Given that the Apocalypse Now original was not only long, but also unusual in style and substance for a film at that time, we tended to cut whenever possible, not only in time but also in what then was considered ‘weirdness’. Maybe 15 years later I happened to catch a TV viewing of it in a hotel, and as I always enjoyed seeing the beginning, started watching and ending up seeing the whole film. I realized that just with that time elapsed, that the film was not as weird as I had thought, and had become more ‘contemporary’. The opinion of many people that so much great stuff had been cut out, led to what was later called Apocalypse Now Redux […].That version had all that had been cut out, restored. Later on, once again, when asked which version I personally wanted to be shown, I often felt that the original 1979 was too abruptly shortened, and Redux was too long, and settled on what I now felt was the perfect version, which is called Apocalypse Now – Final Cut. - Francis Ford Coppola