The films we’re talking about were made after the war was over and had been for years. During the American involvement in SE Asia, there were hardly any films about it at all actually. ‘The Green Berets’ is the only one I can think of.
If by cartoon you mean ‘unrealistic’ and ‘heightened’ then yes. Realism isn’t always the goal. It certainly wasn’t in these films. I’m guessing you dislike ‘First Blood’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ too. These aren’t ‘Time-Life Books’ coffee table tomes or ‘The World At War’ style documentaries. AN, which is an adaptation of ‘Heart of Darkness’, taps into all sorts of mythic archetypes about quests and the human psyche. The Deer Hunter is about what an external force (war) does to a tight knit community. No one involved with those films set out to slander Vietnam Vets.
Talking to you is exactly like talking to a brick wall. Movies are wonderful escapist entertainment - until they cross over into churlish Lefty propaganda. In every one of the movies you cited, those of us who were the few with the guts to fight were shown as either psychotic criminals or costumed nitwits. That wasn’t done to WW II vets, or Korean War vets, or even now for the current wars. Just us - and we deeply resent it.
Hollywood hasn’t got the talent to make a realistic war movie. The best they can come up with for a military consultant is the ubiquitous Dale Dye whose only claim to fame was being a Public Affairs NCO while he was in the Marines. He never saw combat.
If you think that painting an insulting portrait of us Vietnam veterans is “just artistic expression”, then you’re a fool. You weren’t at the wrong end of it.