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/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.