I'm sure you have heard about sublime messages in Kubrick's movies. Stuff like a poster of a native American in Hue, the "we worship Satan" message on the water

I'm sure you have heard about sublime messages in Kubrick's movies. Stuff like a poster of a native American in Hue, the "we worship Satan" message on the water tower, the picture of a black man on the advertising billboard of a brand named "black buzzard batteries" [1] etc... which sure doesn't make much sense in an SE Asia country's setting. BTW, there is actually a brand named "buzzard batteries" now, but the "black" one I think is made up. My parents, who are Vietnamese and don't know about Kubrick, exclaimed in the middle of the movie that none of the fighting scenes in Full Metal Jacket were representative of Hue/Vietnam at all. I think Kubrick probably knew that. My interpretation is the same as Apocalypse Now, the point of it wasn't that the movie is about a specific war. It is about the symbolic nightmare that any unnecessary war brings. To me, that's quite different from how movies about World War II were portrayed -- those often tried to be realistic. 1: https://beersonfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Full-Metal-Jacket-1-962x539.jpg https://beersonfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Full-Meta... PS: I agree with you that 2001 was long and drawn out, and I consider that to be among Kubrick's less favorite movies of mine.