Full Metal Jacket and Platoon

As we discussed in class, I believe that the opening scenes of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket define how the entire rest of the movies are structured. What you see and hear happening in the opening scenes sets the tone for the length of the movie. Platoon begins immediately in Vietnam with grey images of soldiers, smoke, and body bags, giving a grave, hopeless tone from the start. Jacket begins with soldiers having their heads shaved as a country song plays in the background. The song is ironic because though the lines discuss serious topics such as “I don’t suppose that war will ever end, there’s fighting that will break us up again,” the tone doesn’t come across as serious, but rather lazy and insignificant. A single soldier presents Platoon, where we get to see the war through his eyes and hear his inner thoughts. We are able to create a more personal connection with him, causing us to sympathize for him, while it all around helps us understand better what is happening to the soldiers. Jacket is presented through an observer, resulting in the audience feeling disconnected from what is going on, which parallels how most Americans felt during the Vietnam War.

Full Metal Jacket was structured to be more of an entertaining movie, with the humorous comments, the “bootcamp” with the insane drill instructor, and the soldiers enduring basic training. Platoon is devoted entirely to the war, showing a lot more violence and actual fighting, and really everything that the soldiers experienced. The different approaches of each movie show the two different sides in the Vietnam War. Part 1 of Jacket presented more of what ignorant Americans believed war was like, with the intense “boot camp” but failed to present how brutal and life changing actual war is, until Part 2. Platoon being more serious and completely involved in the war, presented the side of war that most Americans were ignorant of, never have being exposed to it.