Full Metal Jacket

I love the whole thing.

 

why look at this as halfs? the "first half" is a set up for the second. and sure, there's an obvious time jump but to try to compare and contrast them as separate entities is foolish

 

Exactly. You can't have surf and turf without the juicy steak haha.

---------------- Now playing: (Kings Of Leon) Molly's Chambers via FoxyTunes

 

How tall are you private?

Sir, five-foot-nine, sir.

Five-foot-nine, I didn't know they stacked shit that high.


Good ol' Kubrick.

 

First half is some what humorous the second half is brutal as hell

 

While I like the whole movie, I like the 1st part better, as it is hilarious.

 

Hmm...I don't think this is at all correct. The two halves were actually based on separate books, and while both Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford (the authors of "Dispatches" and "The Short-Timers" respectively) both worked on the screenplay, they didn't work together, only with Kubrick.

Plus the film is really different in terms of tonality in each half. So analyzing it as if it were two separate films with a couple of continuing characters is completely accurate.

As for me personally, I think the first half is a much stronger narrative than the second. While the second is yet another "Vietnam" movie, the first part is a more universal story of the brutality that one endures to become a fighting soldier. The fact that Joker, the main character, chooses to eschew the infantry and become a writer is juxtaposed against the ridiculousness of the situation that he's put himself into (underscored by the silly songs "Surfing Bird" and "The Mickey Mouse Club Theme"). While the recreation of war-torn Vietnam filmed entirely in the U.K. is fantastic, it doesn't overshadow the sheer brilliance of Lee Ermey's performance, nor do any of the later characters come close to the effectiveness of Vincent D'Onofrio's Private Pyle.

While I can watch the first sequence over and over again without fail, the second part almost always leaves me hollow and is difficult to view over and over again.

Taken as a whole, it's a brilliant film, and certainly better than Stone's "Platoon". But to discount the fact that it's really two movies in one is simplistic.

 

Interesting comments. I prefer the second half, but that's only because I've been burned out by seeing the first half about a million times. In the Army this movie can be found playing in anyone's DVD player at any given moment (slight exaggeration), and often I've seen the movie turned off at the end of the first half. It somewhat irked me that this was the case as the Joes watching the film would be so giddy and sentimental as they watched the new privates go through boot camp. I always suspected that they thought the film glorified war, the military, and barbarism when it seemed to me to have the opposite intent.

 

I prefer the whole movie, but in totality I think the first half is more fulfilling and has more of a message than the second half. I think Kubrick (as long as the original authors) conveyed the message of dehumanization by means of violence and forced training, where they carry this out (in a somewhat lopsided fashion) in the second half of the movie.


wrote this last semester:

In Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick appears to have turned violence into a trivial affair. The first half of the movie focuses on the training and programming (of what appears to be) innocent young men. The Drill Sergeant constantly belittles them in a comical manner, all the while instilling in them a hatred that evolves into an inherent violence. Kubrick's view of trivial violence can be seen his the various marches that the Marines (Mickey Mouse marches) go through, as well as chants such as, “This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun.” That chant exemplifies Kubrick's notion that violence was becoming degraded in an overtly phallic enterprise... The reduction of violence to a sexual being in Full Metal Jacket allowed the recruits to become programmed in a way that made them feel comfortable when told to become violence, bloodthirsty individuals.


i think the dichotomy of the movie is VERY intentional, the first half, for many reasons, was much more descriptive and vulgar than the second half. this is because Kubrick was framing the story in a fashion that made the audience understand the brutality of war, both physicall and on the human psyche. that is why i enjoy the first half more, but still i cannot bring myself to say it is 'my favorite part'...