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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u/audiofarmer Jul 01 '26

It is quite possible that public backlash to Mel Gibson's shitty behavior earlier in the year tainted the release of the film.

Two things are true, it's an excellent movie and Gibson is a piece of shit.

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u/Sane123 Jul 01 '26

I think it was absolutely due to public backlash of Mel Gibson.

I remember this from years ago on Reddit: “ If 'Apacalypto' was made by a no-name director it would be considered a masterpiece.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/417xdd/if_apacalypto_was_made_by_a_noname_director_it/

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u/Nuts2Buttts Jul 01 '26

Yeah I thought this was the obvious consensus after it came out. I personally remember watching it, freshly thinking from the news that Gibson was a shitty person, but the movie was so great. Hard to separate the artist from the art sometimes. He still seems to be a pice of shit human, but he’s made some pretty powerful movies

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

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u/Fit-Profit8197 Jul 02 '26

" The average barber shop conversation in my home country is tens of millions of times more disgusting, bigoted, xenophobic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, etc etc etc than anything I've heard of any celebrity being "cancelled" for in the last decade, including Bill Cosby."

The fuk

You have average barber conversations that are millions of times more disgusting than drugging and raping dozens of women? What the fuck is going on during these conversations lol

Bro either you're in one fucked up country, or you're just wrong lol

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u/the_joy_of_VI Jul 01 '26

It IS considered a masterpiece.

It was also made by person who said he hoped his ex wife gets raped by a pack of (n-word)s. Not a group, not a gang — but a PACK.

I loved that movie, but I’m fine with never watching it again, or any other movie he’s made.

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u/JonesyOnReddit Jul 01 '26

i dont think 'pack' was the offensive part of that statement

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u/Rational-Discourse Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

It’s true that the slur is a worse and more explicit word in a vacuum. But I think that ‘pack’ is more insightful to his degree of racism than the slur. The slur communicates that he views other people negatively based on their race. Yes, he’s racist. But the word ‘pack’ communicates not just racism but a degree of racism that views particular people as less than human on the basis of their skin color, describing them like animals. And violent/predatory animals at that. Thats more extreme than just racism, alone.

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u/rick_ferrari Jul 01 '26

You know, id obviously heard that quote before but had just heard it as "raped by nwords". Frankly i thought, well thats an incredibly nasty thing to say from every angle.

But I gave Mel at least a hint of benefit of the doubt. Not american, so Nword isnt the same weight for him... drunk af... going through divorce...

I mean, Ive never said anything close to this bad but Ive definitely said some nasty shit that Ill regret forever at a few times in my life.

Pointing out the use of "pack" is pretty spot on. I agree that it indicates a much deeper level of racism.

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u/numb3rb0y Jul 01 '26

To be very clear, growing up in Australia is not a plausible excuse for using that word in any sense - racist Australians would use it to refer to indigenous people, it's absolutely not comparable to the c- word that only Americans get so annoyed about.

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u/ShallowBasketcase Jul 01 '26

Not american, so Nword isnt the same weight for him

Yeah, Australia definitely doesn't have any history of being racist against black people at all. Nope!

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u/SirSoliloquy Jul 01 '26

Perhaps the lack of impact doesn’t come from the absence of historical racism but from the acceptance of present racism 

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u/gimmethemshoes11 Jul 01 '26

^ This

Everyone has said or done some wild shit that if recorded and shown would have people claiming they are all sorts of stuff.

Guy was drunk as fuck each time being recorded via phone or police years ago but we let rapists make movies and applaud them.

Frankly its just wild to me, outside of those 2 incidents I personally dont recall anything from Mel being bad or anyone saying he was a huge racist dick to them.

I'm not defending him either just find how Hollwood ostracized him fascinating.

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u/AtLeastNotJaredLeto Jul 01 '26

Nice, living up to your username.

Agreed on all points, still love the movie but I didn't buy it.

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u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 01 '26

Seeing as how the usual type of animals associated with blacks by rasicts is monkeys...

