Apocalypto

Apocalypto
Apocalypto promotional poster
Directed by	Mel Gibson
Produced by	Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia Bruce Davey
Written by	Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia
Starring	Rudy Youngblood Raoul Trujillo Mayra Sérbulo Dalia Hernández Gerardo Taracena Rodolfo Palacios Bernardo Ruiz Juarez Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza Ricardo Diaz Mendoza Israel Contreras
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Dean Semler
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures (USA) Icon Entertainment (non-USA) 20th Century Fox (Argentina)
Release date(s)	December 8, 2006 (theater) May 22, 2007 (DVD and Blu-ray)
Running time	139 minutes
Language	Yucatec Maya
Budget	$40 million
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Apocalypto is an Academy Award nominated 2006 epic film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, it depicts one man's experience during the decline of the ancient Maya civilization.

Plot

Jaguar Paw (in middle played by Rudy Youngblood) and his father Flint Sky (to the right played by Morris Birdyellowhead) in their village.

Opening quote:

While hunting Baird's Tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized and fearful refugees. The procession's leader explains that their lands have been ravaged, and with Flint Sky's permission are allowed to pass through the forest. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return to their village, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the procession's state of fear seep into him. At night, the tribe's elder tells the village a fable of man forever unable to fill his want, despite having been given the capabilities of all of the animals. The villagers follow the story with music and dance, leaving Jaguar Paw to ponder. The next morning, Jaguar Paw wakes from a nightmare to see strangers enter the village and set the huts ablaze. The raiders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), attack and subdue the villagers. Jaguar Paw slips out with his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) and his little son Turtles Run, lowering them on a vine into a small cave (a chultun, shaped something like a well)^[1] to hide them. Jaguar Paw returns to the village to fight the raiders but is subdued with the rest of the tribe. A raider whom Jaguar Paw attacked and almost killed, the vicious Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena), slits Flint Sky's throat in front of his son.

Maya city rulers look up to the approaching solar eclipse

Before the raiders leave the village with their prisoners, one suspicious raider severs the vine leading into the ground cave, trapping Jaguar Paw's wife and son within. The raiders and their captives trek toward the Maya city, encountering failed maize crops and slaves producing plaster. They also pass a small girl with leprosy (alternatively congenital syphilis) who, after entering a trance-like state, prophesies to the raiders that their end is near, including details of darkness in the middle of the day and a man bringing a jaguar. In the city's outskirts, the female captives are sold as slaves and the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid. The high priest sacrifices several captives by pulling out their hearts and decapitating them. When Jaguar Paw is about to be sacrificed, a solar eclipse stays the priest's hand. The priest declares the sun god Kukulkan satisfied with the sacrifices. The eclipse passes, and light returns to the world. Zero Wolf, told to dispose of the captives by the priest, takes them to a ball field. The captives are released in pairs and forced to run the length of the field to win their freedom. The warriors target them with javelins, arrows, and slingstones as they run. Jaguar Paw is struck by an arrow through the abdomen but reaches the end of the field and removes the arrow tip. Zero Wolf's son, Cut Rock, approaches to finish him off with an obsidian blade, but Jaguar Paw stabs him through the jaw with the arrow tip. As Cut Rock dies a painful death, Jaguar Paw escapes through a withered maize field and an open mass grave. The enraged Zero Wolf pursues Jaguar Paw into the jungle with his fellow raiders. The chase leads back to the forest. One of the raiders is killed by a black jaguar that has been disturbed by Jaguar Paw. As he flees, Jaguar Paw jumps over a high waterfall and survives, declaring from the riverbank below that the raiders are now in his territory. Zero Wolf's raiders fall to both the forest's elements and Jaguar Paw's traps. A heavy rain sets in, which begins to flood the ground cave in which Jaguar Paw's wife and son are still trapped. Jaguar Paw defeats Middle Eye in hand-to-hand combat and kills Zero Wolf by leading him into a trap meant for hunting tapir. He is chased by two remaining raiders out to a beach where they encounter Spanish conquistadores and missionaries making their way ashore in boats. The amazement of the raiders allows Jaguar Paw to flee. He returns into the forest to rescue his wife and son from the cave. He finds that his wife has given birth to a healthy second son, and the family is rescued. Jaguar Paw's wife briefly asks what the strange objects near the shore are. Jaguar Paw responds only that "they bring men". Jaguar Paw's wife then asks if they should go greet the strangers. Jaguar Paw's wife's face is then given a close up as if implying to Maya historians that she will eventually become La Malinche. Jaguar Paw and his family go deeper into the forest, leaving the conquistadores anchored in ships off the beach.

