The Vietnam War is arguably the most controversial military intervention in
American history. It was objectively disastrous for everyone involved,
and ever since, nearly every film about it has been at least somewhat critical of it.
Even We Were Soldiers (2002), which offers a more nuanced view of the war, does well
at portraying the futility of it. But while most films critical of it use drama to expose its moral
quandaries (Platoon clip), one film stands out for often using humor instead (clip). Really dark
humor. Here’s everything you need to know about the classic anti-war film, Full Metal Jacket.
Behind the scenes
In early 1980, Stanley Kubrick reaches out to Michael Herr, a war journalist most famous today
for writing Dispatches, a memoir about his reporting on the Vietnam War. They meet up,
and Kubrick tells Herr he wants to make another war film but is still looking for
a story to adapt. Flash forward two years later, and Kubrick reads The Short-Timers,
a book Gustav Hasford wrote based on his experiences in the Vietnam War. Kubrick loves it,
and decides THIS is the story he wants to turn into a movie. Over the next year,
Kubrick dug into archives, looking at hundreds of old photos and old Vietnamese newspapers
to research the war. He also consulted Hasford directly as he came up with a script for the film.
Meanwhile, he spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince Herr to share
HIS Vietnam War experiences with him. Herr was hesitant at first,
but eventually agreed to help out, and both Hasford and Herr read over the first draft
of the script and suggested changes. Ultimately, Hasford and Herr contributed quite a bit to the
screenplay. Kubrick decided to call the movie “Full Metal Jacket,” after coming across the
phrase in a gun catalog. It’s just the name of a type of bullet, by the way.
Warner Brothers agreed to help Kubrick with whatever he needed. No one knows for sure how
much the company spent on production, but it may have been as much as $30 million.
First was casting. While Bruce Willis, Anthony Michael Hall, and Val Kilmer were all considered
for the role of Private Joker, ultimately Kubrick went with Matthew Modine. Kubrick appreciated
Modine’s performance in the film Birdy, in particular. Kubrick chose Vincent D’Onofrio
to play Private Gomer Pyle, but required him to gain weight for the role. He ended up putting
on about 70 pounds. Probably the most iconic role was that of the drill instructor, Gunnery
Sergeant Hartman. Kubrick originally offered the role to Ed Harris, but Harris turned it down,
later calling his decision “foolish.” Meanwhile, Kubrick was already working with an ACTUAL U.S.
Marine drill instructor during the Vietnam War, R. Lee Ermey, who was just helping out as a
technical advisor. When Ermey asked Kubrick if he could audition for the role of Hartman, Kubrick
didn’t think he was vicious enough to play the character. Now he was literally basing this off
of watching Ermey perform as a drill instructor already in the movie The Boys in Company C. Well,
Ermey disagreed, and he videotaped himself improvising insults at actors wanting to play
Marines, and after Kubrick saw that tape, he became convinced and gave him the part.
While Ermey rehearsed his lines, Kubrick’s assistant, Leon Vitali,
would throw stuff at him. Ermey then would have to catch the stuff and throw it back as quickly as
possible while saying his lines as fast as he could. Any slip-up meant starting the lines
completely over. Later Ermey said of Vitali, “[He] was MY drill instructor.” Ultimately,
though, Ermey improvised quite a bit during filming, and Kubrick later estimated that
Ermey wrote about half of his lines, especially with the insults (clip).
