Maya Archaeologist Distressed American's Review of Apocalypto

[malta blue]

From my e-mail...

=================================================

Apocalypt-ow
My take on Mel Gibson’s latest offense

By Distressed American
www.seedsofdoubt.com


As many of you already know, I am a Maya archaeologist by training and profession. As such, I wanted to see Apocalypto so I would be in a position to debunk the false impressions that it is giving to future students. While this movie is a fiction and therefore not restricted to such quaint notions as “historical accuracy”, I fear that the vast majority of American’s are so ignorant of Maya history that they will have little else to base their opinions on. In my own little way, I hope that this review does something to dispel the extremely inaccurate image of the Maya that Mel is perpetuating.

The core message of the film is an attempted justification of the Spanish conquest of the area and the untold death that that resulted from it. Given Mel’s extreme right wing views and known racism, I am not surprised that that is the best he could do with the subject. Disappointed but, far from surprised.

I have read several reviews from other archaeologists. None of them were even remotely positive. However, there are some aspects of the film that the reviews I have read are lacking. That is not surprising as no reviewer could possibly catalog the full list of issues that this movie brings up. I will emphasize those elements I have seen lacking in other write-ups.

Before getting into the details, I will try to sum up my major objection. The most glaring problem with the movie is its blender smoothie approach it applies to the Maya. Prior to the actual arrival of the Spaniards (some 600 years after they show up in this movie), the ancient Maya saw some 2,000 years of cultural development. The political and religious organization changed greatly over time. They occupied a wide variety of environments and showed great diversity in their architecture and other material culture. Watching Mel’s treatment of the subject, you’d never know.

In essence, cultural elements were selected (presumably for visual appeal) almost at random and intermixed without regard to time period, architectural style, region, etc. If the Maya had anything to do with it, it was thrown in and mixed into a grey slurry of “Mayaness” that is this film. Much as if someone was making a movie about the United States and felt that it was appropriate to pull any visual element out of our history going all of the way back to the settlement at Jamestown and intermix them all based on the whims of the director. Conestoga wagons side by side with the space shuttle for example. All of the above driven by firemen because their clothes look cool.

The story is set at the end of the Classic Period “Maya collapse”, which dated roughly 900 to 950 AD. Yet there is no attempt made to draw specifically from that time period. Many of the elements used from bows and arrows to the Gods that they worship are found hundreds of years outside of their temporal context. Much of the movie features developments that did not arrive in the area for hundreds of years after this movie is set.

One of the most annoying aspects of the tale is Mel’s glaring failure to understand even the most basic elements of Maya religion. For example, the climactic scene in the movie features a ritual in which captives are dragged up the main temple in the city and sacrificed. The problems with this scene are so numerous as to be laughable. For starters, the temple pyramid appears to be based on temples at the Guatemalan site of Tikal. That is as close to accurate as they get in the entire movie. Tikal does fit the time period and theoretical location. However, that small bit of accuracy was almost certainly an accident as evidenced by the rest of the scene. The temples that they are using as models for the pyramid are heavily modified in a manner that belies the ignorance of the filmmaker (it is worth noting that I am not referring to pyramid featured on the posters and ads as oddly that temple which is based on a much later structure from the far northern site of Chichen Itza does not even appear in the film.). The original temples theirs were based upon were funerary monuments to specific Maya kings and queens. They were adorned with large images of the rulers in question. Instead they remodeled the pyramid’s superstructure and added stone mosaic facades from the architecture dating to much later and far from the area. The facades that they added feature large masks of the Maya rain god Chac, presumably making it a temple to that deity. Apparently the high priest did not get the memo as the sacrifices he performs are made in the name of the Kukulk’an, who did not even really arrive in the area for several hundred years after the film is set.

Of course that is just where the problems with the ritual begin. The ritual that they perform bears far more similarity to rituals performed by the Aztecs. The main feature is the extraction of hearts to sate the blood thirst of the sun god whom they wildly misidentify as Kukulk’an despite the fact that the Maya are not known for heart extraction). In reality this god has no connection to the sun and was in fact a creator god that was opposed to human sacrifice. So you are left with an Aztec sacrificial ritual to a sun god that takes place on a temple apparently dedicated to the rain god.

Similar misuse of supernaturals is seen throughout the movie. In one scene the warriors kill a jaguar that is attacking on of their party. They immediately begin offering prayers to the god Ek Chuah apologizing for killing “his” jaguar. What Mel appears not to understand is that Ek Chuah was the patron god of merchants and traveling traders. He has no connection to jaguars just as Kukulk’an has no connection to the sun. What becomes abundantly clear is that the filmmaker simply made up ridiculous rituals based on his total ignorance of the Maya and plugged in Maya god names at random if they liked the sound of the name. A parallel situation would be a movie showing ancient Romans praying to the god of war to ask for more children. A simple look at the gods in the Maya pantheon and their roles in the mythology would have made this clear. Either Mel did not read up in the slightest or he simply decided to reject everything that is currently known about Maya ritual.

There are impressive factual details about the Maya that could have been thrown in here. For example, they were among the most accomplished ancient astronomers in the world. Their sacred books contain many long tables listing when various celestial events will take place. Their tables of predicted eclipses remain accurate today and far into our own future. Despite this impressive fact, Mel chose to include a solar eclipse at the height of the ritual described above. Rather than being a predicted event, the eclipse is met with awe and wonderment as if it would have been a big surprise.

Was Mel borrowing from “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”? Maybe so. However, more likely he’s just plain ignorant of the facts.

The costuming was just as atrocious. While some elements of Classic period Maya dress were represented, they were so badly intermixed with fictional elements that in the end they were no more accurate that white actors in black face and afro wigs dancing around as African natives in movies from early in the last century. In my opinion, the clothing, the hair and the jewelry as depicted are just as ignorant and just as racist. The casting of non-Maya actors for almost every role has been commented on by many. Apparently in Mel’s mind, one native American looks just like any other. To my eye the cast bore little resemblance to modern Mayans and even less resemblance to their ancient ancestors who practiced a number of rather extreme body modification techniques such as cranial deformation. Of course, maybe skin color is all that Mel was interested in. Natives are natives. Right?

Finally, the physical setting of the movie made little sense at all. Throughout the movie they show beautiful vistas of densely forested mountains. The presumed setting and the architecture used for the tale would place it in the distinctly flat Maya lowlands. There are mountains in the south of the Maya area and I thought that the setting may reflect that environment. However that notion is totally blown by the arrival of the Spaniards on the coast at the end of the film. First, the Spanish arrival in the area took place well north of the possible settings for the film in an area totally devoid of mountains. Second, the Pacific coast is the only location where you would find mountains and the sea in relatively close proximity. However, this location would be hundreds of miles away from the Caribbean coast where the Spaniards actually landed. Maybe they arrived on the Pacific coast some six centuries early?

Sadly, the film did employ a well respected Maya archaeologist as a consultant. I had hoped that he would have a lot of say on the final look and tone of the film. Either his advice was sorely lacking or he was totally ignored. It’s hard to pin point which is the case here. However, I can say that I would not want to be the guy whose name is associated with this ahistorical monstrosity.

All in all, it is a thoroughly ham-fisted mishmash of Maya cultural elements that lacks even the most basic grasp of the established historical narrative. The depiction of the culture makes a mockery of just about everything that we know about the Maya. The religion is so badly misrepresented that it is difficult to find even small elements that make sense. Worst of all, the early arrival of the Spaniards effectively chopped 600 years of Maya history off entirely. I guess in his rush to blame the Maya for the European conquest, he could not actually wait that long.