Production details

Prior to filming and writing a script, Apocalypto writer and producer Farhad Safinia first met Mel Gibson while working as an assistant during the post-production of The Passion of the Christ. Eventually, Gibson and Safinia found time to discuss "their mutual love of movies and what excites them about moviemaking."^[2] Safinia notes:

We started to talk about what films excite us and what he wanted to do next, and we specifically spent a lot of time on the action-chase genre of filmmaking. Those conversations essentially grew into the skeleton of ('Apocalypto'). We wanted to update the chase genre by, in fact, not updating it with technology or machinery but stripping it down to its most intense form, which is a man running for his life, and at the same time getting back to something that matters to him.^[2]

The desire to portray and explore a culture as it existed before the arrival of the Europeans led Gibson and Safinia to choose the Maya for their high sophistication and eventual decline. Safinia notes why he and Gibson chose the ancient Maya over the Aztecs:

The Mayans were far more interesting to us. You can choose a civilization that is bloodthirsty, or you can show the Mayan civilization that was so sophisticated with an immense knowledge of medicine, science, archaeology and engineering ... but also be able to illuminate the brutal undercurrent and ritual savagery that they practiced. It was a far more interesting world to explore why and what happened to them.[3]

Gibson filmed Apocalypto mainly in Catemaco, San Andres Tuxtla, and Paso de Ovejas in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The waterfall scene was filmed on a real waterfall called Salto de Eyipantla, located in San Andrés Tuxtla. It was filmed also in El Petén, a department of Guatemala, where the mystical city of the movie is located (Tikal). The two did research on ancient Maya history, reading both creation and destruction myths. Safinia and Gibson even used sacred texts such as the Popul Vuh.^[3] In addition, Safinia and Gibson personally traveled to the Yucatan to scout out filming locations and visit Maya ruins to help write the script. Yucatec Maya language is used throughout Apocalypto,^[4] in the same way Aramaic and Latin were used for Gibson's religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ (2004). Said Gibson about again using a foreign language:

I think hearing a different language allows the audience to completely suspend their own reality and get drawn into the world of the film. And more importantly, this also puts the emphasis on the cinematic visuals, which are a kind of universal language of the heart.^[3]

Like the The Passion of the Christ, the movie has no opening credits and begins with a quotation. The title is only seen during the end credits. Maya specialist Dr Richard D. Hansen (the film's consultant), Gibson and Safinia all strived to create some authenticity in the film. Gibson had said of Dr Hansen's involvement:

Richard’s enthusiasm for what he does is infectious. He was able to reassure us and make us feel secure that what we were writing had some authenticity as well as imagination.^[3]

Apocalypto features a cast of unknown actors from Mexico City, the Yucatán, numerous Native Americans from the United States and Canada, and locals from Los Tuxtlas and Veracruz. In the end, three cast members came from Canada, two from the USA and the rest from Mexico. There were at least 700 extras on set. Many of the younger actors from isolated communities had never set foot inside a hotel room prior to filming. During filming, Gibson and cinematographer Dean Semler employed the use of Spydercam^[5], a suspended camera system allowing shooting from atop:

