Apocalypse Now Redux

Apocalypse Now Redux adds approximately 49 minutes of footage to the original 1979 film, bringing the runtime from 153 to 202 minutes. The most significant additions are the French plantation sequence, an extended encounter with the Playboy bunnies at a Medevac helicopter base, and additional scenes of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) interacting with his boat crew, including stealing Colonel Kilgore's surfboard.

The French plantation scene features Captain Willard and his crew taking refuge at a rubber plantation in Cambodia owned by a French colonial family who refuse to leave Indochina. The family hosts a formal dinner debating French colonialism and the Vietnam War, after which Willard spends the night with a widow named Roxanne, played by Aurore Clément. The scene was cut from the original release due to pacing concerns.

Francis Ford Coppola released Apocalypse Now Redux in August 2001, over two decades after the original film premiered in 1979. The restored version was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, where the original had won the Palme d'Or. Coppola and editor Walter Murch reassembled the film from archived footage stored at Coppola's Zoetrope studios.

The Redux version includes a small amount of additional footage at Colonel Kurtz's compound, including an extended scene where Kurtz reads aloud from Time magazine. However, the additions at the compound are minimal compared to the plantation and Playboy bunny sequences, largely because Coppola had limited usable footage of Brando due to the difficult production conditions during the Philippines shoot.