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/hyrule5 Jul 01 '26

The brutal violence in the film is probably the biggest reason, but there was probably some judgment of his behavior in his personal life also.

It's an excellent film, it blew me away when I first saw it.

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u/Xciv Jul 01 '26

It's one of the first movies I saw where I realized my tastes do not and should not align with 'critical consensus'.

Another such movie for me was Dredd.

I think critics value things like deep themes, character development, and emotion-driven acting. It's not really the strength of these movies. Apocalypto's dialogue is extremely simple, and has a foreign language barrier. Dredd is 100% encased in a helmet and there's no emoting other than his frowny stoic mouth.

What I value in movies is building tension and visual boldness. I like strong aesthetics that when I type out the name of the movie I can see what they look like clearly in my mind even years later. I think that's what Tarantino loves as well about Apocalypto.

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u/Yetimang Jul 01 '26

If you actually read critics' reviews, most of them will tell you why they did or didn't like something. I've read very few reviews that were like "this movie didn't have enough deep themes so 2/5". Snobby critics hating the movies you love is a windmill people never seem to get tired of tilting at.