[Lost-in-FL]

1. I watched this movie

cause of my hubby. I can tell you I was very pissed when I left the theater. I thought that the movie is trying to justify the crimes committed during the colonization period. Kinda like saying; "Well, they were savages anyway so we came to the New World to fix it".

[malta blue]

2. You have not misse the poont at all.

Mel seems desperate to make the European colonization of the America's the fault of those that were brutally conquered. In doing so, he is reduced to an ugly characture of the culture in question. It is a shame that there is not some better info out there that will get this kind of circulation. Let's just hope that people do not take it as in any way accurate. I sure didn't.

[Lost-in-FL]

7. It was worst than what I had imagine

the movie to be. I watched the movie because my hubby was curious about it and I was dragged to it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

65. Not only that, but it justifies someone doing the same thing to any

culture that they feel is savage and brutual. Where does that put us, in the scheme of things?

[Recursion]

37. Check out "1491" some time

Contrary to the review's claim, this is not set in 900-950 but after 1500, when smallpox is ravaging the cities and conquistadors are already on the ocntinent.

Spaniards' smallpox preceded them, and decimated (or usually much worse than decimated) communities everywhere. Conquistadors' journals are full of entries about "half-naked wretches", villages in disarray, "savages" living in the woods. For a long time people thought that was just Spanish racism trying to hide the grandeur of the civilizations they were sacking. New research is suggesting that may have actually been what they saw: as smallpox and other diseases spread out ahead of them, entire societies collapsed leaving only bare shells of their former self. (Not that that excuses the conquest and enslavement, but it makes some of the Spaniards' own writings more comprehensible.)

The Mayan civilization, as such, was long gone before the Spaniards got there. Essentially, bad agricultural planning led to an ecological and environmental disaster and they couldn't feed themselves anymore (see Diamond's "Collapse" for this story). The people who lived there at the time the Spanish got there were not the Mayans you read about. This was not the culture that had a hyper-accurate calendar and a flourishing literary tradition; they were their much-less-educated and hungrier great-great-great-great-...-grandchildren. Again, doesn't justify the conquest, but I don't think people should expect to see High Mayan culture portrayed in a movie set in 1505.

[Maestro]

41. Thanks for sharing.

I have my MS in Spanish Lit and we did extensive studies of the Mayan and Aztec culture and you are spot on as to the decline of the Mayan civilization and how Mel is way off chronologically. He is basically wrapping the Maya in an Aztec culture in his "movie." Really sad. Sacrifice was definitely part of both cultures but it was just aspect of life and most common Maya and Aztec never experienced the sacrifices. This was essentially a priest/nobility activity.

[malta blue]

45. Sorry it is not set in 1505.

The small pox is as out of place temporally as the Spaniards that brought it. You are using an anachronism to date a movie set at the end of the "collapse".

From National Geographic (who do know their May culture history):

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061207-apocalypto.html

More than 2,000 years ago workers cut and hoisted thousands of limestone blocks to build the complex's soaring step pyramids, temples, and plazas. These structures were coated with lime stucco and painted with ferric oxide, a bright red pigment made from the mineral hematite. The mineral deterred erosion and, because it resembles blood, symbolized power.

For more than a thousand years the Maya commanded an empire that at times stretched from Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula in the north to Honduras in the south (map of Central and North America).

The Maya Empire saw advances in architecture, writing, religion, science, and math. It was also home to a network of densely populated cities like El Mirador.

But for unknown reasons the empire declined after A.D. 900—a collapse fictionalized in Apocalypto.

[Godhumor]

52. From the Honolulu Advertiser

And an article dealing with the movie's inaccuracy:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Dec/14/il/FP612140309.html

"But Gibson sets his film not during the era of Maya collapse in A.D. 900, but at the time of European contact in the early 1500s, when the first Spanish expeditions arrived on Maya shores. What wiped out the Maya in the 1500s was not internal rot, it was the Spanish, who brought European disease and fought for decades to pacify the Maya."

[malta blue]

54. Honolulu advertizer versus National Geographic?

I'm pretty sure who is off here. I doubt it is the folks with a staff of Maya experts.

Your source is also dating the film based on an anachronism.

[Godhumor]

60. Fine, let me go through the list

Honolulu Advertiser

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Dec/14/il/FP612140309.html

"But Gibson sets his film not during the era of Maya collapse in A.D. 900, but at the time of European contact in the early 1500s, when the first Spanish expeditions arrived on Maya shores. What wiped out the Maya in the 1500s was not internal rot, it was the Spanish, who brought European disease and fought for decades to pacify the Maya."


Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/12/07/mel_gibson_luxuriates_in_violence_in_apocalypto/

The director, who wrote the script with Farhad Safinia, sets his story in a rough Eden: the Yucatan peninsula in the early 1500s, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. (It's also the period of the Maya's "post-classic" decline, which Gibson acknowledges with an opening quote from historian Will Durant : "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.")

LA Times

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-apocalypto8dec08,0,275059.story

Numerous good things can be said about "Apocalypto," the director's foray into the decaying Mayan civilization of the early 1500s, but every last one of them is overshadowed by Gibson's well-established penchant for depictions of stupendous amounts of violence.

Salt Lake Tribue (samne article as the Honolulu Advertiser)

http://www.sltrib.com/entertainment/ci_4820805

But Gibson sets his film at the time of European contact in the early 1500s, when the first Spanish expeditions arrived on Maya shores. What wiped out the Maya in the 1500s was the Spanish, who brought European disease and fought for decades to pacify the Maya.

MSNBC Cosmic Log

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/12/08/19477.aspx

The setting for Gibson's movie of a Mayan on the run is late Postclassic Maya society - or to be more precise, a branch of that society on the Yucatan Peninsula around the year 1510, just before the Spanish conquest began. It's a jungle adventure story that depicts brutal raids and human sacrifices - a gorefest that University of Miami anthropologist Traci Ardren called "sad and ultimately pornographic."

[malta blue]

69. See post 62.

When you find a source as knowledgable as National Geo (who comment on the timing in at least two articles) let me know.

Funny that your last one quotes a friend of mine Traci Ardren who most definitely agrees that it was set in the time suggested by the OP review. I guess they did not read her full write-up.

That is my last on that. I have nothing else to add.

[Recursion]

57. "Apocalypto, an action-escape drama set 500 years ago"

The following reviews and essays claim it is set in the early 16th century CE:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121706D.shtml
http://movies.aurum3.com/content/view/637/51/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,233518,00.html
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/12/14/living/gz/doc45777b20ca22e843981273.txt
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/121606b.html
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117926430.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&p=0
http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0002997.cfm
http://cbs2.com/moviereviews/movies_story_343033702.html
http://www.capeweek.com/apoca10.htm

This one says early 15th century CE:
http://movies.aol.com/movie/apocalypto/23218/photos/apocalypto-a-mythic-historical-drama-set-600-years-ago-prior-to-the-16th/1770337

The movies own website (http://apocalypto.movies.go.com) says it is about "A once great civilization" that is "brutally disrupted by a violent invading force". The Mayans weren't "once great" at the end of the Classical period. They were "once great" at first contact. They weren't "brutally disrupted by a violent invading force" at the end of the Classical period. They were at first contact. I can't speak to why National Geographic would claim that Apocalypto is set around 900 CE; the movie reviews I linked seem pretty clear that it's set when the events make sense for it to be set: long after the collapse of High Mayan culture, at the time of European first contact.

