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Francis Ford Coppola Wants To Make An "Apocalypse Now" Video Game

Logan

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" is the best speech in a movie in a Blockbuster UK survey amongst film buffs in 2004. Probably is, since it’s one of the most memorable lines in a movie ever. If you do not know what move the line came from, you’ll probably listen to it again if Francis Ford Coppola gets his way.

Francis Ford Coppola directed and produced the movie “Apocalypse Now” starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duval, Dennis Hopper, and Laurence Fishburne. Set in the Vietnam War, the film was released 38 years ago and ranks as one of the greatest movies of all time.

In the movie, Captain Benjamin L. Willard, a U.S. Army Special Operations officer played by Martin Sheen, was sent on a mission to assassinate Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando, who was deemed to have gone insane but he commands a group of Montagnard troops in neutral Cambodia.

Now, 38 years after the movie was released to world wide acclaim, Coppola wants to turn the movie into a video game. The problem is that no major game publisher wants to take in the project, and hence Coppola has turned to Kickstarter to crowdfund the project, with the aim of raising US$900,000 to start turning it into reality.

Coppola has already recruited a team from the video game industry and this includes Rob Auten, the lead designer of Gears of War and Battlefield, and Lawrence Liberty, who produced Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeons & Dragons titles.

In the video game, just like in the movie, the gamer will be playing the role of Captain Willard with the task of finding and killing Colonel Kurtz:

Apocalypse Now depicts the horror and spectacle of the Vietnam War through the character of Captain Benjamin Willard, an American tasked with the assassination of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

The game is an interactive recreation of Willard’s journey, as seen through a survival horror lens in which players with limited resources face unspeakable terrors.

By choosing how to react to these situations, each player molds a unique version of Willard within the loose confines of the film story. You are Willard and your actions will determine his fate.

Your mission begins in Saigon, where Willard is holed up in a dingy hotel. Audio and visual distortion evoke Willard’s emotions and past experiences. The game provides you subjective access to a character who is already nearly insane.

Unlike a traditional RPG, the emphasis is not choosing dialogue, but rather actions and postures. Combat draws from survival horror to emphasize combat avoidance and stealth. This is not Call of Duty in Vietnam.

You will quickly learn that the gun-blazing solo war machine of other shooters would not have lasted long in the real Vietnam. Instead you will find rewards for proceeding cautiously and managing limited resources with care. Willard is your responsibility; make him an adept soldier and you will command respect in the jungle.

Brutalism and hubris will bring about severe repercussions affecting your relationship with those around you, especially the crew of the PBR Streetgang (aka the Erebus). Your actions can endanger or empower them and will affect how they view you and their willingness to aid you.

There is also a war of resources. Food, water, first aid supplies, anti-malaria medicine, drugs, ammo, weapons, mission information, and gasoline are all vital to your and Willard’s success. While in U.S.-controlled territory, you can find resources through exploration, interactions with allied forces, completing side missions, scavenging from hostiles, and supply drops.

Once the Erebus crosses under the Do Lung Bridge, the reigns of control are sheared away. American influence is replaced by something more primal, all ending in Kurtz.

If you like the movie and would like to relive it being the main character in a video game, then all you have to do is support the Kickstarter crowdfunding project. US$100,00 is the target and it looks like that amount is peanuts for a video game based on one the best movies in history. That is because the Kickstarter is what it is a “kickstart” activity that once the amount is reached, then further crowdfunding activities will be moved to the main website of the project which is https://apocalypsenow.com/. From there, another target of US$5 million will commence and the site will also serve as the point of entertainment while the project proceeds to completion.

The US$25 “Photojournalist” portion at Kickstarter is all gun, but there are still funding pledge options for you to choose from.

Will a video game project shunned by video game producers be able to turn into a blockbuster just like the movie it is based on? We’ll find it if ever this project gets its required funding and reach completion.

To end this, let us quote Colone Kurtz from the movie:

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But 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 are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

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