Some of those moments occur at the same time; remember again the helicopter assault and its unsettling juxtaposition of horror and exhilaration. Initially set to be a five-month shoot in the Philippines starting in March 1976, a series of problems lengthened it to over a year. Coppola has continued to circulate the original version as well: the two versions are packaged together in the Complete Dossier DVD, released on August 15, 2006, and in the Blu-ray edition released on October 19, 2010. By June 1977, Coppola had offered his car, house, and The Godfather profits as security to finish the film.

The helicopter squadron, playing " Ride of the Valkyries" on loudspeakers, raids at dawn with a napalm strike. Willard, however, sees through their façade and remarks to himself, "Charging someone for murder out here was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. He decided to make the film in the Philippines for its access to American military equipment and cheap labor.After photography was finally finished in May 1977, the release was postponed several times while Coppola edited over a million feet of film. At Cannes, Zoetrope technicians worked during the night before the screening to install additional speakers to achieve Murch's 5. With Brando not due to film until three months later, as he did not want to work while his children were on school vacation, Keitel left the project in April and quit the seven-year deal he had signed as well. Baxter and his little group of friends, known as the Spiders, are stuck in the middle of a gang warfare at their school. This is more clear in cuts of the film that include the French Plantation sequence than in the original theatrical version.

He said that the film centered on American perspectives of the war rather than Vietnamese experiences. Production coordinator Fred Roos had already made two low-budget films there for Monte Hellman, and had friends and contacts there.There are a few chapters where it feels like your brain is trying to adjust itself to the sudden appearance of these mystical creatures and by this point the action is so constant that your brain gives up on trying to understand and just accepts what you are reading.