool in your anti-war film or it ceases to be an anti-war film. You can make a fun film, you can make an anti-war film, you cannot make a fun anti-war film. The greatest anti-war films of all time all treat war the same way; it's boring, senselessly cruel, and leaves everyone broken or dead. This is how it's depicted in Come and See, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of War, etc.
Totally agree with this, and I'd add Thin Red Line to the list of anti-war films that succeed in being anti-war.
I agree with almost everything you said, however I would push back on using YouTube comment sections as representative of the full spectrum of audience response to a film :P