http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061212/news_1c12mel.html

I've checked out several reviews, including the one above, and the consensus is Mel Gibson's Mayan mash-up is a rip-roaring adventure of terror and carnage...and steeped in anachronism and historical liberties.

I won't see it.  It's not just because I don't like Mel Gibson anymore...and I don't like Mel Gibson anymore, it's because the subject of pre-Columbian Meso-American history has become inthe last ten years much better understood than ever before.  "Apocalypto" is historical fiction.  Historical fiction is great when it's "The Pirates of the Caribbean."  The cinematic pirate has never matched with historical accounts of Colonial-era piracy, and we don't expect it to.

Gibson set out to bill his film as "authentic,' especially in the use ancient Mayan language for the script. 

I admire Gibson as an auteur for the sheer scale of his efforts, but while he was preparing a script in the indiginous dead language, he could have at least consulted the Encyclopedia Britannica as well.  He might have left out the gaff of Mayans awestruck by an eclipse.  When the ancient Mayans died out, it would be over a thousand years before Western civilizations knew as much as they about astronomy!  Maybe Gibson merely intended to make the Mayans appear more backward and savage than the best historians tell us they were.  If so, Gibson is a scoundrel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus
The book 1491: New Revelations of the America's Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann is one of my favorite recent books.  When I heard Gibson was making a film about ancient Mayans, I was hoping his film would examine ancient Mayan life through new historical perspective's such as Mann's.

Unfortunately, Gibson is a man violent temperament.  Like The Passion of The Christ, Apocalypto seems like another chapter in "A Brief History of the World, by Sam Peckinpah."
:P 

I'm surprised how it got to #1 at the Box-Office.  With all this hatrid over Mel Gibson, you'd think it would've left the theatres faster than it arrived

I wish Mel would go back to non serious movies and do more goofy acting roles like Maverick and Lethal Weapon.  That's the Mel Gibson I like

I'm surprised how it got to #1 at the Box-Office.  With all this hatrid over Mel Gibson, you'd think it would've left the theatres faster than it arrived

I wish Mel would go back to non serious movies and do more goofy acting roles like Maverick and Lethal Weapon.  That's the Mel Gibson I like


Nah, the media elites hate Mel, the folks don't.
:P

You'd think the Christian right would turn their backs on him for bashing the Jews, but the dirty secret is the Christian Right are raging anti-semites.  The political Right conned them into their passion for Israel in conjunction with the rubbish the armageddonist frauds feed them!  Outside of the Israeli/Zionist right-wingers, most Jews are reasonable folks who tend to be a bit left-of-center politically/socially.  Whenever the Christian Right encounters an average Jew, they call him a "self-hating Jew."

anyone who looks to movies for historical accuracy is going to be disappointed. movies are more like dreams than treatises.

Doesn't suprise me that the film isn't historically  accurate.  ::) Nor the fact that is been called by soon, a mindless blood bath, especially after the other mindless blood bath, he directed.  ::)

anyone who looks to movies for historical accuracy is going to be disappointed. movies are more like dreams than treatises.

Dreams are one thing, howling anachronisms are another.  I say again, Mel Gibson is a disturbed and violent individual.  He is also a right-winger.  Thus, Gibson thinks he has created a noble image of the ancient Maya with all the bloodshed.  The white man has been perpetuating this stereotype of Mesoamericans for 500 years.  Whether it's meant as homage or degradation, the misconceptions live on.

  I saw this Sunday.  First movie I've been to in five years.  Was a wee bit disappointed as I thought more of Mayan history would be presented, instead it is just a backdrop as the personal story of a forest dwelling family unfolds...

  Graphic violence, great soundtrack, breathtaking recreation of a Mayan city and the ever fascinating arriving Spanish in their galleons, bouncing in the coastal surf for the first time...

  With all the hype I hoped I'd learn something.  It's an action film only.  New turf but another blood drenched action film nonetheless

  If you back away from an enemy's ideas/beliefs far enough you back right into the bugger!  Kinda freaky but true!  Go figya groove ;) on...

Gibson is the only guy I know of who could have offended the Zionist Right and remained a darling of FOX News.  Right-wing lunacy and fascination for war and bloodshed (provided you don't don't go when it's your duty) makes Mel the otherwise perfect FOX News guy.  Sean Hannity  asked Mel retarded questions, and Mel spouted a semi-psychotic ramble, and they broadcast this over two H&C episodes.

In fact, FOX News might have seen Mel's assertion that Jews start all the wars as a compliment.  War is good.
"War saves lives!," screamed Sean Hannity at an anti-war panelist.  Mr. Hannity never served, of course.

What's this got to do with "Apocalypto."  The Right is saying "Apocalypto" (about pre-Columbian Mayans) has a "Christian" message.  What's more Christian than "Kill Kill Kill!," eh?
::)

Who gives a sh*t? It's a movie.

Who gives a sh*t? It's a movie.



QFT.