Kubrick filmed Full Metal Jacket all over England between August 1985 and August 1986. Nope,
nowhere near Vietnam. Kubrick, who lived in England at the time, didn’t want to fly to
the other side of the world, so he transformed England into this, believe it or not. He had a
giant plastic replica jungle flown in from California, but once it all got there, he
regretted the decision, saying “I don’t like it. Get rid of it.” Kubrick was VERY particular about
making sure the trees were authentic, though. He ultimately imported around 200 ACTUAL Spanish
palm trees to make the locations more authentic. Kubrick shot the boot camp scenes at Bassingbourn
Barracks, a former Royal Air Force station and British Army base. Much of the filming
took place at Beckton Gas Works, an abandoned gas works in London, believe it or not. It
was a toxic environment. Uh, quite literally…it had been contaminated with asbestos and lots of
other carcinogens. To make sure the actors playing recruits’ reactions to Ermey were more authentic,
Kubrick made sure Ermey and the recruits did not rehearse together. On some days while filming,
Ermey yelled at them for as much as 10 hours. It’s amazing he didn’t lose his voice. Oh,
and yes, the recruits all shaved their heads at least once a week for continuity. Many of the
extras at boot camp were actual British soldiers. Kubrick, as he typically did,
made his actors redo takes over and over and over. Supposedly, when Modine found out
his wife was having an emergency C-section, Kubrick didn’t want him to leave, so Modine
threatened to cut his hand open with a pocket knife unless Kubrick let him go be with her.
Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian, not only wrote the film score,
but also shot a bunch of behind the scenes footage.
Full Metal Jacket premiered on June 17, 1987. Over the following weeks,
it expanded to hundreds of theaters around the world. Ultimately, it was a success,
making at least $120 million at the box office. Critics also generally praised it,
and today it’s often considered one of the greatest war films ever created. That said,
several critics were more harsh of the second part of the film, set in Vietnam, saying it hurt the
overall message of the film. Full Metal Jacket won several awards. It’s currently certified
91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and is one of the highest rated films of all time on IMDb.
Plot
While you should definitely watch it yourself, here is the basic storyline. At the height of
the Vietnam War, we see new recruits arrive for Marine Corps boot camp. Among them, J.T. Davis,
who gets the nickname “Joker” after interrupting the drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman,
with a John Wayne impersonation. (clip) Also among the recruits is Leonard Lawrence, who is
a bit slow at learning and out of shape. He gets the nickname Gomer, after the character Gomer Pyle
from The Andy Griffith Show. The drill sergeant, Hartman, is brutal, to say the least, completely
shredding any resemblance of confidence they may have in themselves. Throughout the training, it’s
evident that Hartman’s goal is not only to make them combat-ready, but willing and able to KILL.
As Gomer struggles in boot camp, Hartman puts Joker in charge of helping him improve.
Gomer gets bullied and broken down to a point where he might be having a mental breakdown.
The second portion of the film takes place in South Vietnam, still following Joker with
different characters. By now, Joker is a sergeant and journalist, traveling with a fellow journalist
known as Private First Class Rafterman, based in Da Nang (duh nang). They are seeing little action,
but that quickly changes after the Tet Offensive begins, and Joker and Rafterman
are sent to Phu Bai (foo buy). There, Joker reunites with his friend Sergeant “Cowboy,”
who he knew at boot camp, and for the rest of the film, we follow Cowboy’s group through the
Battle of Huế and an ambush. That’s basically it. I promise you, there’s no spoilers here.
