Platoon and Full Metal Jacket

Both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket fully embrace one ideal that FMJ so explicitly stated: “war is hell.” The emphasis of death in each of the movies especially in the war scenes represents a message of fear and devastation that I feel the directors wanted to emphasize.
Death in the opening scene foreshadowed much of the ensuing combat that would result in Platoon. The dead bodies that are carried in front of Taylor show exactly the devastation and the cost of the war. Though there are many veterans, Barnes states it best that “everybody gotta die sometime, Red.” The mood and the tone are set from the initial outset that any of the characters in front could be dead throughout the movie. On the other hand, death is not such a heavy onset in FMJ despite the nature of the war. The first death is of Hartman and Pyle, casualties resulting from the Pyle’s depression and psychoses, gradually building toward the Tet offensive and eventual death of Cowboy. It isn’t until Cowboys dies that I earnestly felt a sense of fear in the war. Even though, FMJ developed more personality and journey with Joker, watching as he went through training camp and through his assignments, it was easier to view from an objective view the horrors of the war especially when the door gunner kills all Vietnamese that he sees. Even the final scene, a mercy killing is that was delivered gave more relief. Platoon felt more of subjective view on the treatment of the war. The burning of the village, the murdering of the village head’s wife, and the attempted rape all show that without empathy it would be difficult to understand why or how these events could unfold.
Platoon ends with a retreat, the death of Barnes and an overall feeling of sorrow at a war that shouldn’t have been fought while FMJ ends with the same sense juxtaposed with a Mickey Mouse March however leading to heighten the sense of remorse with irony.