Apocalypse Redux - Book One: A LitRPG Time Regression Adventure

Product Information

We recently talked of the USO show from the movie Apocalypse Now in a previous blog entry about Suzy-Q. But it’s already time to talk again of that scene as King and Country just released a set inspired by the three playmates from that scene! Behold the VN147 - The Apocalypse Playmates Set. A 289min long workprint version exists. It has never been officially released but circulates as a video bootleg. The bootleg contains the following extra material not included in either the original theatrical release or the "redux" version. As for the figures produced by King and Country, those are not exact copies from the movie, but greatly influenced pieces. Those three miniatur playmates manage to keep the same essence as the one in Apocalypse Now, but with different details. In some cases, this was simply impossible to do otherwise. The iridescent paillettes patterns from the US Cavalry and Indian costume are just too complex to be reproduced at small scale. So the skirt of the US Cavalry playmate was replaced by a pair of pale blue shorts while the Indian costume underwent a complete transformation. However, the Cowgirl is surprisingly accurate. Only the haircut is noticeably different compared to the character played by Cynthia Wood. So, overall, it’s a pretty neat adaptation job! adr performer (uncredited) / stand-in/voice-over: Willard (uncredited) / stand-in: Martin Sheen (uncredited) This is a new bonus disc that replaces the final disc from the Full Disclosure Edition. It includes all of those features and adds several new ones too (marked as such below):

What I like about this one, despite its problems, is the willingness to work on a global scale rather than a regional or national one.The book just feels empty where nothing happens. Kind of like a slice-of-life plot-wise, except even slice-of-life has character growth and thoughtful interactions.

Francis Ford Coppola began production on the new cut with working-partner Kim Aubry. Coppola then tried to get Murch, who was reluctant at first. He thought it would be extremely difficult recutting a film that had taken two years to edit originally. He later changed his mind (after working on the reconstruction of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil). Coppola and Murch then examined several of the rough prints and dailies for the film. It was decided early on that the editing of the film would be like editing a new film altogether. One such example was the new French plantation sequence. The scenes were greatly edited to fit into the movie originally, only to be cut out in the end. When working again on the film, instead of using the heavily edited version, Murch decided to work the scene all over again, editing it as if for the first time. This quest for knowledge unfortunately leads to slow, pseudo-scientific writing to justify Humanity's logical advance on the [System]. This is what most detracts from the book, even if it remains fairly logical and well-constructed. Murch’s 5.1 sound design for the 1979 release was not only a technical breakthrough, but on an artistic level, it remains at the pinnacle of surround sound. Murch’s work in enveloping the audience in war and the way sound traveled inside the theater is still a textbook example that virtually all sound designers and mixers study when honing their craft. There is no audio dubbing in this version. All the audio is from the sound recorded during the actual filming. Much of Robert Duvall's dialogue is unitelligable due to the sound of the helicopters in his scenes.Colleen Camp, Linda Carpenter, Francis Ford Coppola and Cynthia Wood on a movie set. (Photo by Nancy Moran) As magnificent as the movie looks, sounds, and feels, this cut expands upon and unpeels the movie’s weaknesses both as story and meditation on Vietnam. It’s a trimmed-down version of the “Redux” cut’s structure. It excises the ghoulish, morbid sex-with-the-Playmates scene, but retains the stealing of Colonel Kilgore’s surfboard and the French Plantation scene. We follow his journey and the various events that befall him and a small group of soldiers in a patrol boat traveling deep into the jungle. On their way, really bizarre things happen. Very slow build "chosen one" trope that fails to adequately set the stage for the scope of the problem. The MC does what other overpowered MC's will do, level up non-stop, but without a specific goal beyond "save the world" a lot of the book ends up feeling like an excuse for info dumping. Actually, you could argue that that is explicitly true. There is no real plot and the MC has no real goals. He's short-sighted and unwilling to even consider compromising his own values to achieve his long term goal of SAVING THE WORLD. He pretty much half-SSes everything he does on the premise that doing more would jeopardize his personal anonymity.

Now Apocalypse Now has resurfaced for its 40th-anniversary in what Coppola is calling his definitive final cut. Interestingly, this does not mean simply including everything he shot. He has removed some of the “Playmate” sequences that were in his 202-minute “Redux” edition from 2001, but this cut retains the extended “dinner party” scene with French planters in the jungle, like an encounter with angry imperial ghosts. The direction is excellent, the music is perfectly integrated into the film and matches the tone of the film.The world building is good, maybe not top notch, but better than average for a end of the world time slip genera novel. Plots good, but also fairly consequence free at this point. There are no real stakes however despite near constant reminders that seven billion arguably untrustworthy humans have just been handed massive corrupting amounts of power. In 1975 Coppola was coming off a series of massive successes. He had written and directed The Godfather and its sequel along with the film The Conversation in the early 1970s. All three movies were critically and commercially successful, and they helped to solidify the New Hollywood era that began in the late 60s after the death of the old studio system. Francis Ford Coppola's next movie, the production problem-plagued Apocalypse Now, was a modern riff on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, transporting it from the Congo in the 1890s into the waning days of America's time in Vietnam. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (with audio commentary by Francis and Eleanor Coppola – HD – 96:00) Someday this war’s gonna end,” is the sage comment from surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, brusquely played by Robert Duvall. In fact, when Francis Ford Coppola’s grandiose epic masterpiece Apocalypse Now was first unveiled in 1979, the Vietnam war had only ended four years previously, and the succeeding war between Vietnam and Cambodia (where the film’s climax is set) was in full swing. A scene where a miniature toy boat passes the Navy PBR. Lance tries to grab it out of the water. The Chief yells at him to leave it alone claiming it's a booby trap. To prove it the Chief fires some shots at it to which it explodes.