Posted on 07/18/2021 2:07:26 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is often remembered as essentially being two movies. Its bravura bootcamp sequence made an unlikely superstar out of the late Lee Ermey and launched Vincent D’Onofrio’s journeyman career. In contrast, most viewers saw the film’s second “half,” (actually the longer of the two parts), as being much more disjointed and difficult to follow. However, I believe Kubrick’s goal in crafting Full Metal Jacket, was to create a “shadow” version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, his epochal 1968 film. All of Kubrick’s post-2001 films make references to 2001 – some obvious, some subtle – and Full Metal Jacket is no exception. Lining up Full Metal Jacket’s structure with 2001 creates some fascinating parallels.
Full Metal Jacket was co-written by Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford, the author of the novel, The Short-Timers. In his introduction to the illustrated screenplay of Full Metal Jacket, Herr, the author of Dispatches, his acclaimed 1977 “new journalism” look at Vietnam, and the co-screenwriter of Francis Ford Coppola’s epic 1980 Vietnam film Apocalypse Now, wrote that when Kubrick first began his collaboration with Herr in 1980, he asked Herr if he was familiar with Carl Jung’s concept of the “Shadow.” Herr assured Kubrick he was.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
San Francisco Chronicle
The concluding image of men silhouetted against the dying flares of explosives, as they march to the raucous refrain of the Mickey Mouse Club theme, is masterly, but leaves a viewer curiously discomfited. Whereas “Platoon” shattered civilian complacency about that war, Full Metal Jacket is merely numbing. [26 June 1987]
When I think of “Eyes Wide Shut” I think of Joe Scarborough, Gary Condit, and John Kasich.
The New Yorker
Pauline Kael
What happened to the Kubrick who used to slip in sly, subtle jokes and little editing tricks? This may be his worst movie. He probably believes he’s numbing us by the power of his vision, but he’s actually numbing us by its emptiness. [13 July 1987, p.75]
Greatest war movie ever made was “The Battle of Algiers.”
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The footage on the Paris Island obstacle course is powerful. But Full Metal Jacket is uncertain where to go, and the movie’s climax, which Kubrick obviously intends to be a mighty moral revelation, seems phoned in from earlier war pictures.
With 2001 Kubrick moved beyond conventional narrative. The Shining and later flicks were throwbacks.
A real-life revenge of the nerds. Or as someone at NASA said, a great day for the squares.
I hate the way the script dispatched Sgt. Hartman. (As if recruits shooting their sergeants was a rather common thing.) That scene ruined the rest of the movie for me.
After the boot camp segment the movie just wandered around with no plot line whatsoever.
Favorite scenes/lines - of course "Hey, what about Major Kong?"
Slim Pickens inventorying the contents of their survival kits.
Gen. Turgidson on the phone in his shorts.
Of course the "precious bodily fluids" scene...
Gen. Turgidson explaining how if a crew is good, I mean really good...
> For the record my favorite Kubrick film is Paths of Glory. <
That was a great movie. It pulled no punches. Suppose someone knew nothing about WW I. After watching Paths of Glory, he’d know everything he needed to know about that war.
They were both crap! Platoon was an atrocity - full of BS tropes about our war in Vietnam and cheesy special effects.
Full Metal Jacket had an OK boot camp start but with an unrealistic finish - and then went into its caricature-filled stupidity with its "Hue City" part that had no resemblance at all to the real Hue City or real Marines or anything else combat-related.
All of the big-budget movies about the Vietnam War were unrealistic and insulting to the good guys who fought that war.
Thank you. Semper Fi
“numbnuts”
“Door Gunner” was the originally cast as the drill instructor, but Ermy beat him out on getting the role.
The night before Kubrick told him “You know tomorrow has to be big.” Yes sir, I know. “I’m talking REAL big, Bela Lugosi big”. And this was the result.
Much like the war it was depicting.
Boot camp
In country
Confrontation
Those are the 3 acts
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