Accentuation...
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket has been coming around quite a bit on one of the premium satellite channels lately (or maybe it's several such channels, I haven't bothered to keep track). What I found noteworthy was the description of the movie that is provided if you press the button for information:
(a) One is not a Marine until after having completed boot camp. Before "graduation," one is technically a "recruit" (although various other names have been known to be used).
(b) "Companions" is just wrong. Companions may apply to the relationship between characters in The Lord of the Rings. Companions make me think of Firefly. I think it would have been a lot better to start the description with "A group of recruits endure basic training..."
(c) The Army has Drill Sergeants; the Marines have Drill Instructors.
Okay, so having tapped all of that out, I'll stipulate that maybe I'm being a bit too exacting in my criticism. However there remains the following:
(d) Sadistic? Perhaps to the untrained eye. We learned, as time passed, that there were reasons behind the seemingly arbitrary and, yes, seemingly sadistic things that would happen from time to time. (This, of course, raises an interesting question: If you do things to others that are interpreted as sadistic, but your purpose in doing so is not to derive any kind of sadistic satisfaction, is what you're doing still sadistic?) There's got to be a better word. Maybe "unforgiving"?
So: "A group of recruits endure basic training under an unforgiving Drill Instructor."
Except that as-is, such a description is a bit lacking, as in:
(e) What about the other 50% (at least) of the movie, guys? The in-country part? Over there in Vietnam? The whole Tet Offensive arc? The street-to-street fighting in Hue?
FMJ is still a pretty powerful movie a quarter of a century later. And its depiction of boot camp is, for the most part, the way I remember it.
Cheers...
A Marine and his companions endure basic training under a sadistic Drill Sergeant.The sequence of thoughts that popped into my mind upon reading this was roughly as follows:
(a) One is not a Marine until after having completed boot camp. Before "graduation," one is technically a "recruit" (although various other names have been known to be used).
(b) "Companions" is just wrong. Companions may apply to the relationship between characters in The Lord of the Rings. Companions make me think of Firefly. I think it would have been a lot better to start the description with "A group of recruits endure basic training..."
(c) The Army has Drill Sergeants; the Marines have Drill Instructors.
Okay, so having tapped all of that out, I'll stipulate that maybe I'm being a bit too exacting in my criticism. However there remains the following:
(d) Sadistic? Perhaps to the untrained eye. We learned, as time passed, that there were reasons behind the seemingly arbitrary and, yes, seemingly sadistic things that would happen from time to time. (This, of course, raises an interesting question: If you do things to others that are interpreted as sadistic, but your purpose in doing so is not to derive any kind of sadistic satisfaction, is what you're doing still sadistic?) There's got to be a better word. Maybe "unforgiving"?
So: "A group of recruits endure basic training under an unforgiving Drill Instructor."
Except that as-is, such a description is a bit lacking, as in:
(e) What about the other 50% (at least) of the movie, guys? The in-country part? Over there in Vietnam? The whole Tet Offensive arc? The street-to-street fighting in Hue?
FMJ is still a pretty powerful movie a quarter of a century later. And its depiction of boot camp is, for the most part, the way I remember it.
Cheers...