entertainment
APOCALYPSE NOW FINAL CUT
UHD BLU-RAY
The avant-garde art of the past becomes the wallpaper of the future.” This statement, from a new introduction by Francis Ford Coppola contained on the Apocalypse Now Final Cut Ultra HD Blu-ray release, ultimately explains the acclaimed director’s motivation to revisit his Vietnam War epic, ranked number 30 on the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of the 100 Greatest American Films, and create yet another cut after already having done so in 2001 for Apocalypse Now: Redux. In that version, Coppola indiscriminately restored almost everything cut from the original, a factor accounting for Redux’s bloated 3 hour and 23 minutes runtime. The main reason Coppola felt his 1979 classic required any new presentation at all was hindsight: During the initial editing session for Apocalypse, major cuts were made by the panicked director to render his mostly self-financed film less “weird” and more palatable to a mainstream audience. Countless minor “annoying” cuts were also made to knock its length down to a manageable 2 hours and 27 minutes. In the new Final Cut version, those edits and select “relevant” sequences have been restored, resulting in a film that runs just over 3 hours and, according to the director, accurately reflects his original vision.
As we learn in the interview referenced above, Coppola is keenly aware that has long been home theater demo fodder (those circling helicopters…) and wanted to make sure that its image and sound received an up-to-date presentation on disc with Dolby Vision high dynamic range and Dolby Atmos sound. A 4K restoration was used to create the original, , and versions contained in Lionsgate’s release, and all three are presented here in Ultra HD/Dolby Vision with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The 4K image has a refined look that allows for film grain to come through clearly, but also provides a high level of detail that rendered fine text in the dossiers that Captain Willard (Martin