We had a Spydercam shot from the top of [the] 150-foot waterfall, looking over an actor's shoulder and then plunging over the edge –- literally in the waterfall. I thought we’d be doing it on film, but we put the Genesis [camera] up there in a light-weight water housing. The temperatures were beyond 100 degrees at [the] top, and about 60 degrees at the bottom, with the water and the mist. We shot two fifty-minute tapes without any problems – though we [did get] water in there once and fogged up.^[6]

This equipment is used in a scene in which the captive villagers are led through the river. Semler and Gibson also filmed Apocalypto digitally, using the high-definition Panavision Genesis camera.[4] Gibson had insisted on making the main sets based on actual buildings rather than relying on computer-generated images. Most of the step pyramids seen at the Maya city were actual models designed by Thomas E. Sanders, who had previously been nominated for "Best Art Direction-Set Decoration" for his work in Saving Private Ryan[5]. Simon Atherton, an English armorer and weapon-maker who worked with Gibson on Braveheart, was hired this time to research and provide the Maya weapons. Gibson let Atherton play the cross-bearing Spanish priest who appears on a boat at the end of the film. In addition, the production team consisted of a large group of make-up artists and costume designers who worked to recreate an authentic Maya look for the large cast. While Gibson financed the film himself, Disney signed on to release Apocalypto for a fee in certain markets. The film was slated for an August 4, 2006, release, but Touchstone Pictures delayed the release date to December 8, 2006, due to heavy rains interfering with filming in Mexico. On September 23, 2006, Gibson pre-screened Apocalypto to two predominantly Native American audiences in the US state of Oklahoma, at the Riverwind Casino in Goldsby, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, and at Cameron University in Lawton.^[7] He also did a pre-screening in Austin, Texas, on September 24 in conjunction with one of the movie's stars, Rudy Youngblood.^[8]

Cast

• Rudy Youngblood - Jaguar Paw
• Dalia Hernández - Seven
• Jonathan Brewer - Blunted
• Morris Birdyellowhead - Flint Sky
• Carlos Emilio Báez - Turtles Run
• Amilcar Ramírez - Curl Nose
• Israel Contreras - Smoke Frog
• Israel Ríos - Cocoa Leaf
• María Isabel Díaz - Mother-in-Law
• Iazua Larios - Sky Flower
• Raoul Trujillo - Zero Wolf
• Gerardo Taracena - Middle Eye
• Rodolfo Palacios - Snake Ink
• Ariel Galvan - Hanging Moss
• Bernardo Ruiz - Drunkards Four
• Ricardo Diaz Mendoza - Cut Rock
• Richard Can - Ten Peccary
• Carlos Ramos - Monkey Jaw
• Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza - Buzzard Hook
• Marco Antonio Argueta - Speaking Wind
• Aquetzali García - Oracle Girl
• Maria Isidra Hoil - Oracle Girl

Themes

The Australian version of the Apocalypto film poster.^[9] The original theatrical poster acquired a nomination in the 36th annual Key Art Awards for the best Action Adventure poster. ^{[10] [11]}

Maya civilization in the Central Area reached its full glory in the early eighth century, but it must have contained the seeds of its own destruction, for in the century and a half that followed all its magnificent cities had fallen into decline and ultimately suffered abandonment. This was surely one of the most profound social and demographic catastrophes of all human history.^[12]

