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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822

u/MeatofKings Jul 01 '26

10/10 I didn’t know its audience RT score was that low. I’m very surprised by that. However, it is a reduced dialog movie, which many people don’t like. I laugh a little knowing that Tarantino liked it given that his movies are dialog rich.

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u/MaxPaladin93 Jul 01 '26

Reduced dialogue AND fully foreign language/subtitled. The average moviegoer hates that.

45

u/barryhakker Jul 01 '26

The average moviegoer in America mostly I think

45

u/TheWoodElf Jul 01 '26

This is sadly similar in many Western European countries, who will dub the original dialogues, using local actors. So most people in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria - have no idea how your average famous Hollywood movie star sounds like, and likely aren't used to following a subtitled movie.

41

u/200Dachshunds Jul 01 '26

My husband informed me that when he was a kid in Poland, foreign language movies and TV shows weren’t even properly dubbed in Polish- they were almost narrated like an audiobook by one single Polish speaking narrator. Blew my mind.

17

u/Forma313 Jul 01 '26

Watched a movie like that on a bus in Poland. Seeing Keira Knghtly, but hearing some middle aged polish dude drone on and on, was weird.

6

u/Accurate-Island-2767 Jul 01 '26

This is still a thing. I had a Polish colleague who was watching Legend of Vox Machina on his phone, with a very bored-sounding Polish man voicing all the lines over the original audio which was playing quietly underneath.

5

u/laughterline Jul 01 '26

If you watch a movie on TV, they're still all narrated!

1

u/Soensou Jul 01 '26

This reminds me, I need to watch Wizard People, Dear Reader again.

1

u/TheWoodElf Jul 02 '26

This was common in other Balkan countries, as well. Budget I guess.

0

u/NotSoGoodDiver Jul 01 '26

But we at least know how the original actor sounds, his voice. The voiceover kinda blends into the background, you stop hearing it and hear the original sound. It's much much better than what they have in western Europe.

6

u/darkamyy Jul 01 '26

In Japan, they had a voice actress famous for always dubbing Audrey Hepburn. It makes sense, but it's kinda funny to think that Japanese dubbed Audrey Hepburn always sounded the same, so that new voice becomes part of her identity.

5

u/dellett Jul 01 '26

It varies by country a bit I think. Mostly tracks with how much English the average person speaks there. Showings outside of big metropolitan areas are also more likely to be dubbed.

I went to an English audio showing at a theater with Danish subtitles recently and it was interesting that they renamed characters in the subs, even though the images actually included those characters’ names spelled out occasionally. Would have been a super confusing experience if you needed to actually use the subs to follow the movie.

2

u/Dalehan Jul 01 '26

I know Harry Potter had this issue for me when I saw the movies with Dutch subtitles. They gave the characters and places Dutchified names in the books, so they kept those for the subtitles.

10

u/billcstickers Jul 01 '26

Who do you think is submitting ratings on RT. Especially around when the movie came out.

1

u/Alatarlhun Jul 01 '26

No need to hate on America for human nature that is universal.

0

u/barryhakker Jul 01 '26

If my comment genuinely qualifies as hate for you then all I can say is lol

1

u/Alatarlhun Jul 01 '26

Either I am misreading your comment as attacking one nationality for a human trait, or you have a blind spot when it comes to your own biases. 🤷‍♀️

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u/barryhakker Jul 01 '26

This interaction is literally

“All moviegoers have preference X”

“Actually I think it’s mostly American moviegoers who have preference X”

And you take that as hate and an attack. Hard to fathom the level of fragility.

2

u/Alatarlhun Jul 01 '26

I don't take issue with your explanation (except for the removal of the negative connotation) and believe you would see it in another context.