EDIT: two spelling errors

[mdelaguna2000]

68. "Maya civilization" was NOT gone before Spaniards arrived

The "collapse" you speak of is of one sub-group, southern lowland/inland Classic Period cities by A.D. 900. During this collapse probably the most powerful empire of all rose - that of Chichen Itza in the north. When Chichen fell, another great capital arose (Mayapan). Spaniard explorers described wondrous cities they encountered on the coast, with fine architecture, rich markets, and so on.

Maya civilization continues to its day, to the extent that it has been able to in the face of 500 years of Colonial atrocities.

Big sweeping generalizing books like Diamond's "Collapse" and "1491" do no justice to the ways that civilizations survive and transform, whether or not formerly great cities collapse in their midst.

Mel's historical accuracy is not the point, in my view (he can mix periods and details all he wants) - but to falsely characterize one of the most sophisticated and literate civilizations of the New World as barbaric and in need of colonizing is worthy of outrage.

[Recursion]

70. Nobody's claimed there are no more Mayans

I don't know where you got that idea. But the great urban Classical Mayan culture was gone in 1500. Just like the great urban Classical Roman culture was gone in 800.

[mdelaguna2000]

81. On contact period Maya and Rome analogy...

Actually it's hard to say. "Urban" may have been gone, but "great" wasn't. Sophisticated calendar and astronomy in use, widespread commercial trade between Aztec empire, Maya area, Honduras and points in between, elaborate crafts and textiles, complex bureaucracy of political rulers, subordinate office holders, priests, and merchants, and so on.

Mayapan was a great urban site, only fell between AD 1441 and 1461, political capital of the Maya world - at contact, only a few decades later, there were many large towns, but no big center that we know of. However, Tiho was a major city, perhaps even a capital. Archaeological estimates suggest it could have been quite large. Unfortunately it is under the urban sprawl of the Colonial city of Merida now, and has been much destroyed, so we may never be able to estimate its extent.

As far as the Fall of Rome, probably not the best analogy. Maya political structure went through cycles of centralization/decentralization from its inception - the fall of Mayapan may have wrought another decentralized period. A better analogy is ancient Egypt, which also went through cycles of centralization and transformation (Old and New Kingdoms, with Intermediate Periods in between).

The Maya cycle was broken by the Spanish conquest.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us.

So sad that we live in such a barbarously ignorant culture, and use our media to propagate the ignorance. What great technological gifts we possess, what low uses we find for them!

[malta blue]

4. I did study the Maya for a time.

DA is the one that has made it a calling. But, I am glad to share this review as I agree wholeheartedly with its conclusions.

"What great technological gifts we possess, what low uses we find for them!"

Well said.

[Kutjara]

5. A trenchant and insightful review.

I suspected that the film would be full of anachronisms and inaccuracies, but even I am taken aback at how little Gibson seems to care about the truth of the culture he depicts.

I take the point about the archaeologist who consulted on the picture, but am not surprised.

A similar "expert" was used in Tom Cruise's exercise in revisionism "The Last Samurai." I am a bit of a Japanese history buff and was amazed at the ridiculous inconsistencies in that film. I purposely got the "super deluxe extended director's cut with extra special footage and lots of added features" version, so I could see the "documentary" entitled "The Real Last Samurai." Instead of talking about Takamori Saigo and his rebellion against the Meiji Restoration in 1877, the "historical consultant" (who was inevitably billed as being "world leading" and "respected") presented some half-assed justification of the film's veracity and of the "key role" ex-Civil War American soldiers had in the creation of the modern Japanese Army. No mention was made of Takamori's rebellion or the central role he played in Japanese society and politics at the time. The final insult was when the (Japanese) producer of the film thanked Tom Cruise for "showing the Japanese a part of ourselves that we had forgotten." I screamed at the screen, "The reason you've forgotten it, you stupid bitch, is because it never fucking happened!!!!"

It's not really surprising that a self-important bigot (Meg Gibson) or a brainless egomaniac (Tom Cruise) would make such pieces of tripe. What's objectionable is that so many of the other "historical" movies that come out of Hollywood are similarly flawed.

[Miss Chybil]

6. I think this guy is a little over the top. It was a movie.

An exciting chase movie with some pretty exotic elements most of us have never seen, or even thought of before. I took a Mexican Art History class and a Mesoamerican Art History class and I was very impressed at the amount of information Gibson was able to put into the movie. I was also disappointed at how much he left out, but it was long enough as it was.

I don't know if Gibson intended it, but I took his movie as a clear depiction of the dangers of organized religion and group think. I'm sure that's not what he wanted me to take from it, but it was quite blatant considering all the atrocities people are still faced with today in the name of somebody's god. I wonder if Gibson noticed?

[malta blue]

9. I think the review is right on the money.

Of course it would take an expert that has spent years studying the culture it depicts to know how far off it was. Most Americans know so little about the Maya to start with that this just makes the picture far worse. Admittedly it if just a film. But, most will assume a basic historical accuracy that simply does not exist in this work of fiction. That is what I think most bothered the reviwer most.

Interesting take on organized religion. I like where you are coming from. I just wish that a similar statement could be made without such an innacurate portrayal of the culture and religion in question. The May had a very interesting set of beliefs that would have worked just fine for a movie. Unfortunately he chose to just make a religion up and attriute some May god names to his blatant fiction.

Thanks for the comments.

[thingfisher]

80. Such is the stuff of Pop Culture.

It may seem petty to some to criticize a movie for historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations. After all "it's only a movie". But in our culture people tend to build their ideas about the world and history from what they absorb in movie houses, however dumb that may be.

It is really to bad. The true histories are often more interesting and compelling than the fictional plots devised to entertain the audience. Acuracy in cultral detail is not important when a director is seeking to merely tell a good yarn.

Our movie culture has a great impact on the collective memory. It has been utilized to prop up a social acceptance of "history" designed to legitimize much that has been ignoble in our true history, from the "winnig of the west" (premeditated genocide) to the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor (known before hand and allowed to happen).

As television was originally viewed as a great tool with which to educate the masses, it rather became primarily a tool to sell goods and entertain them instead and of course reinforce "American values".

All media today tends to provide a cultural goo of popular entertainment and advertising meant to reinforce the consumer culture and keep the money flowing. Horrible historical inaccuracies in film? Who cares - except for the occasional outraged nutty proffessor?:sarcasm:

[Devlzown]

8. A friend of mine called the other night

and said that he enjoyed the movie and I was all set to go see it. Thanks for saving me ten bucks.

[malta blue]

10. It was a good flic if it was not based on a real culture.

As a pure work of fiction based on folks that did not exist and if it were nothing more than a pro-Christian conversion alegory, it would be a pretty enjoyable movie. But, I'd wait until you can see it without a cent going to Mel.

On that note, here is aother review that DA sent me from another archaeologist:

"I had to take a break frrom writing proposals and reports last night so I went to see Apocalpypto at the 10:40 showing. There were only 6 people there at taht hour, 4 teenage boys and a 40ish looking guy. The testosterone teenagers were quiet during the movie, which kind of surprised me as they looked like the kind to be throwing popcorn and cokes at each other and other spectactors and hooting with approval every time the bad guys gutted someone or killed their babies. After the movie, the 40ish guy sitting aobut 5 seats away stood up, turned to me and said, "Now that was the silliest damn movie I've ever seen". He stole the words right out of my mouth and apparently the modern evil analogs in the back row felt somewhat the same way as they burst out laughing. Then I asked the juvenile deliquents what they thought of it. They enjoyed it and likened it to Terminator movies and other action films that no one could mistake for reality. I asked them if they had formed any opinion about the Maya. The least penetrating remark was "Yeah, they're cool". Another guy said "Huh?" And another said, "Hey, it' s just a movie". The 40ish guy and I laughed and we all moved on. I didn't ask them anymore about the film as they were too busy hitting each other on the shoulder, spalshing water on each other at the water fountain and otherwise horsing around.

