Apocalypto (2006)
Directed by Mel Gibson
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
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42 films that influenced Apocalypto
What critics say influenced Apocalypto
There is passing reference to Mayan gods and legends, but primarily, Gibson is busy cataloging gazillion ways to die in the jungle; it's as if he wanted to dramatize Werner Herzog's famous speech from Burden of Dreams : "Nature here is vile and base....
Had Gibson followed the cue of other less self-important variations of The Most Dangerous Game, such as The Naked Prey, Surviving the Game and Hard Target, and cut to the chase more quickly, Apocalypto would have been a far more satisfying experience.
He pushes past the grisly frontier brutalities of “Black Robe” and “The Last of the Mohicans,” using the adrenaline of “Predator” and “The Naked Prey.”
However, to be fair, like "The Naked Prey" there isn't a lot of dialogue.
An indigenous remake of The Naked Prey, Gibson and screenwriter Farhad Safinia's story focuses on Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young hunter whose village is ruthlessly attacked by Mayan warriors.
George P. Cosmatos (l'auteur du Rambo: First Blood Part II) is as much of a point of reference as Boorman's Emerald Forest and Herzog; the majestically ripped main bad-guy (Raoul Trujillo) could be patterned on Vernon Wells in The Road Warrior (or in Commando), the second-string rotter (Rodolfo Palacios) might be Billy Drago, the balls-eating bit (and the subsequent burning-balls bit) are from Porky's, perhaps.
George P. Cosmatos (l'auteur du Rambo: First Blood Part II) is as much of a point of reference as Boorman's Emerald Forest and Herzog; the majestically ripped main bad-guy (Raoul Trujillo) could be patterned on Vernon Wells in The Road Warrior (or in Commando), the second-string rotter (Rodolfo Palacios) might be Billy Drago, the balls-eating bit (and the subsequent burning-balls bit) are from Porky's, perhaps.
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Unless you're thinking of George Chakiris in Kings of the Sun.
Gibson is not making an exotic yarn like “Kings of the Sun,” a 1963 romp in which Yul Brynner and George Chakiris played Mayan war hunks.
A Short List of That Gross Stuff: Impalement, disembowelment, humans being hacked to bits, putrid heaps of rotting corpses in mass graves that cinematically recall the poppy fields Judy Garland had to tiptoe through in The Wizard of Oz, the eating of boar scrotum, internal-organ juggling, kickball with heads (as mentioned earlier), underwater childbirth ?
This is a chase movie with an environmental theme, and the footsteps that momentarily block our view of the foliage bring to mind the opening shot of the similarly-titled Apocalypse Now, in which helicopters whirred by in front of us just before laying waste to the jungles of Vietnam.
It is here, about two-thirds of the way into the movie, where Apocalypto finally comes to life and reveals itself to be a variation of The Most Dangerous Game (1932).
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The first can hardly be called original, since it’s cribbed from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Apocalypto is an action film, less lyrical than The Last of the Mohicans and virtuoso than Predator (its visual references), but crazier than both of them.
He pushes past the grisly frontier brutalities of “Black Robe” and “The Last of the Mohicans,” using the adrenaline of “Predator” and “The Naked Prey.”