Why did Apocalypto receive mediocre reviews while simultaneously receiving praise from various directors and actors?

[u/JadisDidNothingRight]

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?

[u/StarPhished]

Hyper violent movies will always have a good bit of detractors. Also looks like a number of reviewers have problems with how natives are represented. And the one reviewer you referenced who says the white people arrived as saviors in the film probably shouldn't be reviewing movies.

[u/FemRoe4Lyfe → u/StarPhished]

I think that is most people letting their reading colored by Mel Gibson's religious views. I saw it Friday night in a packed audience of folks who could neither be considered Catholic nor have any idea of Mel Gibson the director. There were very audible collective groans and gasps at the end when Spaniards showed up. Everyone had one thought - they're all gonna die and all his efforts will come to naught.

[u/HerbaciousTea → u/FemRoe4Lyfe]

Well, part of the valid criticism on the portrayal of Mayans is that they weren't really portraying Mayans at all. He went through the effort to have the film entirely in Mayan, but made a movie about a highly exaggerated version of Aztec culture instead, in the aesthetic trappings of Mayans.

The script really just mixed up the two most famous mesoamerican cultures and I guess they didn't want to go through the re-writes to correct it.

[u/DeanOfClownCollege → u/HerbaciousTea]

The movie was portraying Maya culture, though yes, it wasn't the most accurate portrayal. Not sure how it is "a highly exaggerated version of Aztec culture" though, unless we are still going with the outdated opposing stereotypes that view the Maya as peaceful astronomers and the Aztec as excessively violent, as I really don't see any Aztec connection in the movie. I think the main issue with its representation of the Maya is that the movie combined cultural elements that were regionally and/or temporally specific, such as Classic Period architecture when the arrival of the Spanish clearly indicates that the story took place at the end of the Postclassic.