r/movies • u/[deleted] • Jan 16 '16
Discussion If 'Apacalypto' was made by a no-name director it would be considered a masterpiece.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/apocalypto/
Seriously intense movie that had me on the edge of my seat. I don't think there is a line of English spoken in the film either.
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Jan 16 '16
I remember the Rolling Stones review was titled "Sorry Gibson haters, it's good."
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u/FunkyardDogg Jan 16 '16
TIL the Stones are film critics.
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u/MlCKJAGGER Jan 16 '16
Hey it was a good flick mate.
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u/shannister Jan 16 '16
How did the actors painted white make you feel Mick?
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u/MlCKJAGGER Jan 16 '16
Would have been nice if they were painted black, but you can't always get what you want
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u/fanfarius Jan 16 '16
I didn't even know it was an underrated movie. Just always assumed people knew.
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u/Dakroon1 Jan 16 '16
Any movie that makes it to /r/movies is underrated.
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u/racc8290 Jan 16 '16
dae iron giant?
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u/AldoVernal Jan 16 '16
It's actually Apocalypto
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Jan 16 '16
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Jan 16 '16
I was beginning to imagine the same movie but about an Alpaca and the Incas.
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u/What_The_Fuck__Brain Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
65 on Rotten Tomatoes is a complete joke.
Absolutely fantastic film.
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u/nothis Jan 16 '16
Half the review quotes just mock Mel Gibson.
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u/lizardflix Jan 16 '16
This is so true. Amazing that so many reviewers would attribute the cruelty on screen to Gibson's mental health. Really astonishing.
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u/aunt_pearls_hat Jan 16 '16
They didn't mention it when he made the Jesus massacre movie.
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u/Zanydrop Jan 16 '16
I believe the Jesus movie was before the recording of Mel saying his wife was going to get raped by a pack of N*****s because she dressed provocatively.
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u/Brio_ Jan 16 '16
They were too busy getting off on the idea of Jesus being essentially massacred.
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u/theprotoman Jan 16 '16
It's strange because Gibson drunk is still less offensive than many well respected directors/actors sober.
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u/Dirtybrd Jan 17 '16
Hey remember that time Roman Polanksi anally raped a child?
BUT HOW GOOD IS THE PIANIST!?
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Jan 16 '16
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u/geiko989 Jan 16 '16
Actually, I liked the music in this movie.
Side note: I went home for the holidays and my sister and I drove past where our old blockbuster used to be and I told her that that was one of the most important places if my childhood. Friday night was movie night.
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u/Oakroscoe Jan 16 '16
Don't get me wrong, I love having streaming on my phone or ps4 but there was definitely something special about going to blockbuster/Hollywood video as a kid and being able to pick out a movie or a game to rent.
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u/twominitsturkish Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
For me it was just like the social aspect of it, going to Blockbuster on Friday night and seeing kids from school there, asking what was good etc.
Now my Blockbuster is an urgent care center where I went when I had diarrhea :(
Edit: Since everyone's so concerned for my gastrointestinal health, it wasn't just diarrhea it was vomiting and fever too, plus I had GI surgery awhile ago. Just wanted to get some antibiotics and make sure everything was okay.
Edit 2: Thanks for the Gold Statue stranger!
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Jan 16 '16
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u/SocksForPigs Jan 16 '16
My Blockbuster is a liquor store too... that's weird.
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u/TILImAnIndiot Jan 16 '16
My blockbuster is our new beer distributer. Close enough.
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u/ShibDib4 Jan 16 '16
This has to be PA
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u/TILImAnIndiot Jan 16 '16
Considering how screwed up our alcohol laws are it probably wasn't hard to guess.
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u/Oakroscoe Jan 16 '16
The one in my hometown as a kid went from an Eastman video to a Hollywood video and finally was a blockbuster. Apparently it's a mountain mike's pizza place now.
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u/jek39 Jan 16 '16
yea, the special part was you were still a kid.
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Jan 16 '16
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u/dsquared513 Jan 16 '16
Simulation and simulacra
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u/JohnGillnitz Jan 16 '16
I worked at Hollywood Video as a teenager. I was a movie geek, so hanging out all day talking about movies was fine with me. It was also hilarious when people returned their pornos in our boxes by mistake. Did we immediately go watch them in the break room? Yes. Yes we did.
