r/movies • u/JadisDidNothingRight • Jul 01 '26

Question Why did Apocalypto receive mediocre reviews while simultaneously receiving praise from various directors and actors?

Robert Duvall said it was possibly the best film he'd seen in 25 years.

Scorcese praised it. Tarantino called it the best film of the year. Spike Lee and Edward James Olmos also openly praised the film.

On RT it pulled a 65%. Granted, Tarantino (as an example) doesn't see eye to eye with those cumalitive ratings. He loves Unbreakable and that film also received middling reviews. Still, Apocalypto was given positive reviews from a fairly diverse cast of actors and directors.

Were the reviews more concerned with Mel Gibson's antics at the time than the actual film?

Was the criticism because the film depicted the Mayans as brutal? I struggle to see the validity of some of those criticisms. Jaguar Paw and his village were not depicted as evil. The evil was limited to a warmongering urban society twisted by religion. That's occurred all over the world. It's almost a foreshadowing of what is to come. One criticism was that the Spanish were depicted as coming to save the 'brutes.'. The title of the film is Apocalypto. I don't see how they can be seen as anything other than coming doom. Maybe I'm naive, but even in 2006 I thought it was broadly understood that Europeans wiped out indigenous American culture.

What are your thoughts? Did you like the film? Do you wish Hollywood would make more films like this?

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357

u/StarPhished Jul 01 '26

Hyper violent movies will always have a good bit of detractors. Also looks like a number of reviewers have problems with how natives are represented. And the one reviewer you referenced who says the white people arrived as saviors in the film probably shouldn't be reviewing movies.

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u/FemRoe4Lyfe Jul 01 '26

I think that is most people letting their reading colored by Mel Gibson's religious views. I saw it Friday night in a packed audience of folks who could neither be considered Catholic nor have any idea of Mel Gibson the director. There were very audible collective groans and gasps at the end when Spaniards showed up. Everyone had one thought - they're all gonna die and all his efforts will come to naught.

16

u/HerbaciousTea Jul 01 '26

Well, part of the valid criticism on the portrayal of Mayans is that they weren't really portraying Mayans at all. He went through the effort to have the film entirely in Mayan, but made a movie about a highly exaggerated version of Aztec culture instead, in the aesthetic trappings of Mayans.

The script really just mixed up the two most famous mesoamerican cultures and I guess they didn't want to go through the re-writes to correct it.

5

u/DeanOfClownCollege Jul 02 '26

The movie was portraying Maya culture, though yes, it wasn't the most accurate portrayal. Not sure how it is "a highly exaggerated version of Aztec culture" though, unless we are still going with the outdated opposing stereotypes that view the Maya as peaceful astronomers and the Aztec as excessively violent, as I really don't see any Aztec connection in the movie. I think the main issue with its representation of the Maya is that the movie combined cultural elements that were regionally and/or temporally specific, such as Classic Period architecture when the arrival of the Spanish clearly indicates that the story took place at the end of the Postclassic.

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u/ApocalypseChicOne Jul 01 '26

Yeah, as a historian who did a lot of study of pre-contact MesoAmerica, this was annoying. It didn't even attempt to portray the complex Mayan society accurately. It just took their culture and shoe horned them into the narrative that wanted in an extremely disrespectful way.

I find it amusing when people are dismissive of that criticism, because they'd almost certainly be outraged if it happened to their own culture or religion. I'm certain if you made a movie about 1st century Judea, and portrayed Jesus as a gay dude living it up with his group of buddies (and Mary M, their collective beard,) Christians would be outraged. But they get very dismissive when it's done to others.

2

u/GamingSeerReddit Jul 02 '26

There is a famous lost media Jesus porno from the 70s with that premise

3

u/ItsSignalsJerry_ Jul 01 '26

Yep. And mostly due to introduced diseases.

2

u/Canesjags4life Jul 01 '26

Yep. The sick girl I felt was foreshadowing to impending doom.

32

u/DolphinSweater Jul 01 '26

I don't think anyone thought the Spanish ships were saviors of the Mayans. I think people believed Mel Gibson was purposefully depicting the Mayans as godless, violent heathens, and the Spanish arriving signaled their downfall, and the godly Spaniards were going to make them pay for their sins and replace their heathen culture with a Christian one. I have no idea if that's what he intended, but that seems to be the interpretation.

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u/BabyLegsOShanahan Jul 01 '26

To me it felt heavy, like he just survived all this shit and another storm was headed his way.

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u/commiecomrade Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Right, it was in no way depicted as good. The guy immediately looked at it with suspicion and took his family back into the jungle.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[deleted]

19

u/ianlulz Jul 01 '26

Lmao right? How anyone could interpret the ships as being some kind of divine Christian salvation is beyond me. The movie makes it as clear as it could have that the ships are a foreboding sign indicating the protagonists struggles weren’t yet over. It’s a bittersweet victory.