Their responses, and my own, gave me pause to think about the impression the movie will leave about the Maya. First, let me say that the modern Maya will be incensed as well they should be; they probably are as I am sure the movie is already on pirated CD's on every street corner in Merida. But second, I don't think that many people will draw too many conclusions about the Maya from the movie. Here's why: the bad guys were such carictures of bad guys, they were so evil, maniacal, sadistic, gore-loving, filthy and all of the rest of the negative-superlatives in absoltuely every frame of the movie that they were cardboard - no, celluloid- characters without about the same reality as an animated cartoon, and the very worst of them. They were absolute jokes and their acting was so horrible, so caricaturish (Is that a word?) as to be laughable. You wanted to point your finger and ask "How the hell did that idiot get the part?" I suppose some people wiil leave the theater with a horrible image of the Maya, but I think most will look on the Maya much as most people look at Texans after they've seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Italians after The Gladiator. I still think they'll go to Texas (although I can't imagine what would attract them there, but that is my own bias) and Rome. I wished I had asked by macho buddies what their travel plans were after they got thrown out of the bar they almost certainly tried to get in after the movie. Finally, the idea of a guy who had marched umteen kilometers tied to bamboo poles (check your facts Gibson and Hansen), then piereced with spears through the side and upper chest by spears, dramatically drawing copiouos amounts of blood, running at break neck speed for at least two days without stop, is so ludicrous that absolutely no one -- not even my macho buddies -- could be expected to suspend that much of a sense of reality. I''ll bet a lot of people go out and get popcorn at some point in the prolonged chase scene (about half the 2hour and 18 minute movie), knowing that they will not miss anything because one scene is jsut like the next and the guy couldn't do it in the first place, while popcorn is real and tastes good.

On the other hand, the good guys were portrayed as Roussian noble savages -- so gentle and loving -- and except for the fact that they were dirty and naked and uneducated (not even at a community college), you'd probably want your daughter to marry one of them and someone right now is probably opening up a hotline to adopt their babies. Also, the good guys were such remarkably good actors that you couldn't help but empathize with them; they will probably get nominated for academy awards. I should also say that whatever else you have to say about Gibson and his movie, the acting by all of the Maya in the village that was raped and pillaged was absolutely stunning, right down to the smallest little boy and girl and teh most decrepit old man. I have no idea how Gibson did it. The movie is worth seeing just for that! I've never seen a hollywood or indie production where horror and sadness was so convincing. I mean it!

I'm not going to say much about the historical inaccuracies other than to say that excessive artistic license was taken, to say nothing of absymal ignorance; hopefully NGS and others will get into classrooms and on the popular media to help correct them. But I'd like to mention onething sine no one else has. If it weren't for the opening quote from Durant about civilizations collapsing from within, plus all the verbal hype in the promos and public relations hoopla about how relevant the movie is supposed to be, one could not surmise from any of the content of the movie that it had anything to do with the collapse of Maya civilization. It resembled nothing so much as Gibson's other Road Warrior movies in a patently post civilizational world.... in bloody Australia no less. Well, OK you could make a case for Ruanda, Darfur, Cambodia and a few more...Iraq (but that's another story), but I've never really heard of them refered to as civilizations in their own right that collapsed or are collapsing. They're just fucked up. The Durant thing is simply a matter of appending a quote that is supposed to give it some intellectual respectability. Only it's not even appropriate. It's a nonsequitor. Which makes Gibson even more of an ignoramous. And, finally, I doubt that the quote will resonate very much with most of the people who end up enjoying the movie, anyhow; they probably won't even bother reading it, even if they could.

There were other good things about the movie that deserve mention (I can't believe how I am so adept at procrastinating; my whole archaeological future depends on these proposals! Sometimes in front of my computer I feel like Jaguar Paw, the guy who runs two days after loosing 20 gallons of blood, and I'm old enought to be his grandfather). The score is as you would expect it: lots of drums to keep the pace of the action in hyperdrive. The structures in whatever city they were supposed to have been hauled off to looked too much like plywood and painted canvas, but then again, this archaeologist has a discerning eye. The technical effects were great, especially the blood and gore (you probably thought I was too politically correct to make mention of that. Well, I'm not.) The photography is stunningly beautiful.

Ok, back to work. I'd encourage you (mildly) to see the movie, but I am sure you all will anyhow. Better yet, buy a pirated cpoy so none of the money goes to Mel

Best
Bruce"

[Lost-in-FL]

15. "Now that was the silliest damn movie I've ever seen"

:rofl: :rofl:

That was exactly what I told my husband shortly after the jaguar attack. I did noticed 2 couples walking out mid movie.

[Devlzown]

16. I do like slasher flicks.

Maybe I'll get one of those 'cheap' copies.;)

[mdelaguna2000]

55. self delete

[mdelaguna2000]

58. take this down?

It's a private email, I believe. Sorry, I tried to pm you but can't figure out how. Good comments in the thread otherwise.

[malta blue]

77. He gave DA permission to share it.

Not to worry. All above board. DA was encouraged to share.

[Leopolds Ghost]

27. If you were all set to go see it, go see it. Don't let other people shape your opinions. n/t

[roody]

11. Another anthropologist's view

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1217-24.htm

Glad to have missed all of Gibson's films.

[malta blue]

17. Very Good Review.

I could not agree more.

This part bears repeating for those that seem to think that a film does not have very real world impacts on people and how cultures are percieved:

Rather than quibble about Apocalypto's many historical and archaeological inaccuracies as other academic critics have done, I focus here on four racist messages the film sends to audiences:

1. Native Americans are all interchangeable. Many critics have offered facile praise to Gibson for having filmed his bloody epic in a contemporary Maya language and employed various Native American actors. Gibson has boasted to the press how relatively cheap it was to make the film because he had pay so little to these actors and his Mexican crew. To me, these actors didn't look or sound Maya at all. Their Yucatec diction was terrible and lacked the real lyric cadence of Maya languages. If someone exploited local labor to make a cheap film about gang-violence in Brooklyn and employed heavily-accented Australian and British actors, would critics still praise it as "authentic" simply because the actors are speaking English?
2. Mesoamerican cultures are all the same. While keeping some of the archaeological details accurate for "authenticity," Gibson then jumbles together mass Aztec sacrifices with Maya rituals, as if they were the same. Certainly at the height of classic Maya civilization, the ruling classes made occasional human sacrifices to their gods, but nothing on the Holocaust-level scale that Gibson portrays in Apocalypto with fields of rotting, decapitated corpses that his hero, Jaguar Paw stumbles across as he attempts to escape his own execution in the city. With the advice of archaeologist Richard Hansen, Gibson seems to have researched anything the Maya might have done badly over a thousand year history and crammed it all into a few horrific days. How would the gringos look if we made a film that lumped together within one week the torture at the Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo prisons, the Tuskegee experiments, KKK lynchings, the battle at Wounded Knee, Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, the Salem witch hunts, Texas death row executions, the Rodney King police beatings, the slaughter upon the Gettysburg battlefield, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and made this look like a definitive statement on U.S. culture?