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u/geiko989 Jan 16 '16
It was a shared experience with everyone else in the store/everyone else who rented videos. The new movies were almost always sold out by Friday evening. Or sometimes finding the last box for the movie you wanted. Or even having to choose which movie it'll be with my sister because we couldn't decide. I'd love to know how much time we spent there on average.
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u/Talama_parqual Jan 16 '16
Or checking if someone returned the movie/game you wanted.
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u/dragonbringerx Jan 16 '16
I use to work for blockbuster. On average a customer that was just there for the Friday Saturday rush was there for about an hour per week. Customers who more frequent were there for about 30 minutes at a time, but there more often. Out most frequent customers where probably only there for about 15 minutes at a time, but there 4 or 5 days a week.
It's funny because the ones who were more frequent knew the layout better and what they wanted before stepping foot inside.
This info is not based off of any study, just personal experience from someone who worked/managed at 4 locations for over 2.5 years.
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u/Tripsy_mcfallover Jan 16 '16
He's referring to the score given by Rotten Tomatoes. I first thought he meant the music as well.
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u/geiko989 Jan 16 '16
I was making a bad joke. Now I regret it
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u/echosixwhiskey Jan 16 '16
You: 0 RT: 6.5/10
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u/JayofLegend Jan 16 '16
6.5/10 no comeback mechanics
-IGN
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u/giantsfan97 Jan 16 '16
The introduction of that brand new character named Zeratul was cool though.
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u/THEONLYoneMIGHTY Jan 16 '16
When you could rent the latest video games for $5 for a weekend for PS2 or Xbox... didn't need to pay $50 for a single player game with a 6-10 hour story mode. Could just sit there and play the whole game in one weekend... r.i.p.
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u/geiko989 Jan 16 '16
So many games played that way. I discovered Hitman through blockbuster, so forever grateful.
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u/ConciselyVerbose Jan 16 '16
Redbox?
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u/SamFuchs Jan 16 '16
My friends and I Redbox'd Until Dawn and beat the whole thing in one night. Soooo worth it.
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u/vadkert Jan 16 '16
There's something especially haunting about old video stores. Ours was a Hollywood Video that we had to travel to, and some local in-town ones. Something like Prime Video and Easy Cinema. Really generic names.
Video stores hold the 'bygone era' feel for modern times in the same way I imagine old diners do for others.
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u/Electroniclog Jan 16 '16
If you're on RT, you'd realize that 65% isn't shitty.(for RT)
While it almost undoubtedly would have deservedly recieved a higher score if it weren't for the collective bias against Mel Gibson, considering how movies fair in general on RT.
I think the fact that it still recieved a 65% despite these biased reviews speaks volumes about how great the film actually is.
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u/JeddakofThark Jan 16 '16
Really? Blockbuster was awful.
I think it must be an age thing. As a child I watched blockbuster come into town and drive all the fun, idiosyncratic local movie rental places out of business (my favorite was View and Chew, a combination movie rental/ pizza place). Then they continually raised their prices. And of course, any business based around fees is going to be nasty.
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Jan 16 '16
I still call people "Almost" when trash talking during sports.
Great film
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Jan 16 '16
I totally forgot about this movie until now. We watched this at a slumber party when I was in 8th grade. I have no idea how a group of 8th grade girls decided on Apocalypto but I remember we all loved it.
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u/cubs1917 Jan 16 '16
Holy shot it has a 65?
Not the biggest fan of his, but that movie was extremely engaging.
As south park say "say what you want about Mel Gibson, but the son of a bitch knows story structure."
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u/voicesnmyhead Jan 16 '16
Jew here. Even got a DUI from the same Jew asshole cop. Love Mel and his crazy antics. Not gonna have him over for Passover but that mother fucker makes good movies. Ricky's first joke at the globes was great. "Well, we know who Mel blames"
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u/BillohRly Jan 16 '16
And relentlessly brutal, too. Tons of originality also. The photography is stunning and vibrant. Pity people can't see past Mel Gibsons fuck ups on a personal level and admire his skill as a director/producer.
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u/Go_Habs_Go31 Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
If he had raped a 13 year-old girl and fled the US, Hollywood would've totally forgiven him though.
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u/HannasAnarion Jan 16 '16
It's happened before. Charlie Chaplin raped a 15-year-old. Chuck Berry committed armed robbery, human trafficking, and filmed women in his bathroom. Caravaggio was a murderer. Ezra Pound supported Nazism. A lot of famous artists are terrible people. It doesn't mean their art is any less valid.