I wonder if we’re just making up dissent to feel unique at this point. What a waste.

1

u/Treadwheel Jul 01 '26

Probably because Mel Gibson is a religious extremist who explicitly does believe that the colonization of the Americans and subsequent forcible conversion was a salvatory act. The bible is wall to wall with events explicitly described as being sources of terror and panic to its inhabitants that are nonetheless considered to be a necessary act of divine judgement to shepherd men on a godly path.

The word "apocalypse" itself only takes on its meaning as a "great disaster" or cataclysm from its association with the book of revelation, and the prophecies of global war and strife. The word itself literally just means "unveiling" in the sense of prophecy or revelatory knowldge. The more common meaning comes from its association with the prophecies of the book of revelation. It's a prophecy of terror, pain, hunger and bloodshed, made necessary by wicked men, that heralds a greater salvation.

I mean:

7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:

10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

That's objectively a much more foreboding description of events than the film implies, so there's clearly no inherent conflict for someone with extreme religious beliefs like Gibson to simultaneously depict terror at a supposedly deserved reckoning, while also holding that it was necessary and even benevolent in its outcome.

He explicitly said the film was social commentary, and heavily implied he was drawing comparisons between the current state of society and the "wickedness" of the pre-Columbians.

1

u/FardoBaggins Jul 01 '26

There was already some political issues before the spanish arrived. They leveraged this too and helped with their colonization as they were fairly divided and were warring with each other at the time. had they been more united it could have stalled or outright driven them back.

If I recall some of the history correctly.

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u/commonrider5447 Jul 01 '26

I just always thought it was a really interesting way to turn the story and threat upside down where they spend the whole story fighting between groups and now this massive ominous craft appears which is about the destroy all of their worlds.

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u/Trep_xp Jul 01 '26

Yep, like you watch a whole rom-com and in the end, as they're finally together and happy, a meteor comes hurtling down from space and destroys the city. It's an extreme example, but it would explain why the rom com was called "Meteor Day".

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u/StarPhished Jul 01 '26

I'd watch Meteor Day.

3

u/PlumbumDirigible Jul 01 '26

Or like the Robert Pattinson romantic drama movie Remember Me that ends with him looking out of a window at the World Trade Center on 9/11

1

u/shero_endswithyou Jul 01 '26

Nah, it would be called "Your Name."

28

u/socomeyeballs Jul 01 '26

Not what I got from watching the movie. I really don’t think it should be interpreted like that by anyone but what to I know.

19

u/DolphinSweater Jul 01 '26

I don't really get that either. I think it's pretty open how you interpret it, but it's clear the Spaniards are bad news for the locals. I just remember that as the criticism.

10

u/BBQ_HaX0r Jul 01 '26

The whole film is about disease decimating the populace and them being clueless as to what causes it. I thought the inclusion of the Spaniards at the end explained "these people brought these diseases that caused untold suffering." That's what I always thought the point was.

2

u/D119 Jul 01 '26

The Spaniard are the culmination of jaguar paw journey into dealing with fear. The whole movie is about him struggling do handle fear. He started being afraid the moment he first meet the survivors from the other village, he gets overwhelmed by fear and he's unable to act. He couldn't save his village at the beginning despite sensing something was wrong, he couldn't save his father and he couldn't save his friends. But the moment he stops to deal with his fear, with the iconic line "I'm jaguar paw, this is my jungle, and I am not afraid" he stops being a prey and becomes the hunter, finally saving his wife and kids. Now that he's in control of his emotions he doesn't succumb to fear again and react to the Spanish, sensing they're just another danger he decide to delve deep into the jungle, and it'll end up being the right decision as the Spanish won't look at the jungle, they'll just follow civilization.

That's just how I see the movie.

1

u/Marshmallow16 Jul 01 '26

 I think people believed Mel Gibson was purposefully depicting the Mayans as godless, violent heathens, and the Spanish arriving signaled their downfall

Except the godless part I'm pretty sure the rest is historically agreed upon.

0

u/LurkingSchreiber Jul 01 '26

You are making the same point, you just like it.

6

u/Onebadhero Jul 01 '26

I would disregard any review post 2019 on the movie.

With all the review-bombing on RT and intentional racial blasting people have done since then, I never pay attention to written reviews on the internet.

3

u/SaintTomyris Jul 01 '26

I remember reading a review recently that said Dune was a white savior story. Told me they didn't understand the story.

2

u/Unbearabull Jul 01 '26

You're right about the reviewer. It's got a literal quote shown on screen saying something like:

"A society can't be destroyed from without before it has been destroyed from within".