3. Indigenous people should remain noble savages, since attempts to build cities and more complex political organization will bring their inevitable demise. Gibson purportedly wanted to make a statement about the decay of empires in this film. However, the only clear message I could take away was that indigenous people should have remained friendly forest hunter-gatherers and never have attempted to build their own civilization. Ignoring the fact by the time of the Spanish invasion, all Maya peoples had been either urbanized or sedentary agriculturalists for hundreds of years and maintained complex trade networks, Gibson nevertheless depicts his hero's tribe as crude but happy rainforest peoples living in isolation, blissfully ignorant of the corrupt cities neighboring them. He contrasts these noble forest savages with evil city dwellers such as slave traders, despotic politicians, psychotic priests, and sadistic head-hunters all living amidst rotting sewage, filth, disease, and general misery. Real Maya cities were places with sophisticated water and sanitation systems, great libraries, and extraordinary artwork and architecture. If Gibson wanted to make a statement about the consequences of environmental destruction, as he has claimed to the press, why not produce a film about corporate excesses at Love Canal or Three Mile Island instead of mucking up the historical reputation of the ancient Maya?

4. The Spanish arrive as if to save the Maya from themselves. After enduring two hours of horrific violence, in the last minutes of the film, we witness the miraculous rescue of the film's hero Jaguar Paw from his stalkers by the appearance of Spanish galleons off the coast. This short, final scene shows dour Spaniards approaching the mainland in boats bearing Christian crosses across still water. After forcing his audience to endure two hours of horrific violence, Gibson uses this placid scene allow the movie-goer a sigh of relief in the hopes that these European Civilizers have arrived to make order out of the Maya mayhem. By ending his film there, Gibson ignores the far greater genocide to befall the Maya. In fact, within a hundred years of conquest, the Spanish were responsible for killing between 90 and 95 percent of the Maya population through disease, warfare, starvation, and enslavement.

[Cleita]

12. I haven't seen the movie and it seems that the invasion and

forced Christianity of the conquistadors is supposed to be a good result. I remember seeing a movie when I was a kid called, "The Captain From Castille" about the conquest of Mexico (circa sometimes in the early 1940's). It too, ended with Christianity and the Spanish being a good result for the Aztecs.

Sigh...........

[Godhumor]

26. Nope, not it at all (mild spoilers)

In no way, shape, or form did the arrival of Spanish imply that it was "good" for the Mayans--instead, it was heavily stated earlier in the movie that the end of the culture would be brought about by Jaguar Paw. His ending up on the beach when the Spanish arrived foreshadowed exactly that outcome. The Spanish served as a visual queue for the end of the civilization not for the saving of it.

I also do not buy this whole "He's racist because he used non-Mayans!" argument. Look, this is absolutely nothing enw in Hollywood--actors are interchangable and regularly asked to play well outside who they really are. This can be seen in everything from English actors trying to play Americans to non-deaf or blind individuals playing those with either of the diabilities to actors being asked to "reimagine" themselves as being from other cultures. Probably the most common occurence of this is various Asian actors being asked to play other Asian cultures (none of the 4 main actresses in "Memoirs of a Geisha" were Japanese, the vast majority of actors in "The Last Samurai" were Korean and Chinese, Ando from "Heroes" is Korean-American, etc.), but it is certainly not limited to one or two subgroups.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Gibson and the movie, so there should be no reason to invent problems from whole cloth.

[malta blue]

28. You seem to have missed the opening quote.

It opened with Durant's quote that goes something like this:

"I civilization can not be conquered from without until it is conquered from within."

The implication is clear. That the Maya so weakened by their own (Mel percieved) inner corruption that they were taken down from without. I do not think that he portrayed the Spaniards "saving" the Maya. That will probaly be the sequal. But, it is clear that Mel is innacurately portraying the May as so degenerate that their conquest was inevitable.

Never mind that the Maya were not actually in contact with the Spaniards until some 600 years after the movie is set and that he totally ignores all of that cultural development. The conquest had NOTHING at all to do with the so called collapse. Historically the two events are not even remotely connected.

To be fair DA said nothing about the conquest being "good" for the Maya. All that he said that Mel was trying to justify it, good or bad. I do not think he was trying to imply it was a net plus for the Maya. Just ultimately their fault for "conquering" themselves first. Which as noted is totally innacurate on all historical levels.

You have a point about actors playing roles that is spmewhat valid. However, as someone that has worked with the Maya for years, DA is well atuned to the many differences in culture and physical appearance that it appears that the whole juxtoposition removed to borrow his term "Mayaness" from the whole picture for him.

You can say that is not racist. Would you say the same thing about white actors in black face dancing around with spears? If that was racist in your mind, what makes this different? The costuming is just as innacurate and the depiction decidedly negative.

I also think that just plugging any Asain into a Japanese role is pretty gross. Using other actors from a different cultural group may be how it is done. But not by anyone really interested in accurately portraying the roles (especially when he puts the movie in Yucatec to give it an air of anthenticity). That combined with the wildly ignorant way that they were dressed, etc. suggests to me a blatant lack of understanding of the group in question. I definitely agree with DA on this one. At the minimum it is terrible and lazy casting. At the maximum it shows how little Mel knows or cares about the Maya he clearly blames for their own conquest.

[Recursion]

38. SPOILER The movie is set in 1505 SPOILER

There's smallpox and conquistadors. It's not set in high Mayan culture. It's not even about "Mayans" as that word is generally understood

[malta blue]

48. See posts 45 and 46

Maybe you wll believe National Geographic.

You are dating the movie based on one of its more obvious anachronimsms.

I would not post this repeatedly. But, you seem dead set on your assesment (with repeated posts). Sorry, but you are not correct on this.

[Recursion]

72. Yes, I am correct

You have one magazine article, in a journal not known for its contacts with hollywood, that is misdating the setting date of a movie. We have given you scores now of articles by people with contacts in the film industry who are saying the studio set it in the early 16th century.

The plot of the movie supports this: there are spaniards, and smallpox, and a much-declined Mayan civilization.

[Godhumor]

49. The opening quote

Deals with saying that a civilization is only able to collapse after it has decayed--this movie is set well after the 900s that the archaeologist claimed in his review and deals only with the waning days of the culture. Look, it is historically inaccurate in a lot of ways, but the movie wasn't trying to make a grand statement (regardless of Gibson's quote about this being a parallel for today). This was a chase movie that happened to be set in Mesoamerica.

I also don't really like people from one culture playing people from another, but, you see, that's the problem. Either the line is drawn so no one can play outside their own experiences, or you have to allow leeway in casting. It is also different than blackface which served entirely to make fun of and denegrate the people those actors were portraying--I think you'd be hard pressed to say that, for instance, Gong Li in "Memoirs of a Geisha" is showing the Japanese as being silly, stupid people with no major understanding of the modern world. Even in the most blatant modern example absolutely no one writes about how racist it was to have Al Pacino portray a Cuban in "Scarface" via heavy make-up.

Finally, almost all movies, even those not directly dealing with a foreign culture, take liberties with clothing, accessories, and other details. Movies like "Pearl Harbor" used modern battleships, "The Last Samurai" gave peasants insanely expensive kimonos, showed them eating normal rice instead of rice gruel, and inaccurately portrayed seppuku, and "The Last of the Mohicans" combined various tribal items together to form the style of the Mohicans. Worse yet, they cast Native Americans from many different tribes to portray those from one ("The New World" recently did the same thing by hiring zero Algonquin tribal members to play their own ancestors. Of course, the producers did hire them to teach the actors how to speak the language.). Hell, even in foreign movies they follow the same MO--"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has only one of the three main characters actually able to speak Mandrian.

