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 avant-garde art of the present often becomes the ‘wallpaper’ (mainstream) art of the future. That plus the opinion of many people (including the distributors) 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

Like his peers George Lucas and (to a lesser extent) Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola has been reluctant to close the book on the films that made him famous. But while digital revisions to Star Wars and E.T. were scorned by many, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux was treated respectfully by critics and audiences upon its 2001 release. […]
Now, in what feels like revisionism, the master explains that Redux was not meant to be a definitive version. It was simply a chance to “put everything back”, despite realizing that 202 minutes was longer than the movie really needed to be. He has gone back again, keeping much of what Redux added but nip-and-tucking throughout: His 183-minute Apocalypse Now – Final Cut (a half-hour longer than the 1979 version) is meant to be “just right” […]. It’s also a chance to apply present-day tech advances to the film, using Dolby Vision and Atmos to make it as viscerally affecting as possible. This is an overwhelming sensory experience, with deep colors and nuanced sound amplifying the film’s hypnotic effect.

John DeFore, “The Hollywood Reporter”, May 1st 2019