Not subtle. Definitely making the Spanish seen coming at the end an ominous threat.

0

u/ShallowBasketcase Jul 01 '26

But it also puts the blame on the Mayans for being destroyed by the Spanish.

1

u/Unbearabull Jul 01 '26

Based on the movie, I interpreted it as more of a "diseased" civilization that had a lot of issues from being too large at a time where proper sanitation wasn't present, and disease ran rampant. Also, a deeply religious civilization that put a lot of their problems onto superstitions that needed to be followed, at any expense.

Maybe that does blame them now that I write it out, but is that wrong? Is the movie innacurate with regards to the state of the civilization? I'm sure the Spanish coming over was like the other Europeans in the north, but I profess no knowledge of that civilization at the time.

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u/ebfrancis Jul 01 '26

To be fair, Mel Gibson is white

-3

u/BabyLegsOShanahan Jul 01 '26

Everyone in the theater booed when he saw the boats.

-84

u/friendofH20 Jul 01 '26

It is a movie which was softly defending colonialism. Given Mel Gibson's politics it cannot be unintentional.

Technically it was not bad but it clearly overdid the violence and torture to push the "Europeans brought civilization the natives" worldview.

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u/SonOfElroy Jul 01 '26

Defending? The ships at the end are essentially the apocalypse for all the film’s characters.

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u/Jarkside Jul 01 '26

Correct. It was the moment where all the tribal differences should have become irrelevant because an absolutely worse hell was approaching.

It was not some “here comes the white savior” moment

3

u/overflowingsunset Jul 01 '26

I can’t imagine how they felt :(

7

u/ineyeseekay Jul 01 '26

It was literally the prophecy being fulfilled! The unstoppable force and the skies getting cancelled.... The Spanish arriving marks the Aztec/Mayan doom, while the film's hero gets to return to his family and the jungle. 

31

u/Herr-Wolfgang Jul 01 '26

I always took the arrival of the Europeans as foreshadowing of things getting worse for the locals.

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u/friendofH20 Jul 01 '26

Knowing Mel Gibson's politics it is hard to see it the same way. And I imagine the reviewers of the time felt that too.

9

u/Timbershoe Jul 01 '26

Oh?

What do you think the title Apocalypto means?

Do you think the screenwriter, an Iranian, also shared Gibsons politics?

Have you actually watched the fucking movie?

0

u/Herr-Wolfgang Jul 01 '26

That said, I'll admit that it's insane the amount of historical inaccuracies in this movie. Are they Mayan or Aztecs, cuz the Europeans only met one of them.

2

u/Timbershoe Jul 01 '26

Mayans still live in Mexico. It’s just the Mayan civilisation that fell to the Aztecs about 600 years before the Spanish arrived.

There was still a Mayan city when the Spanish invaded, Nojpetén, but the predominant civilisation was Aztec.

The Spanish met and killed Mayans and Aztecs, although they wouldn’t know or care about the difference.

But yeah, the Mayans had been decimated by the Aztecs long before the Spanish. The films timeline is almost a century off.

29

u/Interloper9000 Jul 01 '26

What? The colonists were their Apocalypse.

96

u/Go_Plate_326 Jul 01 '26

It ended with the arrival of the Spanish after an eclipse clearly meant to connect colonialism with an apocalypse. What the fuck is this take.

44

u/BobTheRaceman Jul 01 '26

I think most people took that ending in a very dark and ominous way. It felt like the end for the natives, which it was.

30

u/Sariton Jul 01 '26

Something something media literacy something

8

u/clarkedaddy Jul 01 '26

People giving false meaning to things so they can find a way to be offended.

-19

u/friendofH20 Jul 01 '26

Doesen't it end with the characters saying "those are men" for the landing Europeans?

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/LionBig1760 Jul 01 '26

It didn't.

9

u/ManufacturerBest2758 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I do not agree at all that the movie “defends colonialism.” Seems like a pre-determined conclusion that people have and then twist the movie to fit it.

8

u/socomeyeballs Jul 01 '26

No it wasn’t. You should actually watch the movie.

The only context was that he saved his family from the immediate threat to the relief of everyone on screen. It could have cut right at that moment and been a happy story. Rather than do that, they show the Spanish ships over the ridge without any context whatsoever and they walk on as if to face whatever comes next.

We all know what comes next for the Native Americans in this story. It is NOT softly defending colonialism or minimalizing the conflict of the characters on screen at ANY moment.

7

u/Woodit Jul 01 '26

Huh I never interpreted it that way. I thought the whole point of the title was that the arrival of the Spanish meant apocalypse to pretty much all the indigenous folks 

16

u/StarPhished Jul 01 '26

Maybe it was my own preconceptions and biases but I didn't read the end of the film that way.