There are a lot of issues with Gibson--he clearly has ingrained hatred to work through, and he needs to come to terms with his own feelings in a constructive way. Reading into Gibson's use of standard industry practice as being racist disguises and dilutes the very realy and very nasty attitudes that he has shown. I would much rather see people focused on what he actually unequivically did then to try and add inference to the equation.

Edit: Before Malta posts to tell me to see 45 I'd like to quote the following from the "Honolulu Advertiser"

But Gibson sets his film not during the era of Maya collapse in A.D. 900, but at the time of European contact in the early 1500s, when the first Spanish expeditions arrived on Maya shores. What wiped out the Maya in the 1500s was not internal rot, it was the Spanish, who brought European disease and fought for decades to pacify the Maya.

[malta blue]

51. See post 45.

It is clearly set during the end of the Collapse as suggested in the review.

See National Geo. Post 45.

[Godhumor]

53. Apparently I didn't edit in time

National Geographic does say that he fictionalizes the collapse after the 90ss--it does not say it was set in the 900s. From other articles, such as the one I posted above, it is clearly set in the early 1500s.

I'd also like to know your thoughts on the rest of what I posted above.

[malta blue]

56. Set in a time 600 years after the time they mention.

Sorry. But that does not fly at all. The implication of the National Geo article is clear. The movie is set at the end of the collapse. Not 6 centuries later.

[Godhumor]

66. Above I posted a wide variety of links

Not going to repost them here, but every single review and discussion on the science talks about the movie being set 500 years ago.

[H2O Man]

13. I prefer to read this

than to see the film. Thank you for posting it.

[malta blue]

18. My Pleasure.

:toast:

[azndndude]

14. Here is an article that articulates how some Native Americans feel about it.

http://indianz.com/News/2006/017433.asp

[Metta]

23. Somewhere along the way Gibson lost his heart.

So sad to see a human, much moreso when he's a celebrity, with such a cruel, heartless vision/interior. So sad when we know he directed Braveheart, a movie with miles of heart and some nuance dispite the bravado.

He's so far lost, he could make a good Republican.

[Riverman]

19. Was thinking about seeing the movie tonight, but maybe not!

I used to like Mel Gibson, the early Mad Max movies and Braveheart, being a working class celtic myself. But, after the Christ movie, the drunken racist rages and his right-wing Catholic mythology (saying this as a recovering pape). I did not see the Christ movie, did not want to watch such S and M crap. I did not ask some dude 2000 years ago wearing a toga and walking around the desert in sandals to get himself nailed to a cross in order to get forgiveness for my sins. My sins are my sins and I will seek forgiveness and redemption in my way, thank you very much. And, I have been fascinated by mayan and other native cultures and would love to see a film that more accurately depicted what really went on. I've read four of Jared Diamond's books. His description of the Spanish slaughter of the Inca's with a small force is revealing about the role of the Catholic priests and the moral emptyness of the Spanish nobility and military. Not this was entirely new information for me. I've read plenty about the genocidal collusion of the church and new world conquerors from Europe.
So it should be no surprise that Mel has produced a snuff film for the consumption of the true-believers. Thanks for posting the reviews and it does give be pause about paying to see this garbage.

[malta blue]

21. Jared Diamond is Brilliant.

Great, accessable author with a very wholisit perspective. He has am amazing graps of the diverse cultures he writes about. The contact period is one of the most fascinating ang depressing periods in human history.

I highly recommend buying any of his books with the money that would otherwise go to this movie.

Thanks for he comments.

[Vanje]

64. Thus also sucked Braveheart

Wrong kind of bagpipes. The sillouetted piper on the horizon played the great highland pipes,but the sound which emerged was from an irish uiillean pipes.
Neither of these instruments as we see / hear them in the film were available durinng Wallaces' century.
The forward seat english saddle Mel sits on was developed late 1800's / early 1900s.

I might have caught more mistakes,had I not been so astounded by theater-goers laughter at the scene where the king threw his son's friend out of the palace window,for no other apparent reason than for the unpardonable crime of appearing to be gay.
Hahaha. reaal fucking funny. laff-riot. Gay dude gets thrown to his death. WoooHooo. Laugh your ass off. Get an oscar for best picture.

Mel Gibson is an asshole.

[KoKo]

20. Thanks! Saves me from walking out of another "Christmas Movie" thing

once again. Already walked out of two of the "blockbusters" so far...and after I'd paid for the popcorn and eaten half of it.

This one is definitely a "miss" or something to rent on a really boring evening when I need a dose of blood and gore and re-writing of history. :-(

[malta blue]

22. Do not hold the popcorn accountable.

It is so tasty and salt is your friend! If you walk out. Take it with you. Theaters make the best.

:popcorn:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Thanks for the fact check!

This is similar to what a professor of Asian history did for Shogun which also contained a lot of howlers.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

25. Thanks!

I have been very curious about this film, but quite reluctant to throw down any jack to Mel Gibson. I guess my "spidey sense" was on alert after my rightwing nutjob brother gave it the thumbs up.

It is very illuminating to read reviews such as those on this thread, and I would echo the waterman that it is time better spent, and $10 saved.

[shadowknows69]

29. Just a thought but

Maybe in the spirit of the holidays Skinner and Co. would consider asking some of our prodigal children to come back to the family.

[paulk]

30. just a thought...and not to defend the movie, which probably

does suck, but I would hope "distressed american" brings more objectivity to his archeological research than he does to his movie reviews, ie;

"I wanted to see Apocalypto so I would be in a position to debunk the false impressions that it is giving to future students."

----------------------

[malta blue]

31. DA was well aware of the kind of issues the movie had before seeing it.

He had already read a number of reviews before seeing it as he noted in his review. He could have gone in totally ignorant. He didn't. That is not bias. That is information on the subject. It IS giving false and totally ignorant impressions to future students. You see setting that straight for his students as a problem?

As all of the negatives he heard and then some was correct, I fail to understand your attitude on this. As the review is well founded in real archaeological reearch, I do not see his take as out of line or pre-biased.

Attacking his research sight unseen seems a bit off to me.

Tell you what. Go see the movie and then tell me how you feel about the review.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. Not out of line at all

Movie makers are notorious for distorting history. In fact, if you know anything about history, just about any historical drama is going to make you cringe.

Yet with Americans more inclined to watch visual media than to read ("We live such stressful lives that we just want to be entertained"--actual quote from an affluent suburban student), anyone who teaches is going to be faced with students whose heads are stuffed full of media-generated misconceptions.

I bet that Distressed American has had other experiences with movies that distorted ancient cultures.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

34. Gotta Love The Open Mind Right? LOL

[malta blue]

35. I'l make you the same offer.

Go see the movie and if you disagree with the review, come on back and we can chat about what you think was wrong with it.

What does it matter what he thought (had read) before he saw it if the review is well founded and accurate? He knew a lot about it before he saw it. Does that make him wrong in his assesment?

If you think the review is off let me know why. Other than that, I do not see the point of your objection.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

42. Who Really Cares? This Movie Was For Entertainment, Not To Teach A Bunch Of History Students LOL

I also didn't 'object' to anything. I simply laughed. Big difference, but nice try.

