“Opera Meets Film” is a feature dedicated to exploring the way that opera has been employed in cinema. We will select a section or a film in its entirety, highlighting the impact that utilizing the operatic form or sections from an opera can alter our perception of a film that we are viewing. This week’s installment features the popular hit “Crazy Rich Asians.”

“Crazy Rich Asians” is a fun movie. Its themes are compelling developed, but the packaging is all about creating a fun and exhilarating ride for the viewer.

And it undeniably does that throughout. Its reason for being on this website is also the testament to this. Let’s set the scene.

Nick Young, our co-protagonist is heading to the bachelor party for his best friend Colin Khoo alongside his other, less likable family members. The film has already established its world as one of excess and riches, nothing seems beyond the limits of its characters. So, it’s only fitting that as the men ride helicopters on their way to the bachelor party, wherever it might be, we hear Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” from “Die Walküre.” If you read last week’s installment or the one that highlights this very piece in its most famous cinematic iteration, you know the reference could not be clearer.

Helicopters and “The Ride of the Valkyries?” Who doesn’t immediately think of “Apocalypse Now?”

Of course, director Jon M. Chu is not coupling the image and sound to create any thematic connection between the two films. Sure, both of them feature Americans in Asia (Rachel Chu, the film’s protagonist, is a Chinese-American often rejected by the natives of Singapore as a gold digger), but the connection here is made because Chu knows his audience all too well. He knows that the combination of image and sound will automatically create this historic link and the dissonance between the two films will generate laughter.

In “Apocalypse Now,” Wagner’s famed theme was a battle cry, a war theme that “depicted” strength, might, and “heroism.” Those associations have stood with cinemagoers for decades so to suddenly see this reinterpretation is funny. After all, these young boys are not heroes or conquerors but a bunch of spoiled brats who have had everything given to them. They feel entitled to take over the world and, in a way, the sudden emergence of “The Ride of the Valkyries” is poking fun at their own sense of exaggerated power.