Analysis Toward the end of basic training,
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman says to the squad the Marine Corps does not want robots the Marine Corps
wants Killers but what's the difference it's a curious distinction to make especially when basic
training is full of rigid discipline absolute submission to Authority and the transformation
of individuals into a homogenized group that acts as one so if it's not mechanical compliance that
creates a killer what is it I think the answer lies in the unique genre that Full Metal Jacket
occupies the dark comedy Contra many American war films of the era Full Metal Jacket is largely
devoid of sentimentality or melodrama in fact there's Nary a serious moment the film is mostly
soldiers relentlessly roasting each other Hartman humiliating recruits with legendary one-liners
John Wayne impersonations innuendos about each other's mothers crotch grabbing STD jokes and
Battlefield eulogies that quickly devolve into a discussion of poontang although it may be tempting
to Discount these obscenities as trivial I think they're actually crucial to understanding the
phenomenon of military group psychology that the film is so preoccupied with because in order to
create a squad of killers you need dedication to the cause and ideology and for philosopher slavoy
Zizek and ideology is able to most effectively control us when it's held by its subjects at a
slight distance or held with a little dose of irony as if in some way the recruits are not
taking their mission as killers entirely seriously in the film obscene comedy is the mechanism by
which the squad keeps their mission to kill the Viet Cong at a distance and Hartman uses this
lurid comedy so popular in military culture as a way to get the squad to systemically dissociate
with their mission to become Killers for example when Hartman tells the soldiers that their rifle
is the only sexual action they're gonna get he's exercising his incontestable authority with a kind
of a rye wink he's telling a joke almost bribing the squad with a little bit of obscene Joy there's
a kind of unspoken social contract between Hartman and the squad they live the hell of basic training
and in return he gives them the salacious pleasure of a dirty joke and importantly these jokes don't
compromise his authority on the contrary they strengthen it because Virginia subjects are
more likely to submit to Authority when they think they're getting pleasure and freedom
indeed the importance of crudeness continues on the battlefield enabling them to cope with the
horrors of War by using dark comedy to regularly dissociate from the utter seriousness of life in a
war zone even when Joker who of course jokes says that he joined the Marine Corps to kill there's a
sense that he's being ironic I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill
after all he iconically has a helmet that says born to kill and a peace button on his lapel
the juxtaposition itself is a representation of the dissonance one has to juggle in order to be
effective in a war zone it's very difficult to turn human beings into robotic killing
machines doing so requires them to actually believe that their killing is Just which is
difficult especially for a conflict as unpopular as the Vietnam War it's much more effective to
turn them into a band of jokers who could be made comfortable killing with the knowledge that given
the freedom they may have chosen otherwise like the rolling stone song in the film's end credits
in order to deal with the horror of war sometimes you've got to use humor to paint it black
Legacy Not only are there so many
freaking war movies out there, but there’s A LOT of actually pretty good ones. Full Metal Jacket
definitely stands out as a good one. Strangely, though, other Vietnam War films continue to get
way more love from critics and just are more popular over all. And yet, while Full Metal
Jacket seems to become increasingly overshadowed by other great war films in recent years, it has
still had a long-lasting impact on how many people view not just war, but joining the military.
35 years later, we still laugh at this film…even though we might feel guilty
laughing. Hartman’s rants, in particular, continue to provide countless opportunities for memes,
despite being pretty offensive today. Full Metal Jacket, in fact, may be a big reason why we still
accept the brutal nature of boot camp, strangely enough. There is even evidence the boot camp
scenes may have even inspired more Marines to enlist. The line “Me love you long time.
Me so horny.” ultimately became a catchphrase and was sampled in rap songs.
But we all still recognize that this is a serious film. Full Metal Jacket managed to not only raise
awareness of the brutality of combat, but the harrowing nature of abuse recruits can endure.
It doesn’t have a “happy ending.” There is not much of a resolution other than just being alive.
And while the film is technically an “anti-war” film, Kubrick never referred to it as such,
and today it’s one of those rare war films that both pacifists and veterans respect. Indeed,
it’s probably the best war film ever made to capture the collective doublethink we tell
ourselves about war. War is evil and absurd. War is necessary and noble. It’s a constant
contradiction that this scene in particular captures. (peace button clip) Simply put,
no other film seems to have captured the absurdity of war quite like Full Metal Jacket.
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Ok, I’d better be upfront with you here. I had nothing to do with the analysis portion
of this video. That was all Jared Bauer. Yep, THE co-founder of Wisecrack who now has his own
channels on YouTube and Twitch in which he offers more brilliant analyses on a variety of art. Be
sure to go over to his channels to subscribe. It was an honor to collaborate with him on this!
Full Metal Jacket is certainly MY favorite anti-war film of all time,
but what’s yours? And Kubrick is among my favorite directors. What do YOU think of this movie? Also,
which movies should I cover next on this channel? Let me know down below, and thanks for watching.