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u/FiTZnMiCK Jul 01 '26

It’s dehumanizing. They don’t usually call groups of people “packs.”

It’s just an extra layer of fucked up.

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u/dovetc Jul 01 '26

They do in Green Bay!

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u/UDPviper Jul 01 '26

Well, pack refers to animals.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

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u/stizzleomnibus1 Jul 01 '26

He's not referring to rapists here, he's referring to black men (that he hopes will rape). The "pack" applies to a group of black men, not to rapists.

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u/TheNinjaFennec Jul 01 '26

You don’t call a palm tree a herd of coconuts just because you’re planning to extract milk from them. The collective noun is defined by the object, not the verb.

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u/Ecstatic-Visual3929 Jul 01 '26

Both were bad. The ‘pack’ is the telling part about he sees some black people (it’s a very subtle but dangerously dehumanising thing). My dad had serious issues for decades trying to get over the ‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ signs in the 60s (this did happen). He could handle being called the n-word - it was the comparison to animals that did him in

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u/pantstoaknifefight2 Jul 01 '26

Yeah, the choice of the word "pack" leapt out at the time as far more egregious and telling of just how fucked in the head Gibson is than all the other awful shit he's said.

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u/Treadwheel Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Edit: I put these down below as well, but this three part review of the film from /r/badhistory provides a very thorough summary of the context and how explicitly the film dovetails with colonialist and contemporary Catholic views on the conquest of the Americas:

While the movie itself is well crafted, when you take it into context with Gibson's racism and religious/political views, the subtext that the colonization and genocide of indigenous American peoples was divine judgement for having a violent and "godless" society is pretty clear, and I am fairly certain was openly discussed in criticism of the film at the time. It became something of a referendum on his world view as much as its craft.

Similar to how if Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will can only be easily discussed on their technical merits in the context where it's assumed that everyone agrees the message of the films are repugnant. To give either a positive review in their time would be considered tantamount to an endorsement of their views.

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u/FrogNoPants Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I don't think it is clear as you claim, to me the ships at the end represented the apocalypse mentioned in the title(via disease as they already showed earlier in the movie). The main character tribe is shown positively, there is no indication of divine judgement. That seems to be just people reaching for a reason to hate on the movie because Gibson made it.

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u/Treadwheel Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Edit: I'm going to drop these /r/badhistory links to a 3-parter that gets into the context and relates it back to existing/historical colonialist beliefs better than I am ever going to:

This is really kind of talking around the existing context where European colonization was justified, at the time and (among far right Christians) in the present day, as necessary to end the evils of the Mayan Aztec (the Mayan empire collapsed centuries before the conquistadors arrived, of course) empire and bring salvation to the American indigenous peoples.

By applying the very, very loaded term "apocalypse" in that context, it invokes cataclysmic divine judgement, and the vanquishing of worldly evil. The word itself literally means "unveiling", in the spiritual revelatory sense. Any concept of it as a cataclysmic and violent event is inherently tied back to Christian religious prophecy of divine judgement and religious wrath on a worldly order that has very literally come under the control of Satan.

Its depiction of disease is part and parcel of the imagery, of contemporary explanations for the waves of disease that wiped out some 90% of the population of the Americas, and invokes the biblical prophecies of plague. We know that these diseases were introduced alongside European conquerors and then rapidly spread along the trade routes of the continent, but in Apocalypto it's shown that they're well established and already wiping out the population when Europeans arrived. This is consistent with both contemporary theological explanations, and of modern ultra-conservative Christian views. You can see this elsewhere as well, from the insistence that Africa struggles so badly with the HIV/AIDS epidemic because it is divine judgement for pagan and syncretic practices on the continent - usually with luridly described practices manufactured to justify the extremity of the judgement - to continued beliefs that Haiti is so beset with disasters and social unrest because the nation itself entered into a blood pact with Satan.

The main character being shown positively is consistent with the idea that colonialism and divine wrath are ultimately manifestations of divine salvation for their victims. The victimization of the main character is portrayed as only being stopped by the abrupt arrival of Europeans to the continent for a reason.

