ARCHIVE FILE | Platoon/Apocalypse Now Parallels

Family ties
Charile Sheen is Martin Sheen’s son, he actually was in the Phillipines as Apocalypse was shot and “worked” as an extra. There are some speculations if casting Charlie (or Emilio in the first run) in Platoon was the way Stone wanted to make a reference to Apocalypse.

The  Voiceover
Protagonists’ voiceover is used in both movies.

The Journey
Both movies describe the protagonist’s journey into the “heart of darkness”, and they end with a murder of a fellow soldier. During the trip Willard becomes more and more like Kurz, Taylor becomes Barnes – the “only one who can kill Barnes”. 

The Barnes/Kurtz parallel
Kurtz can be seen as more sophisticated, philosophical version of Barnes. They both faced horrors of war, they are sick of the hypocrisy of the politics and see the necessarity of extreme means in an extreme situation. Both are almost supernatural figures. Others see them as insane, but Kurtz’s madness (or is it rather the ultimate clarity?) is much more spectacular. Ironically, it was probably Kurz’s philosophical mind that broke him in the end, because — unlike Barnes — he couldn’t stop THINKING, seeing the bigger picture, he couldn’t turn on the autopilot and do what he was said. 
If Barnes was more articulate he could say these words instead of just stating “I am reality”:

“(…) You have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… But you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.” (…)

“They  train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won’t allow them to  write f*** on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”

“It’s judgment that defeats us”.

Both Kurz and Barnes actually have chosen a person to kill them. These lines would fit in Taylor’s voiceover, if there was any in the scene when he kills Barnes:

“Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade.” 

Rhah and the Photographer
I can also see some likeness between Rhah and the photographer in Apocalypse, they both preach about love and hate… each of the characters is a kind of a crazy shaman. The Photographer can see the method behind Kurtz’s madness, as Rhah can see a method behind the tactics of Barnes. Even their clothes are somehow similar: both are wearing traditional (probably Montagnard-made) vests.

Literary sources
Platoon is based on Moby Dick (more about it soon) in the same way Apocalypse is based on Heart of Darkness.

The Location
Both movies were shot in the Phillippines, using local army help and equipment. US Army refused to cooperate.

Michael Herr
… cowrote Apocalypse, in his book Dispatches he quotes some graffitti form soldiers’ helmets and at least three of those grafitties appear on the helmets in Platoon.

Oh, yes, the scar
Taylor get his cheek cut by Barnes, Willard gets a scratch below his eye, almost at the same spot, as the Cavalry bombs the beach. Unlike Taylor’s, Willard’s scar has no significance at all. 

And…
By accident the catholic priest saying the Mass in Apocalypse is credited as… Father Elias. Ah, well… 🙄

———

Actually it was all that I wanted to post here, but once you start googling… 

The Developing Process
First drafts of both movies were written in 1969. (see Break post) Both were thought to be accompanied by The Doors’ music. Both turned out to be something entirely different in the end. Coppola, like Stone was able to make Apocalypse after (and because of) a success of their previous movies (The Godfather and Midnight Express respective).

The project began with George Lucas’s plans to direct a script written by John Milius in 1969 entitled The Psychedelic Soldier, with Coppola as executive producer. Lucas had planned to shoot his film as a faux documentary on location in South Vietnam while the war was still underway. But a production deal with Warner Bros. fell through, and Coppola moved on to co-write and direct The Godfather (1972). The huge success of this Oscar®-winning film gave him the clout to reintroduce the idea of Apocalypse Now, which would be filmed by Coppola’s own American Zoetrope Studios for United Artists, on location in the Philippines. Source TCM.com

The Real People and Events
In both movies at least some of the characters are based on real persons. 

Fred Rexer, from whom the Willard character was based, actually witnessed the incident in which children had their arms hacked off, as described by Kurtz in his monologue. (source) (Wikipedia on Fred Rexer)

The real-life model for the updated Kurtz was Col. Robert Rheault, a commanding officer of U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam who was court-martialed in 1969 for the murder of a Vietnamese guide he suspected of being a double agent. The charges against Rheault eventually were dropped, but his career had been ruined by what the press called “the Green Beret murder case.” Official documents had described the killing of the suspected agent as “termination with extreme prejudice” — a phrase repeated in the film. (source)

There are two possible models for Col. Kilgore: Lt. Col. John B. Stockton, squadron commander of the real 1st Squadron – 9th Cav of the First Cav Divison (source) (source) and Steve Kanaly, “a radioman in Col. Stockton’s outfit, was a mil. advisor on Apocalypse Now, and suggested the character to Milius when they met at a skeet shooting range” (source)

A Murder in Wartime (amazon.de)
In June 1969 a group of Green Beret officers, suspecting that one of their Vietnamese operatives was a double agent, executed him and dropped his weighted body into the ocean off Nha Trang. (…) In the end the Army dropped the charges, but the “Green Beret case” nevertheless had a significant effect on the conduct of the war: it provoked Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon Papers.

There are scenes in both movies that actually happened, unbelievable as it is:

The scene [in Apocalypse] where Roach uses a grenade launcher to kill the NVA soldier in the wire during the scene at the Do Long bridge is taken directly from Dispatches
from IMDB

————-

I bet there is more to be found.