Apocalypse Now Is Hailed as the Ultimate Vietnam War Film

Article abstract: Apocalypse Now helped to establish the themes and narrative structure of Vietnam War films.

Summary of Event

The Vietnam War made it necessary to create a new kind of war film. World War II films assumed that the United States was exceptional--that the United States always won its wars and embodied freedom and virtue. Defeat in Vietnam, charges that the United States acted as an imperialist power there, and atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers--burning of villages, torture and assassination of suspected Viet Cong, the massacre of...

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