Coppola, along with editor and longtime collaborator Walter Murch, added 49 minutes of material that had been removed from the initial theatrical release.

For the Redux version, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Frederic Forrest, and Aurore Clément were brought back to record ADR for the new scenes.

New music was recreated and recorded for the remade film by San Francisco Bay Area-based composer Ed Goldfarb, specifically the added tracks "Clean's Funeral" and "Love Theme".

Coppola went to the festival, accompanied by Murch, Storaro, production designer Dean Tavoularis, producer Kim Aubry and actors Bottoms and Clément.

The website's critics consensus reads, "The additional footage slows down the movie somewhat (some say the new cut is inferior to the original), but Apocalypse Now Redux is still a great piece of cinema.

[9] Some critics thought highly of the additions, such as A. O. Scott of The New York Times, who wrote that it "grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the restoration of scenes left in the cutting room two decades ago has only added to its sublimity.

"[10] Some critics, however, thought the new scenes slowed the pacing and were too lengthy (notably the French plantation sequence) and added nothing overall to the film's impact.

Owen Gleiberman wrote "Apocalypse Now Redux is the meandering, indulgent art project that [Francis Ford Coppola] was still enough of a craftsman, in 1979, to avoid.

"[12] Anthony Lane wrote, "if you have never watched Apocalypse Now in any form; if you know it well and wish to bend your Jesuitical attention to the latest addenda; if you have grown to love it on scrumbled videotape but failed to catch it on the big screen; if you were out of your head during a pre-dawn college screening, duly noted the movie as a trip, and find yourself unable to remember whether the trip in question was Coppola's, America's, or yours; in short, however relevant or rocky your relations with this film—see it now.