Oscars: 25 iconic movies that never won Best Picture

Iconic movies that never won the Oscars Best Picture: 16. Apocalypse Now

Release Year: 1979

Directed By: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, G. D. Spradlin, Jerry Ziesmer, Harrison Ford, Scott Glenn

If there’s a Hollywood dynasty everyone has heard of, it’s the Coppola family. They have had their hands in many award-winning films, many of which have also made a sizable pop cultural impact. One such film that won awards and got the world talking was Apocalypse Now from director Francis Ford Coppola. It’s considered one of the greatest films ever made, and perhaps one of the greatest to make broad strokes commentary about real-world issues. But it didn’t win Best Picture.

Loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now takes place in Vietnam in 1970 and centers on Captain Willard (Martin Sheen). He takes a dangerous and hallucination-inducing journey up the river to locate and assassinate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), an officer who has gone utterly insane. Despite the issues experienced while filming, the movie went on went to be a box office hit and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Apocalypse Now was the third most nominated film at the 52nd Academy Awards, behind All That Jazz and Kramer vs. Kramer, which tied for first with nine nominations each. Of its eight nominations, Apocalypse Now won two for Best Sound and Best Cinematography. Coppola had previously won Best Picture for The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, and while those films are still highly regarded, Apocalypse Now has been recognized as a “masterpiece” of the New Hollywood era.