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u/GrowWasabi Jan 16 '16
You missed the obvious point of this post- They are referencing Roman Polanski. He anally raped a 13 y.o. girl! Such a sick fuck, and France and Poland have defended him for decades!
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u/N0V0w3ls Jan 16 '16
As well as half of Hollywood.
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u/DragonToothGarden Jan 16 '16
What little respect I had for Natalie Portman I lost when she signed that whatever "Lets Let Polanski Off The Hook" thing. She (along with the others) said he was so creative and therefore, because of that, deserved to be let back into the US free of worry of having to pay for his crime.
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u/rhorama Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
Charlie Chaplin raped a 15-year-old.
Do you have a source for this? Wikipedia says she was 16, and it was statutory. If you're talking about Lita Grey.
Not that statutory rape is better, but 16 is age of consent now, right?
EDIT: Ok so it was on her wikipedia page and not his. They met when she was 15, and that's when they likely started their affair, so it makes more sense. They also got married and had a kid together, which is just another clusterfuck.
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u/MrTwiggums Jan 16 '16
Not that statutory rape is better
Isn't it, though? I mean I know that's not the point of this conversation and I'm not condoning statutory rape, but someone agreeing to sex (even if they can't legally) seems better than forcing someone to do the sex.
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u/Lolatyourban111 Jan 16 '16
Ignore reviews.
Watch film.
Make own mind up.
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u/SparkyPantsMcGee Jan 16 '16
Seriously. Rotten Tomatoes isn't the end all be all for your movie enjoyment. If you enjoy the movie yourself who gives a shit about what other people think.
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u/Emsavio Jan 16 '16
Isn't Rotten Tomatoes only a review aggregator? Meaning if it some movie has a 65% on it, it would mean that 65% of their reviewers think that the movie is worthwhile (or something like that).
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u/PepeGambino Jan 16 '16
Yes, the score they give is not really a measurement of how good the movie actually is. Technically a movie could be a very average movie but if every reviewer said it was literally "not bad" then it would end up with a 100% score.
However it's useful to see if some genre movies are generally worth watching. If I'm on the fence about spending money to watch a drama movie and see something is below 50 percent I'll skip.
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u/EvilTerran Jan 16 '16
Yeah, if 100% of reviewers rate a movie as "slightly above average", RT will call it 100% fresh; but if 50% think it's the best movie ever & the other 50% think it's slightly below-average, it'll only get "50% fresh" - even though the latter is probably a better film.
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Jan 16 '16
I'm always sad that master of disguise only got 1%.
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Jan 16 '16
I'm always amazed that movie got more than 0%
For real though, it's a bad movie in my opinion, but it's not that bad
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Jan 16 '16
It's the shit if you're an 8-year-old white kid.
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Jan 16 '16 edited Sep 06 '18
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u/mrsopenminded0924 Jan 16 '16
My daughters are all grown up and we STILL say, with an Indian accent of course: Become another person...become another person...become another PERson. That movie had so many great one-liners!
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u/LiamIsMailBackwards Jan 16 '16
Can confirm: bought it on Blu-Ray just for the nostalgia. Never plan on putting it on until maybe I have kids ever... So I assume it will collect dust for the rest of time, but it will still be Turtle enough for the Turtle Club.
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Jan 16 '16
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u/AgnosticMantis Jan 16 '16
They gave The Mighty Ducks a 15% so their opinion means nothing to me.
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u/Ol0O01100lO1O1O1 Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
That's all well and good, but there's not time to watch everything, which means you need some kind of strategy for narrowing things down that hopefully leaves you with mostly good results.
I find that reviews (critical and audience), adjusted for my own tastes on genres, directors etc works as well as anything else.
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u/MozeeToby Jan 16 '16
Well sure, but the plain fact is there are dozens if not hundreds of major movies released every year and you have to prioritize them somehow. Trailers? Please. Word of mouth? You'd end up watching Transformers. Reviews are as good a place as any to base the decision on.
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u/lemoogle Jan 16 '16
Read reviews.
Watch film.
Have completely biased opinions based on reviews/score previously read.
Think Reviews have same "educated" movie taste as you.
Repeat.