—Michael Coe, The Maya

As Coe puts it, the precursors to the fall of the Maya civilization, the "seeds of its own destruction," are similar to those found in other past civilizations. Yet Mel Gibson takes this comparison a step forward and claims these same "forces" are "occurring in our society now." Apocalypto is partially intended as a political allegory about civilizations in decline.^[13] The movie is an attempt to illustrate the parallels between a great fallen empire of the past and the great empires of today. Gibson states, "People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we're susceptible to the same forces – and we are also capable of the same heroism and transcendence."^[14][3] The filmmakers researched exactly what was the cause behind the Mayan collapse. The problems "faced by the Maya are extraordinarily similar to those faced today by our own civilization" co-writer Safinia stated during production, "especially when it comes to widespread environmental degradation, excessive consumption and political corruption."^[3] The peek through time at this culture of the past serves as a looking glass onto our own lives today. The film serves as a cultural critique – in Dr. Hansen's words, a "social statement" – sending the message that it is never a mistake to question our own assumptions about morality.^[15] The corrosive forces of corruption are illustrated in specific scenes throughout the movie. Excessive consumption can be seen in the extravagant lifestyle of the upper-class Maya, their vast wealth contrasted with the sickly, the extremely poor, and the enslaved. Environmental degradation is portrayed both in the exploitation of natural resources such as the over-mining and farming of the land, but also through the treatment of people, families and entire tribes as resources to be harvested and sold to slavery. Political corruption is seen in the leaders' manipulation, the human sacrifice on a large scale, and the mass slave trade. These themes are prevalent throughout the movie and often overlap and blend together, creating an overall sense of sadness, devastation and destruction. The Ancient Greek verb αποκαλύπτω (apokalýptō) means "I uncover," "disclose," or "reveal." Gibson commented about the movie's title: "[It] just expresses so well what I want to convey. I think it's just a universal word. In order for something to begin, something has to end. All of those elements are involved. But it's not a big doomsday picture or anything like that."^[16]

Reception

This scene from Apocalypto was filmed at a waterfall in San Andres Tuxtla.

The film was released in the United States on December 8, 2006, to mostly positive reviews from film critics according to Rotten Tomatoes. Apocalypto was given a "two big thumbs up" rating by Richard Roeper and guest critic Aisha Tyler on the television show Ebert & Roeper. ^[17] Michael Medved gave Apocalypto four stars (out of four) calling the film "an adrenaline-drenched chase movie" and "a visceral visual experience."^[18] Overall, the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 116 out of the 177 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 66% and a certification of "fresh".^[19] Contrary to the omens that the film would not have a warm reception in Mexico, it registered a wider number of viewers than Perfume and Rocky Balboa. It even displaced memorable Mexican premieres such as Titanic and Poseidon.^[20] According to polls performed by the newspaper Reforma, 80% of polled Mexicans labeled the film as “very good” or “good”.^[20] Apocalypto gained some passionate champions in the Hollywood community. Actor Robert Duvall called it "maybe the best movie I’ve seen in 25 years."^[21][22] Director Quentin Tarantino said, "I think it’s a masterpiece. It was perhaps the best film of that year. I think it was the best artistic film of that year."^[23]

Box office

Apocalypto opened at the top of the American box office with $15 million, beating the Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond and Nancy Meyers' The Holiday. The following weekend, it dropped 47% to land in sixth place. It dipped another 50% over the four-day Christmas frame and fell out of the top 10 altogether. The film grossed $51 million in the US and an additional $69 million internationally.^[24] Icon Productions entirely financed Apocalypto's $40 million budget, so Icon owned international rights to the film and sold domestic distribution to Touchstone Pictures for a reduced distribution fee.^[25] In the United Kingdom, the film set a new record for the highest opening weekend take by a foreign language film. It took £1.3m compared to the previous record holder, Hero, which took £1.05m in 2004. Gibson's The Passion of the Christ only took £229,426.^[26] The movie has also sold over $36 million worth of DVDs in the international home video market.

