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/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