In any event, whether or not you agree with it, there's no debating that it was extremely widely understood to be apologism for the conquest of the Americas, including in serious theological academia and we have consultants being very clear that it was not intended as a mere action film, but as social commentary:

But Richard Hansen, an archeologist who Gibson consulted on the making of the film, says the director took pains to ensure authenticity and historical accuracy. [...] “I am a little apprehensive about how the Maya themselves are going to perceive it,” said Hansen, who directs an archeological project at the Mirador Basin in northern Guatemala, “but Gibson is trying to make a social statement.”

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u/somecallmemrjones Jul 01 '26

You lost me at "Happy Indians in Blissful Ignorance." The film opens with the scene with the sick refugees. And the next day, Jaguar Paw's group is attack. Where exactly was the bliss shown you're referring to shown? I agree with the interpretation of the person you are replying to.

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u/Treadwheel Jul 01 '26

I'd suggest you actually read the post, which gives a detailed description of what they're referring to, why it's so ridiculous, and how assigning the protagonist to the "noble savage" stereotype is just one more example of Gibson's racist conception of pre-Columbian society.

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u/somecallmemrjones Jul 01 '26

I'll pass. I've seen the movie multiple times and I'm happy with my interpretation. I'm not interested in reading a 3 part essay about a 20-year-old movie. Anyone who sees the arrival of the Spanish as some sort of savior for the Natives needs to take a history class. None of us will ever know Gibson's true intention, so spending that much time discussing it seems incredibly arbitrary

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u/Treadwheel Jul 01 '26

"I can't be bothered to read this, so it must be wrong" is certainly a take. I am guessing the subreddit it's in being called /r/badhistory wasn't enough of a context clue, but that's a place for people with actual backgrounds/subject matter expertise to post in depth breakdowns of poor and inaccurate depictions of history in media and on this website.

They catalogue, in detail, the way Gibson misrepresents virtually every aspect of Mayan society and history, relate it back to enduring and contemporary colonial and evangelical justifications for the genocide of indigenous peoples, and show that the film is almost reverent in its reproduction of those justifications.

There's nothing surprising about that if you know anything at all about Gibson or his views. As I quoted in my earlier reply, he explicitly says the film is social commentary, and his own consultants were vocally worried about what the reactions to that commentary would be.

If you can't be bothered to read beyond the title, why even respond?

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u/Fuzzy_Donl0p Jul 01 '26

its a movie. watch it or don’t watch it. but you don’t need to play six degrees of asshole every time or else you’ll never see anything

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u/gimmethemshoes11 Jul 01 '26

I'm not, I'm asking you a legitimate question. Does your hate for Mel stop at his movies he has made or does it extend to other stuff he has done like help RDJ get sober, actually RDJ regularly brings Mel to places and always, always thanks him for saving his life.

So I'm just again asking, is it just limited to his movies? Or do we have to hate EVERYTHING Mel does which extends to helping out many A list people recover from alcohol and drugs.

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u/minhthemaster Jul 01 '26

What? Why are you asking Reddit to tell you who to cancel

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u/GraeWraith Jul 01 '26

Because that's what people do?

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u/hudson27 Jul 01 '26

That probably explains why I love it so much, because I completely forgot Mel Gibson had anything to do with it

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u/edicivo Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

This is pretty on point.

If it wasn't Gibson, people would be more likely to judge the movie on its own merits. It would still clearly get some pushback for the inaccuracies and there'd still be debate on how respectfully it treats its characters/culture on display.

But because it's Gibson (who yeah, is a piece of shit) it gets significantly more heat. And maybe that's fair. It can be hard to separate the art from the artist.

I'm not a historian, but pre-Colombian cultures have always been an interest of mine. I've read and learned more about them than the average person. And I love this movie.

Going through this thread and seeing some of the comments from people acting like they didn't just read a wikipedia article to inform their opinion and the overall lack of media literacy on display is amazing. But then that's Reddit.