Historical accuracy and related criticism

Apocalypto has been criticized by a number of anthropologists and archaeologists working in the field of Mayanist studies who charge that the film depicts late Maya society as violent.^[27][28][29] The film has also been accused of historical inaccuracy and racism by historians, Chicanos, Native Americans, and many in the archaeological community.^[28] Some of these people charge that the film helps fuel a stereotype that shows native Mesoamericans as bloodthirsty savages, while failing to portray their achievements in areas such as mathematics and astronomy. For example, it was more typical of the Aztecs to practice the kind of human sacrifice depicted in the movie, rather than the Maya. The sun god Kukulkan, to whom the sacrifices are offered, is in fact the Maya equivalent of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and did not demand human sacrifice. Sara Zapata Mijares, president and founder of Federación de Clubes Yucatecos-USA, a group of Yucatec Mayans, disagrees on any perceived negative portrayal but nonetheless commented that the film "should have had a little bit more of the culture. It could have shown a little more why these buildings [pyramids] were built."^[30] Likewise in the movie, another key cause of the fall of the civilization was "excessive consumption" and "environmental degradation" of which there is plenty of supporting evidence. It has been discovered that the Mayan process of creating the lime stucco cement that covered their temples required a great deal of energy to heat up the lime stone to convert it to quick lime. One calculation estimates that it would take five tons of jungle forestry to make one ton of quick lime. Dr. Hansen explains, "I found one pyramid in El Mirador that would have required nearly 650 hectares (1,600 acres) of every single available tree just to cover one building with lime stucco... Epic construction was happening... creating devastation on a huge scale"^[31] Michael D. Coe, author of "The Maya" also lists "environmental collapse" as one of the leading causes of the fall of the great empire, alongside "endemic warfare", "overpopulation", and "drought". "There is mounting evidence for massive deforestation and erosion throughout the Central Area. The Maya apocalypse, for such it was, surely had ecological roots," explains Coe. ^[32] Richard D. Hansen, the historical consultant for Apocalypto and assistant professor of archaeology at Idaho State University as well as the director of the Mirador Basin Project in Guatemala (a forest reserve home to a number of Maya archaeological sites) states that the impact the film will have on Maya archaeology will be beneficial: "It is a wonderful opportunity to focus world attention on the ancient Maya and to realize the role they played in world history."^[33] In Hollywood on a large scale, there is an "active set of debates" between historians and filmmakers as both attempt to create meaning out of the past.^[34] Using a historical perspective to portray a work of fiction automatically thrust the work into this debate and undoubtedly will cause outcries from all types of groups. Safinia addresses such concerns by stating, "The final decision when making a film is, 'What is the right balance between historical authenticity and making it exciting visually as well?' The film is an all out entertainment thrill ride, and that is what it was always designed to do.^[35]

