‘Apocalypse Now’ Is Becoming A Videogame

Francis Ford Coppola has given game developers the greenlight to turn his acclaimed 1979 war film, “Apocalypse Now,” into a videogame. And not just any first-person shooter either — “a psychedelic survival horror” game, as executive producer Lawrence Liberty told Ars Technica.

Players will take on the role of Capt. Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen in the film, as he travels up the Nung River into Cambodia to find the mysterious Kurtz, a Army Special Forces colonel who has gone mad. Now AWOL, Kurtz has organized his own tribal milita, which worships him like a god.

Willard’s mission? Terminate. With extreme prejudice, of course.

If you’ve never seen the film, stop reading this now. Go watch it. Then come back when you have hair on your chest. Meanwhile, even if you’ve seen it, the trailer provides a nice refresher.

As you can see, turning this beautiful work of art into a game is inane. Apparently, they couldn’t get rights to “The Deer Hunter.”

Whatever. The game’s Kickstarter page, which includes a video showing off the prototype, is aiming to raise $900,000 to make a PC version of the game. If it raises $2.5 million, PS4 and XBox One versions will also be released. There’s even talk of a VR version. Sigh.

If you’re looking to blow people away, this might not be your top choice. “We are making a survival horror experience,” Liberty explains in a promotional trailer. “I want to make a game where you can sit on the boat and drop acid if that’s what you want to do.”

Or as Coppola himself puts it, the game is “about not getting killed rather than being a killer … until you meet Kurtz.”

No doubt you’ll be able to surf as well. (Unless you’re Charlie. Charlie don’t surf.) What you won’t be able to do, apparently, is play the game as Kurtz, who has gone, as one character put it in the film, “totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.”

That would have been kind of fun. Maybe in the sequel? Meanwhile, the prototype is shaping up nicely. A few stills: