Watching Apocalypse Now Final Cut in Sony 4K Laser
Severed heads. Skulls on stakes. Surfers in a gun battle. A bridge rebuilt and blown up every night. Painted faces. A jungle swallowed in flame. Wagner. The Doors. Sweat. Malaria. And so many helicopters, their blades pounding relentlessly. Only Crazy Grenade-Launcher man knows "who's in charge here," and he ain't saying.
Yes, Apocalypse Now is back. For its 40th anniversary, the movie has been remastered in 4K digital and re-edited before heading to Blu-ray and 4K/Ultra HD discs. The nightmarish Vietnam War epic is the quintessential example of the "cinema of endurance": long, grueling, magnificent, and LOUD. When Apocalypse Now first hit theaters in 1979, it ran about 2.5 hours, but its 2001 re-release (dubbed Apocalypse Now Redux and presented in 35mm) clocked in at a whopping 3 hours and 22 minutes. The newest version, Apocalypse Now Final Cut, comes in at about 3 hours.
Martin Sheen stars as Captain Willard. Sheen is best known for being Paula Abdul's father-in-law from 1992 to 1994. [credit: Lionsgate ]
Before heading to home video, Final Cut gets a brief theatrical run so you can watch it the way God and Director Francis Ford Coppola intended: on a huge screen in a dark room with no ability to hit pause and escape. Many theaters are also showing it on Sony's cutting-edge 4K Laser Cinema Projectors, which only hit the market about a year ago. Although most cinema projectors are already 4K, the 4K Laser replaces the xenon bulbs used by most projectors with a longer-lasting, brighter, and more-consistent laser.
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