[malta blue]

43. Many people care.

Clearly you do not. That does not make the comments in the review any less valid.

[paulk]

76. yeah, something tells me it's the same "open mind"

that got him tombstoned.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

79. LOL!

:rofl:

How true that probably is.

[Beausoir]

33. Thanks for this. Chalk another fantasy gore fest up for Mel.

[Recursion]

36. It was set in 1505, wasn't it?

I won't give spoilers, but I'll say it's very obvious that it's not set in 950. It's set long after the Mayan collapse. They didn't have astronomers anymore and, IIRC from my class on the Maya, were in fact surprised by an early 16th-century eclipse.

*shrug* every historical movie has "Jurassic Park" aspects (there were dinosaurs more separated from each other in time than the T-Rex is separated from us in time, all glommed together in one park. And actually none of the star dinosaurs were Jurassic.)

From my perspective, the historical inaccuracy in the movie is saying it's about "The Maya". It's not; the Mayan civilization had dispersed and collapsed long before 1500. These were the Goths to the Mayan Rome, numbly rehearsing rituals they had forgotten the meaning of.

[malta blue]

39. That is a total misunderstanding of the Maya.

The "collapse" was not the end of the Maya they prospered well after that event in the north and south. The "collapse" merely ended the "Classic Period". It was a depopulation of the central maya lowlands around 950 (when the movie IS set according to Mel himself). Your statement about disappeared and gone could not be farther off. Read up on the Terminal Classic and Postclassic Maya and you will see how wrong that impression is. Your comments about the the Maya not having astromomers and such is also completely wrong. I suggest you begin by reading up on the late Post-classic Maya codex called the Drasden Codex. It contains many of the very exclipse tables he referred to in his review.

Sadly the term "collapse" implies what you suggest. However, it is a total misnomer that is widely criticized by folks in the field today. It was a highly restricted phenomena. It was far from the end of the Maya as a civilization. The Maya were a vibrant culture until the Conquest and still remain one today. Guatemala for example is 65% indigenous May to this very day. Most of those living a very traditional lifestyle.

DA works at a site called Mayapan that controlled the entire Yucatan Peninsula well after the "collapse". He is an expert in the Maya Postclassic. Sorry. Your impressions are way off mark here.

My background is in this areas as well although I no longer study it. That is how I first met DA. He has been working in the Maya area since 1996 and is quite knowledgeable. I assure you that his assesment is accurate and shared by most archaeologists.

[Recursion]

44. According to Mel himself? SPOILER AGAIN

central maya lowlands around 950 (when the movie IS set according to Mel himself)

Where did you read/hear that? I've only heard 1505 as the setting. The presence of smallpox and conquistadors kind of gives that away, n'est-ce pas?

[malta blue]

46. See post 45

You are using one of the glaring anachronisms to date the movie. It IS set around the end of the "collapse" in the 900 to 950 period that DA mentioned.

I'll see if I can find a write-up of the Mel comments. I saw it on an interview.

[Recursion]

47. Collapse

Sadly the term "collapse" implies what you suggest. However, it is a total misnomer that is widely criticized by folks in the field today. It was a highly restricted phenomena. It was far from the end of the Maya as a civilization. The Maya were a vibrant culture until the Conquest and still remain one today. Guatemala for example is 65% indigenous May to this very day. Most of those living a very traditional lifestyle.

The same can be said of Rome, or Athens, both of which collapsed too. There are still Romans, there is still even technically a senate. People still speak a language descended from Latin. Roman society collapsed, however, and Charlemagne's coronation was not really a continuation of Roman civilization, however much he pretended it was and despite the genetic, linguistic, and judicial continuities that did survive. Similarly, the people in central America in the early 1500's were genetically and linguistically related to the Classical Mayans, but were not in a sociological sense "the same people", whatever continuities there were.

[malta blue]

50. No.

Again I suggest you read up on the Post-Classic Maya. You are dead wrong here. Postclassic culture had a diffent political organization. But, their religion and other cultural prtices were largely unchanged. In fact, in the Postclassic, the Maya maintained larger and more powerful polities that the Classic period ever saw.

You seen quite insistent in your view. But, it is dead wrong.

[Recursion]

63. Rome had more people in 800 than 300

It was still a societal collapse. Why you insist Rome didn't collapse is beyond me.

[malta blue]

73. Funny. I do not recall saying any such thing.

Roman history is not Maya history. I did not comment on the Romans at all.

Have a nice day.

[skipos]

40. I have some Mayan ancestry, and I liked the movie.

I don't get upset when British people play Americans, so it didn't bother me that non-Mayans were used. Did Germans and Jews play all of the roles in Schindler's List?

Mel Gibson is racist, but I wouldn't describe this movie as racist. It focuses almost exclusively on the more violent aspects of the culture (and fabricates a lot along the way), the same way the Godfather series focuses on the violent and illegal aspects of their Italian subjects.

Personally, I can enjoy movies like JFK that have some historical inaccuracies. Apocalypto is about as inaccurate as it gets, but if you want to see a simple action movie you might like it. The blood is a bit over the top, IMO.

And the Spaniards aren't portrayed as being "justfified" in any way that I saw.

[InvisibleTouch]

59. That's the problem when an expert sees a work of fiction.

I've gone to see "The Mummy" movies with Egyptologists, and all they did was gripe about the inaccuracies. The whole point, IMO, was to enjoy the story, but I guess that's just me.

My own area of expertise is herpetology and exotic pets, and I always laugh when I see, for instance, a black emperor scorpion portrayed as a lethal creature, and as a desert creature, no less (they are jungle dwellers, virtually harmless, but they just happen to look impressive). But all I do is have a quick laugh, and then continue to enjoy the movie. It's called willing suspension of disbelief, for the purpose of being entertained.

Now, I don't entirely disagree with the reviewer - if you're going to make a movie about a historical culture, the least you can do is try to get the facts as accurate as possible, within the context of the story. It is an opportunity to educate as well as entertain, and it should be taken seriously. If it were me, I would take pride in trying to get it right - but would try not to get obsessive about it, to the detriment of other elements. If the historical data constrains the dramatic storyline, I'm all in favor of some creative license.

Of course, this is why I love science fiction as a genre most of all - because you can craft your storyline to make your point, without having to worry about historical accuracy. Elements can be influenced by historical cultures and events, but no expert will be able to say, "Wait a sec, that's not how the inhabitants of Gamma-Scorpius IV conducted their coming-of-age ceremonies in the 1015th year of their calendar!"

Have not seen "Apocalypto," btw. I'm intrigued by it, but I'll probably wait till it shows up in the library on DVD.

[The Backlash Cometh]

61. Please, please, please send this to the New York Times for publication.

What an incredible review. My minded actually expanded from reading it.

[malta blue]

62. More from National Geo for the dating skeptics

Ans those that think the collapse ended Maya civ:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061208-apocalypto-mel_2.html

It may be modeled after Tikal in Guatemala, a great Mayan city. But it is more of a combination of architectural features from both the southern and northern lowlands on the Yucatán Peninsula.

If Apocalypto is meant to to show the terminal Classic—the Classic Maya collapse—then it may have looked in a state of disrepair. The decline in social organization may have made the upkeep of public buildings a difficult economic and political endeavor.

more from the article:

The movie suggests that there were several reasons for the Maya collapse.

There are many causes for the fall of that form of Classic-period social organization. Multiple historical, economic, and environmental factors were in play simultaneously at that time.

