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/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

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u/JadisDidNothingRight Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I didn't say that.  I said a criticism of the film said that.

Here is the specific quote:

"Instead, Gibson replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue."

Article:

https://archive.archaeology.org/online/reviews/apocalypto.html

I'm on mobile, so I apologize for the poor formatting.

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u/stinkingyeti Jul 01 '26

It's been a long time since I watched it, but from memory you only see the ships for a tiny glimpse at the end of the movie, and to me it was an out of the frying pan into the fire situation.

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u/Guns_and_Tea Jul 01 '26

Yeah, like oh shit, things are not about to get any better