Full Metal Jacket’s Mickey Mouse March & Final Narration Explained

In Full Metal Jacket, the final narration and the accompanying Mickey Mouse March singalong can seem somewhat inscrutable without further context. Director Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket arrived late in the helmer’s career and midway through the cycle of Vietnam War movies. Although a few more Vietnam movies were released after Full Metal Jacket, such as Born on the Fourth of July and Hamburger Hill, Kubrick’s contribution to the Vietnam movie sub-genre came after Platoon and Apocalypse Now had already offered definitive, albeit very different, cinematic portrayals of the invasion. Despite this, Full Metal Jacket was a critical success.