It was a time of particularly bad drought. There was heavy deforestation. The ancient Maya overused their land and were no longer producing the amount of food they needed.

At the same time, populations were going through the roof. There were too many people, and the pie simply wasn't big enough.

There was also increased warfare in some areas. Royals were trying to kill off each other. This appeared to have occurred over a 100- to 150-year period, so it wasn't one single event. And it occurred largely in the southern Maya lowlands.

In some areas in the north, the construction of pyramids and other buildings continued unimpeded .

It is important to remember that the Maya didn't disappear. They reorganized. So we should think of it more as a social reorganization than a collapse.

By the time the Spaniards arrived, the social problems associated with the Classic period collapse, as portrayed in Apocalypto, did not exist.

[Recursion]

67. So national geographic didn't see the movie

The studio itself sets it at first contact, after the "high" point of the civilization. National Geographic is wrong about the movie. The studio and the reviewers (who get their info from the studio) are right (about the movie).

To quote:

If Apocalypto is meant to to show the terminal Classic—the Classic Maya collapse

It didn't. Unless you have evidence that they did this doesn't really help anything. We've given you now dozens of links showing that the studio thinks it was set around 1505. You have one national geographic article. I'm sticking with my story here.

[malta blue]

71. Sure. They did not see the movie that they wrote up.

That must be it.

I see a bunch of incorrect reviews above. How is it exactly that you know where they got their info? I read them and I see no information that they got the info from the studio. Funny how you take the word of random movie reviews from sources like the Hololulu Advrtizer as better informed than National Geo.

More from the National Geo article:

In terms of historical accuracy, the arrival of the Spaniards is a problem in itself, right?

The movie ends with the Spaniards coming . So basically we're looking at a 400-year difference in architectural style and history.


See ya. This is not worth it anymore. People can think what they want.

[mzmolly]

74. "I fear that the vast majority of American’s are so ignorant of Maya history ..."

Considering many Americans thought the Titanic starring Leonardo DeCaprio was based on fact, I'd say that is a valid concern. ;)

[H2O Man]

83. Well "Titantic" was on TV ......

you aren't trying to say that They can put stuff on TV that isn't real, are you?

[mzmolly]

88. Oh my goodness

:rofl:

Gosh, I must have my facts all wrong?! I had no idea that Titanic was on the tele. :spray:

[malta blue]

75. I give up.

Do with the info what you will. :shrug:

Back to the lounge for me.

[Godhumor]

78. Fine, final irrefutable proof...

From a Mel Gibson interview...

http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=15856§ionId=2&page=1

"And it's important, if you're going to do a film that has themes in another language and involving an indigenous culture, that everybody's able to identify with them immediately. So in the casting process, you had to find people who had those qualities already, who just looked like you imagined they should; in a predictable way, sometimes, and yet who didn't betray the feeling of real people back in the 16th century, in some of those Mayan cities."

Even the director says this is the 1500s.

[trumad]

82. Ummm let's see.....

A Maya archaeologist by training and profession---or a bunch of amateur DUers who think they know better?

I'll put my money on the Maya archaeologist.

I swear to God if you got on DU and said the earth was round, the same damn characters would hop in the thread and dispute it.

[Godhumor]

87. Or, you know, the director himself saying it's set in the 1500s

My thoughts on all of this is that there is no reason to invent new reasons to shoot down Gibson, when so many actual things he has said and done speak for themselves. Attacking a movie for being inaccurate does not do anything but make people who want Gibson to be held accountable to look like they have to reach for reasons.

Secondly, no one, and I mean no one, is disputing that Gibson has gleefully exaggerated aspects of the Mayan culture, combined various ages together, etc. However, what a few of us really went after was that the review and Malta erroneously stated that Gibson set his movie off by 600 years from what it should have been portraying. The fact is, Gibson did set the movie in the 1500s, and we were simply trying to show that particular argument as being invalid.

Looking through this thread I haven't seen anyone attack DA's Mayan credentials--there have just been questions to the vaidity of certain conclusions that the OP and DA came to as well as trying to set the record straight on the movie's date.

[trumad]

89. Well---like I said...the real experts pr Mel Gibson...

It's not like he's been wrong before--uh..like Jews start all the wars.

[Godhumor]

90. But see that's MY point

Let Gibson hang himself with his actual words and actual actions. Inventing shit that isn't there, like he was trying to say the Spanish saved the Mayans, that he's racist for not using Mayan actors in the leads, or that he botched the history of the 900s when he clearly set it in the 1500s makes it look like we are desperate to create new reasons to hate him. That whole process dilutes what he actually did.

And, I'm sorry, I am going to take the director stating unequivically that he set the movie in the 16th century versus someone who is not the director, regardless of who it is.

I don't want his comments like "Jews start all the wars" to disappear under the weight of poorly crafted and invented conspiracies.

[trumad]

92. Wrong again...and me-thinks the OP was written for another reason...

accuracy of the era in which these events took place.

What if Gibson said it took place in 1750? Would you still go along with him?

[Godhumor]

94. What if Gibson said it took place in 1750?

Have you read any of the reviews, the information, or anything else where every one of them states the movie is set in the 16th century. The director says it is set in the 16th century, the official website talks about it being set post-collapse, the fact that the Spanish are there at all says it was set in the 16th century. The OP is wrong to say anything else. There is also a world of difference between the Spanish actually showing up in the 16th century and the director saying, hey, that's the culture we're showing than arbitrarily using dates with absolutely no connection to the material at all.

Listen, the OP is standing on his own on this--every major review, interview, even science sites like MSNBC's Cosmic Log discuss Gibson's portrayal of 16th century Mayans. To blindly turn away from the huge wealth of sources in favor of one review from a former DUer is a fallacy. No one is arguing that the movie was inaccurate, even most of the sites I use to argue my point talk about what he got wrong, but the OP's basis is off by 600 years. That is a problem.

Final edit: Most of the OP's arguments for what was wrong with the movie is that elements used didn't show up for hundreds of year after the movie was set. As a result, your point about him trying to show the accuracy of the time period does become invalid, as the reviewer didn't get the time period right.

[lynne]

84. Movies are entertainment and not education -

- and the two should never be confused.

[trumad]

86. Just like Propaganda eh?

[lynne]

93. You think propaganda is entertaining?

I guess to each their own.

[Maat]

85. Thank you for the post.

I learned quite a bit. I haven't seen the movie, and will not, because I don't think much of either Mel Gibson or his movies; but, as I said, this post was highly educational. Please thank DA for me.

[Dover]

91. Apparently this guy has never seen an American Western

Those savage Indians are always backwards and subhuman terrorists. Mel carries on the cowboys and Indians tradition, with more emphasis on blood and guts.

I'd like to think that we are not in too much danger of being swept up in this ethnic wash. And also not sure the Spanish conquest is depicted as some kind of positive development. Afterall, the Spanish are not the ones that hasten a new beginning. I heard that there is a retreat back into the natural habitat to 'begin again'.

At any rate, I'd hate to hype the movie by attempting to address it as particularly important. I don't think it is. So these Mayan archaeologists and historians should make a documentary and get the history channel or PBS to help fund it. I'm sure the reality of Mayan life is MUCH more interesting than Mel's depiction.

[nam78_two]

95. I thought of watching it just to see how

horribly inaccurate it would be. But in the end, couldn't stomach the idea of sitting through a boring and sickening Gibson flick.

Good on DA for watching it so others don't have to :thumbsup:. Cool & informative post btw.