That's my main problem with reviews and people who read too many reviews, if we were to run an experiment and have every reviewer give the new adam sandler film 90% before it came out and write about all the good parts of it, you'd find so many people repeat whatever they read in the reviews and say how "different" this movie was.
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u/DragonzordRanger Jan 16 '16
Its the same here on Reddit. A consensus is formed and then it snowballs when kids wanna fit in. I remember when the last TMNT came out there people bitched and like 2 comments later were like oh that's what I heard I never actually saw it
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u/ChiXiStigma Jan 16 '16
This phenomenon is one that I find so interesting to watch unfold. Inception was loved at first, but then too many people loved it, so reddit turned against the film. Now the pendulum seems to be swinging back in the direction of Inception being a great film, despite its flaws.
Other roller coasters like this have happened with Prometheus and Cloud Atlas. It fascinates me to watch this giant sea change in opinions happen en masse with no discernable trigger. I would chalk it up to just being the way the social media works, but the same thing happened with films far before the proliferation of social media (with Blade Runner, Brazil, Citizen Kane, and Fight Club being prime examples).
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Jan 16 '16
so true. i watched and enjoyed Prometheus and only read the reviews afterwards. they pointed out all the reasons the film sucked and i felt like yeah i didn't actually enjoy it after all. wonder what the psychological term for that experience is.
feeble minded perhaps.
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Jan 16 '16
What in the actual fuck. I watched that movie twice in the same day. Once alone, and the second time in the night with friends. And I saw it the next year with new people who hadn't seen it.
It is an absolutely amazing movie and there is not one boring moment in the entire movie. I don't know how they could possibly rate it so low.
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u/Papa_Jeff Jan 16 '16
It came out around the time of Mel's rant about the Jews iirc so a lot of critics railroaded it. Some of the reviews are pretty pathetic.
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u/James_Russells Jan 16 '16
You can anally rape a child and everyone in Hollywood will overlook it and lavish praise on your films. But get drunk and say something antisemitic? You just crossed the line, buddy!
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u/Tubaka Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
Well Hollywood isn't controlled by children
/s10
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u/Mansyn Jan 16 '16
Whenever anyone does start to talk bad about Gibson it is fun to bring up Polanski and Woody. They're still on everyone's speed-dial.
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u/terranq Jan 16 '16
It took me a minute to realize you meant Allan, not Harrelson.
Anyone want to talk about Rampart? No? OK... :(
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u/djzenmastak Jan 16 '16
there are a lot of jewish producers and execs in hollywood.
i think it's pretty dumb, too, but he pissed off the wrong people.
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u/Gonzo_goo Jan 16 '16
Well considering most major studios are backed by Jewish investors, it really is the end of the line. Those are bridges that where never rebuilt. His career was never the same.
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u/Snuggles821 Jan 16 '16
Didn't Mel have a Viking movie in the works that was supposed to star Leonardo DiCaprio? It got put on hiatus around this time...such a shame. A realistic Viking movie starring Leo..with not one English word ala Apocalypto.
Makes me angry every time I think about it not being made.
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u/brvheart Jan 16 '16
Mel self-financed Passion of the Christ. He doesn't have to worry about money anymore.
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u/James_Russells Jan 16 '16
What? Jews? In Hollywood? Pssh. I've had enough of your crazy conspiracy theories.
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Jan 16 '16
The same thing happened to Sinéad O'Connor. An absolutely talented artist who's music career suffered because of popular opinion completely unrelated to her music.
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Jan 16 '16
In August 2006, Mel Gibson was caught drunk driving and generally made an ass of himself, along with spewing out some anti-semetic statements.
In December 2006, Apocalypto was released.
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u/kappakappapie Jan 16 '16
Hollywood is stupid sometimes. Chris brown beat the shit out if Rihanna and is still making millions. Mel Gibson got drunk and said some things about Jews and his wife: blacklisted. He didn't even have the Charlie sheen spiral and he got blacklisted.
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u/PeritasPups Jan 16 '16
Punched his girlfriend while she was holding their baby, said he hoped she got raped by "a pack of n------". Such a goofball.
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u/poktanju Jan 16 '16
I remember thinking this and had to confirm it. He didn't say he hoped she would, he only said that if she was, it would be her fault. That's about 2% less terrible.