Mesoamerican history

On a very basic level, Apocalypto contains a number of items unknown in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. It depicts the latter days – the post classic period – of Maya civilization, but the main pyramid where the human sacrifices occurred actually comes from classic period, when the Mayas were at their zenith. This period ended in 900 A.D., 600 years before the movie apparently takes place. Hansen comments: "There was nothing in the post-classic period that would match the size and majesty of that pyramid in the film. But Gibson was trying to make a story here. He was trying to depict opulence, wealth, consumption of resources."^[36] The Maya city inaccurately combines details from different Maya and Mesoamerican cultures widely separated by time and place.^[29] For example, temples are in the shape of those of Tikal in the central lowlands classic style while decorated with Puuc style elements of the north west Yucatan centuries later. Co-writer and co-producer Farhad Safinia states the mixing of architectures had been done simply for aesthetic reasons.^[37] The mural in the arched walkway includes elements from the Maya codices combined with elements from the Bonampak murals (over 700 years earlier than the film's setting) and the San Bartolo murals (some 1500 years earlier than the film's setting) – as in most civilizations, the styles of Maya art changed dramatically over the centuries. Elements of such non-Maya civilizations as those of Teotihuacan and the Aztec are also seen. Robert Carmack, an anthropology professor from SUNY Albany's renowned Mesoamerican program, said "it's a big mistake – almost a tragedy – that they present this as a Maya film."^[29] His colleague, Walter Little, agreed, stating how "a lot of people will think this is how it was, unfortunately."^[29] Stephen Houston, professor of Anthropology at Brown University, points out that human sacrifice victims among the Maya were captured kings, members of royal families, and other high-ranking nobility: "They didn't run around rounding up ordinary people to sacrifice."^[38] However MSN Encarta mentions decapitation of royalty and heart extraction of slaves and prisoners.^[39] Karl Taube, professor of Anthropology at the University of California Riverside, objects to the huge pit filled with corpses in the film, citing the lack of evidence for mass graves.^[38] On the contrary, Hansen responds it is "conjecture", citing that "all [Gibson was] trying to do there is express the horror of it [whether those pits existed]."^[40] Taube also objects to the large number of slaves, something for which there is also no evidence.^[38] Also, there is little possibility that the Maya would have been "dumbstruck" by the sight of a city.^[29] As agricultural people, they also would not have allowed fields of rotting corpses near their crops.^[29] Zachary Hruby, of UC Riverside, lamented the use of the Yucatec Maya language, as it gives a sense of authenticity to a film that he says has taken many unfortunate liberties with the subject. Specifically these liberties include: the style and scale of the sacrifices, the presentation of the Maya villagers as isolated people living off the wild forest, the chronological compression of the more urbanized Terminal Classic Maya and the primarily village-dwelling Late Postclassic Maya.^[41] Critics have complained that Gibson also includes the arrival of a Spanish Expedition in the last five minutes of the story and argue that the Spanish arrived 300 years after the last large Maya city was abandoned. However, despite the end of construction at many famous postclassic centers, such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal they had not been abandoned at the time of the Spanish arrival, and there were still many comparatively smaller Maya cities such as Mayapan, Tiho, Coba, Chetumal and Nito, and Tayasal, also known as Petzen Itza survived until 1697 before being conquered by the Spanish. Some Mayanists disagree with the romantic view about the Mayas. "The first researchers tried to make a distinction between the 'peaceful' Maya and the 'brutal' cultures of central Mexico", David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article. "They even tried to say human sacrifice was rare among the Maya." But in carvings and mural paintings, Stuart said: "we have now found more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and Mayas – including a Maya ceremony in which a grotesquely costumed priest is shown pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living sacrificial victim."^[42] Stuart also noted evidence of child sacrifices.^[43] Interviewed by the Sunday Times, Gibson defended the film before the attacks of the critics: "I didn't show half the stuff I read about. I read about an orgy of sacrifice: 20,000 people sacrificed in four days. They were also very fond of impaling genitals and torturing people for years on end. For instance, if they captured a king or queen from another place, they would humiliate them for a decade. They would cut off their lips, have their tongues ripped out, they would have no eyes and no ears. Oh, and they would chew their fingers off. The guy would be alive but was just a babbling mass of nerve endings, then they'd roll him up in a ball after nine years of this stuff and roll him down the temple stairs and pulverise him."^[44][45] Hansen has defended research that had been done on the film. Hansen was asked to be technical adviser on the film after Gibson had seen one of Hansen's documentaries, called Dawn of the Maya, which was done at El Mirador in northern Guatemala. While Gibson's fictional story is set near the coast of Mexico's Yucatan during the collapse of Classic Maya civilization, Hansen's work in Guatemala's Mirador Basin serves, in large part, as the movie's factual basis: "A lot of the overall ideas that are in the story come from El Mirador, there were a lot of individual scenes that we provided for him [Gibson]. Working on the set was a time machine for me. The Maya houses were exactly like you would expect to see ... the corn husks, the pottery shards, the feathers and textiles, the baskets and mats on the ground."^[33]

Asked about if there was any historicity of the physical portrayal of the Mayas in Apocalypto in regards to the makeup and body paint, Hansen responded: "Oh, absolutely. I spent hours and hours going through the pottery and the images looking for tattoos. The scarification and tattooing was all researched, the inlaid jade teeth are in there, the ear spools are in there. There is a little doohickey that comes down from the ear through the nose into the septum – that was entirely their artistic innovation."^[33] A subtle but interesting example of authenticity in tattooing is found on the left arm of Seven, Jaguar Paw's wife - a horizontal band with two dots above; the Mayan symbol for the number 'seven'.

A screenshot of Jaguar Paw's wife, Seven, showing a tattoo on her arm in the design of the Mayan symbol for the number 7.

