Platoon & Full Metal Jacket Blog

I watched Platoon first then I compared that to Full Metal Jacket. I found Platoon to be over the top in war movies and felt it was one of the strongest anti-war movies created. This movie showed that the war was a big mistake. The movie told the story of a young soldier’s point of view. I looked into fun facts about the movie’s background, and I learned that the director of the movie was an actual soldier in the Vietnam War. Parts of the storyline and the general idea behind the movie was based on some of his personal experiences. I found some of the scenes in this movie very brutal. Such as, in one scene the American troops invade a small Vietnamese village and randomly start killing the villagers. In one killing scene, a little girl is on her knees begging for the soldiers to not kill her father, in which the soldier just stands there making the girl cry even more without any remorse. One of the main things I didn’t like about Platoon was that they didn’t state any significant locations or battle names. If anyone was trying to watch this movie just to get the history of the Vietnam War then they wouldn’t find this movie helpful. This movie stated only about battle and no history. This movie didn’t quite seem to interest me. The only thing from this movie that really seemed to catch my attention were the battles fought. Full Metal Jacket started off with soldier’s being constantly yelled at with vague profanity and with them being trained to fight. I am guessing higher ranked soldiers do this to trainees to strengthen them physically and emotionally. Full Metal Jacket, however, mentioned important events than Platoon, in which I found that was important to keep track of the scene’s locations. Knowing the locations and name of battles is important because if someone with no background of the Vietnam War is watching this movie, that person will not find this movie interesting as much as if that person was watching this movie that mentioned locations and names of the battles.

If I had to choose which movie I liked more, I would choose Full Metal Jacket because I felt that there was more information about the Vietnam War than Platoon. Platoon seemed as if it could have been any war being fought. Both of the director’s were portraying what happens in a war. Both movies showed the feelings of troops during the war, regardless if it was a soldier fighting or a journalist writing about the war. Some violence in the scenes were impossible for me to watch. The main difference I thought between the two movies was that Full Metal Jacket displayed the psychological effects of war and Platoon focused mainly on soldier's personal effects through the war.