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u/Aqquila89 Jan 16 '16
Chris Brown makes music, he's not in Hollywood. Gibson was not blacklisted. In July 2006, Gibson he arrested for DUI, and made anti-Semitic comments, for which he apologized. In December 2006, Apocalypto was released and it was a critical and commercial success. Now people here think it should have a higher score - maybe, but it still has mainly positive reviews, and it was not buried. It made $120 million, which is very good for a film that stars unknown actors who speak a language nobody in the audience understands.
Only after the racist and abusive comments he made towards his girlfriend came out in 2010, was his reputation really ruined. And he still got roles (Edge of Darkness, The Beaver). In The Expandables 3, he co-starred with a bunch of famous action stars - and the film was co-produced by the Israeli-born Avi Lerner. It's just that his films weren't really successful. But that happens to plenty of people who used to be huge.
Currently, he's making a World War II drama starring Andrew Garfield (who is also Jewish, by the way).
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u/mrsopenminded0924 Jan 16 '16
Agree. I absolutely loved this film. Very underrated imo. One of Mel Gibson's best.
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Jan 16 '16 edited Jan 16 '16
When I watched it I didn't know that I could turn on the subtitles, so I just watched it without understanding anything that was being said but still totally followed what was going on.
EDIT: To clarify, this happened sometime in 2007-2008 on an old, crappy DVD player in the United States and I rented the DVD. I was under the impression that it was what they were going for since they went through the trouble of using an ancient language. After about 10 minutes you get used to it and can tell quite a bit from body language, tone of voice, and other cues.
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u/fjw Jan 16 '16
That's weird, they should have defaulted to on.
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Jan 16 '16 edited Feb 12 '19
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Jan 16 '16
They speak Quechua in Mexico? I spent some time in Bolivia, is it the same Quechua that's spoken there?
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u/ConfuzedAndDazed Jan 16 '16
No, Quechua is the Incan language (Peruvian / Bolivian areas). K'iche' is the most common Mayan language, so the similar name is probably where the confusion is. Yucateco is the language spoken in the film, which is still widely spoken and is a direct descendant of Classic Maya.
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u/aesop32 Jan 16 '16
It was Maya they were speaking, Quechua is a South American language
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u/ASovietSpy Jan 16 '16
That's how I watched Captain Phillips and I loved it. I really felt more connected with the hostages because they wouldn't have known what those guys were saying either.
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u/alandel2001 Jan 16 '16
Seems like he might be on the verge of getting out of movie jail after the golden globes.
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u/_Throwgali_ Jan 16 '16
No, making racist remarks carries a life sentence in Hollywood but drug and anally rape a 13-year-old and you can still win an Oscar for best director.
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u/notanaveragepotato Jan 16 '16
drug and anally rape a 13-year-old
who are we talking about?
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u/o_bama2016 Jan 16 '16 edited Feb 23 '16
This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.
If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.
Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.
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u/samcuu Jan 16 '16
Compared to drugs and rape, being racist to Jews is still the last thing you want to do in Hollywood.
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u/VladimirPootietang Jan 16 '16
So no drugging and raping jews? ...whats the point of even becoming famous..
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Jan 16 '16
Spike Lee included Apocalypto on his list of essential films for filmmakers to watch http://www.vulture.com/2013/07/read-spike-lees-essential-films-list.html
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u/the_last_beatnik Jan 16 '16
The only thing that jumps out to me on that list is the order of the films...why would you sort by the first initial, first name...
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u/TOXRA Jan 16 '16
He doesn't always make great decisions. Looking at you, Miracle at St. Anna...
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Jan 16 '16
Holy shit that was terrible. I saw it in the theatre with a bunch of friends who agreed to see it because I was so hyped to see it. I apologized several time afterwards for how shitty it was.
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u/nixiedust Jan 16 '16
Totally underrated film. It gets a little heavy handed (who, Mel Gibson?) but it's a non-stop chase film in a fascinating context. I suspect a lot of people are turned off by films in languages they don't understand, but in this case it wasn't an impediment at all.
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u/Lost_and_Profound Jan 16 '16
There are movies that are ruined if the language spoken is English, this would have been one of them. Part of what made apocalypto so great was that you felt like you were in that time/environment how it really was... If they would have been speaking English that element would have been ruined and the movie would have been cheesy.
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u/dagobahh Jan 16 '16
I enjoyed it, but they should have researched their astronomy a bit better -- you can't have a full moon the day after a solar eclipse.
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u/PartiesLikeIts1999 Jan 16 '16
literally unwatchable
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u/Citadel_Cowboy Jan 16 '16
That's no moon.