In addition, Hansen states that the "scenes of people running around with elaborate body paint and bones pierced through their noses"^[33] had also some artistic licence on Gibson's part. In response to how violent the Mayas were in the film, Hansen commented: "We know warfare was going on. The Postclassic center of Tulum is a walled city; these sites had to be in defensive positions. There was tremendous Aztec influence by this time. The Aztecs were clearly ruthless in their conquest and pursuit of sacrificial victims, a practice that spilled over into some of the Maya areas."^[33] Other areas where the film has been criticized for some inaccuracy and liberties taken include the scene where Jaguar Paw and the rest of captives are used as target practice. Archaeologist Jim Brady of Cal State L.A has responded that he has not heard of any evidence of the Mayas staging such a scene, while Hansen states: "The process of using these individuals as target practice is a real possibility. I couldn't say it did happen, but I couldn't say it didn't either. [Gibson] wanted to have some reason to have the guys go after Rudy Youngblood, to go after the hero ... . That was entirely Mel's scenario – but it's highly reasonable."^[46] Apocalypto writer and producer Farhad Safinia did extensive research in conjunction with the making of the film, using several sources including the Popol Vuh.^[47] In the audio commentary of the film's first DVD release, Safinia states that the myth in the old shaman's story (played by Espiridion Acosta Cache who is an actual modern day Maya storyteller^[48]) told at night to the people of the village had been taken from a Mesoamerican tale retranslated into Yucatec Maya with Safinia's own additions.

Eclipse

The solar eclipse is portrayed as occurring in just a few seconds, with the moon moving rapidly to obstruct the sun, then remaining motionless for some time, before moving away quickly. In reality, while totality may be brief, eclipses take place over several hours, with the moon moving at a constant pace throughout. In the film, the eclipse is followed by a full moon on what appears to be the evening of the same day, an astronomical impossibility: solar eclipses only occur during the new moon. Edgar Martin del Campo of SUNY Albany has pointed out that the Maya had an understanding of astronomy and would not have been in awe of an eclipse as they are depicted in the movie.^[29] Nevertheless, while Maya astronomers and priests knew about eclipses and how to predict their occurrences, lay people may not have had access to the same information. In the movie, the reactions of the priests suggest that they were fully expecting the eclipse and had scheduled the ritual sacrificial ceremony to coincide with it; before bringing down the sacrificial knife, the High Priest looks to the sun expectantly, seconds before the eclipse begins. Also, the priest asks the sun to return during the climax of the eclipse as a sign the god is satisfied, suggesting the priest had privy knowledge of what was actually happening. The eclipse scene of the film is reminiscent of an episode during Christopher Columbus' fourth voyage; Columbus impressed local Arawaks in what is now Jamaica by predicting a lunar eclipse.^[49]

Awards

Apocalypto has been recognized with numerous awards and nominations. For his role as producer and director of the film, Mel Gibson was given the Trustee Award by the First Americans in the Arts organization. Gibson was also awarded the Latino Business Association's Chairman's Visionary Award for his work on Apocalypto on November 2, 2006, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California. At the ceremony, Gibson had said that the film was a "badge of honor for the Latino community."^[50] Gibson also stated that Apocalypto would help dismiss the notion that "history only began with Europeans”^[51].

Won

• Central Ohio Film Critics Association- COFCA Award for Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
• Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards - DFWFCA Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler
• First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor (2007) - Rudy Youngblood
• First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor (Supporting) (2007) - Morris Birdyellowhead
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actor (2007) - Gerardo Taracena
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actress (2007) - Dalia Hernandez
• Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing for Music in a Feature Film (2007) - Dick Bernstein (music editor), Jim Henrikson (music editor)
• Phoenix Film Critics Society - PFCS Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler

Nominated

• Academy Awards, USA- Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup (2007) - Aldo Signoretti, Vittorio Sodano
• Academy Awards, USA- Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Editing (2007) - Sean McCormack, Kami Asgar
• Academy Awards, USA- Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing (2007) - Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, Fernando Cámara
• Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA- Saturn Award for Best Direction (2007) - Mel Gibson
• Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA- Saturn Award for Best International Film (2007)
• American Society of Cinematographers, USA - ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases (2007) - Dean Semler
• BAFTA Awards- BAFTA Film Award for Best Film not in the English Language (2007) - Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey
• Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards - BFCA Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2007)
• Chicago Film Critics Association Awards - CFCA Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2006)
• Golden Globes, USA - Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film (2007)
• Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards - Key Art Award for Best Action-Adventure Poster (2006)
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Picture (2007)
• Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing in a Feature Film: Dialogue and Automated Dialogue Replacement (2007) - Sean McCormack (supervising sound editor), Kami Asgar (supervising sound editor), Scott G.G. Haller (supervising dialogue editor), Jessica Gallavan (supervising ADR editor), Lisa J. Levine (supervising ADR editor), Linda Folk (supervising ADR editor)
• Online Film Critics Society Awards - OFCS Award for Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
• Satellite Awards - Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language (2006)
• St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards - Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2006)

Soundtrack album

Further information: Apocalypto (soundtrack)

The soundtrack to Apocalypto was composed by James Horner.

Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Although Mel Gibson does not star in the film, he does have a one-frame cameo about 1 minute, 46 seconds or about 2/3 into the first teaser trailer. His appearance is just before the screaming monkey is shown. [6] [7]
• The leader of the warband, Zero Wolf, yells, "I am walking here!" when a tree almost falls on his group who are making their way to the Temple. This is a parody of Dustin Hoffman's famous line in Midnight Cowboy, which was an ad lib by Hoffman.
• Upon realizing his son had been wounded, Zero Wolf tells him "You forgot to duck", a phrase that was used by the boxer Jack Dempsey after a defeat, and later by President Ronald Reagan after he was shot in a failed assassination attempt.
• The poster for Apocalypto does not depict the central character, Jaguar Paw. It depicts the Holcane warrior, Middle Eye (played by Gerardo Taracena).^[52]
• When the captives are first brought into the city, the procession passes a dwarf riding in a backpack device on the back of a much taller man. This appears to be a nod to a very similar small-on-big combination (Master-Blaster) used in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which starred Gibson.
• In late 2006, Mexican filmmaker Juan Catlett said he was going to sue Mel Gibson for plagiarizing his 1991 film “Return to Aztlan” about an ancient Mexican civilization.^[53]
• In pirated and screener DVDs, there is single-frame subliminal image of Waldo (from the book series Where's Waldo?) in the pile of corpses.
• Saturday Night Live did an SNL Digital Shorts which used the trailer and added an anti-Jewish subtitled making the trailer a hit on various websites, notably YouTube. The trailer is one of the known Recut Trailers that recuts various trailers/films including The Shining and several Brokeback Mountain parodies.

See also

• Kings of the Sun, a 1963 Hollywood treatment of the Mayas.

Notes

External links

• Official Movie Site
• Official Teaser & Theatrical Trailer
• Apocalypto at the Internet Movie Database
• Apocalypto Reviews at Metacritic
• Interview with Gibson on ComingSoon.net
• Apocalypto at Rotten Tomatoes

Reviews

• McCarthy, Todd, "Apocalypto", Variety, December 1, 2006
• Shorris, Earl, "Mad Mel and the Maya", The Nation, December 18, 2006
• Ardren, Traci, "Archaeology Journal: Is "Apocalypto" Pornography?", Archaeology.org, December 5, 2006
• Christopher, James, Apocalypto, The Times, January 4, 2007
• Hruby, Zachary X., "'Apocalypto' does disservice to its subjects" The Chronicle, December 11, 2006
• Danien, Elin, "A Mayanist at the Movies", Penn Museum, December 8, 2006
• Graham, Elizabeth, "Maya archaeologist Elizabeth on Apocalypto", The Guardian, January 8, 2007