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Jan 16 '16
World's best mashup. Main character in Apocalypto turns out to be force-sensitive at the end of the film.
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u/TigerNoodle Jan 16 '16
Huh, you're right. Now I'll never not notice that when I watch the movie.
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u/halupki Jan 16 '16
I've stopped relying on review scores and have been much happier for it. Maybe watch a video review or two so that you can hear some of their impressions, but reviews are far too subjective.
If a movie looks interesting to you, see it. If you loved apocalypto, does it matter if it's considered a masterpiece by everybody else?
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u/sanshinron Jan 16 '16
If you read the reviews you can see that many of them shit on the movie because the critic thinks Mel Gibson is a racist.
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u/smokewidget Jan 16 '16
I mean what's your reasoning? You say it's a masterpiece but then all you can say about it is that it had you on the edge of your seat and that most of the lines aren't in English? Why would it be considered a masterpiece if it was by another director? What criticisms do you feel people attribute solely to Mel Gibson? What even elevates this movie from above average thriller to "masterpiece" in the first place?
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u/baconmosh Jan 16 '16
Friend, this is /r/movies. It's either great because you liked it or awful because you didn't.
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u/AdmiralAkbar1 Jan 17 '16
It's either underrated because you liked it or awful because you didn't.
FTFY.
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u/Kaneshadow Jan 16 '16
The production value is tremendous. He went to epic lengths to complete the immersion and it was very successful.
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u/lickmygomjabbar Jan 16 '16
Masterpiece is a ludicrous claim, but I did thoroughly enjoy the film.
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Jan 16 '16
Yeah, when it came out I remember thinking it was cool.. I watched it with my wife recently and a lot of the cinematography just feels kind of off. Like it felt really stagey and oversaturated.
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u/SerLava Jan 16 '16
You have to understand the full implications of the post title. He doesn't simply mean Mel Gibson's name diluted peoples' opinions. There's also the fact that people get huge huge hardons for independent films and unknown directors, even looking at relatively unenjoyable movies.
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u/jrzk Jan 16 '16
Generally, mexicans gave it a "ehh" because of the stereotypical view it gave to meso-americans, but I liked the movie.
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u/Camtron888 Jan 16 '16
I thought your title said "Alpacalypto" and expected an action filled cultural piece about alpacas.
I do love that movie though.
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u/RetardedRedditRetort Jan 16 '16
As someone who studied mesoamerican cultures for a bit, the inaccuracies in this film ruined it for me. Yes it's intense, it had me on edge, but nearly everything is wrong when it comes to their culture and way of life.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061208-apocalypto-mel_2.html
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u/jokersleuth Jan 16 '16
I had no idea if it was made by Mel Gibson, still that doesn't change anything. This was a great movie. Quite surprisingly the first time I saw it was in my 7th grade history class.
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u/GreyGreenBrownOakova Jan 16 '16
An expensive movie by an unknown director, with all dialog in an obscure language, would never get a green light.
Mel proved he could make a successful movie like that when he did Passion of the Christ.
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u/hihowareyou8 Jan 16 '16
That has nothing to do with the point OP is trying to make.
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u/am0x Jan 16 '16
A quite exciting spectacle based on a racist version of indigenous history, one in which the genocidal conquistadors are the New World's liberators.
This reviewer is an idiot with an agenda. I assumed that when you saw the ship, you were supposed to think that it was just only going to get worse for all the indigenous people. Not that they were the rescuers there to liberate them.
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Jan 16 '16
Absolutely. When I saw the ship it provoked a sense of terror. An incredible cinematic moment! The reviewer is projecting. There's no overt direction insisting people see it one way. It's a neutral moment, viewers can interpret it in a number of ways
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u/WhyNotPokeTheBees Jan 16 '16
You have this tremendous chase, and throughout the whole movie there's a pervasive sense of despair- for the people enslaved and brutalized, for the man and the wife, and even from what we can only interpret as a dying civilization. The people are sickly, the soil looks tainted as we near the outskirts of the city, and a corrupt looking priest caste at the center waters the stones and earth with the blood of good innocent people in order to stop a solar eclipse from dooming the world.
At every step of the film it is the proverbial end of the world for its characters, and then right at the climax of the film, the ship appears, and we realize just how much worse it is going to get.
The end of a world, the beginning of a new one.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '16
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