I have better things to do with my money, thank you.
Mel goes from idiot to idiot, with brief excursions into normalcy.
A lot of people were telling me that this movie was a metaphor about the coming of Christianity, etc.
That isn't what Mel says, apparently.
one's values doesn't give strength, that takes might - muscle. being unified behind that muscle, adn willing to use it to defend and promote those values does.
History is replete with high value cultures that failed due to disunity, or unwillingness/inability to defend themselves.
one could also use this movie to show another POV: The barbaric (Radical islams) are unified behind their power and hate, while the western society isn't capable of defending itself against the horde of invaders...
He wants to get some Oscar nominations and satisfy Hollywood liberals by telling them what they love best: Bash President Bush.
Just not into Gibson's gorefest films, especially during the holidays.
Before anyone passes judgment on the film itself, you might go see it and decide for yourself. I know a handful of folks I consider to be very conservative Christians who have seen the movie and actually enjoyed it. One is a bit of a history buff when it comes to Mayan civilization.
Gibson's comments sound rather lame, yes. But as a film maker, he has come into his own. And as I also have an interest in Mayan culture, I will go see the movie as well.
And by the way - the "great" Mayan power was not brought down by a society that was more powerful. They were doomed by a long drought that eventually weakened them to not even a shadow of their former power. The Spanish only had to over throw small villages and "farms". No real opposition from the Mayan remnant.
I don't think that's his point at all.
The prime focus of Mel's loathing is Israel, not America. In his worldview it is Israel that is "capturing" innocent Americans and dragging them to Afghanistan and Iraq to be sacrificed on the altar of Zionism.
How is watching the movie any different?
it is the height of hypocrisy for Gibson to make a bloodthirsty film like this and then turn around and claim that its viewers are corrupt and degenerate because they actually watched it.
To equate the freeing of 15 million from a barbaric dictator to the genocide of a peaceful society is the height of ignorance. Hope mel lost some of that money he made from the Passion.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Actually, cultural leaders equating human sacrifice with self-defense and the imposition of law and order is grounds to be concerned about our future.
One more example of how hard drinking kills brain cells.
I've never seen Gibson so ... animated. His eyes were darting around the room, and he seemed to answer everything sarcastically. He seemed almost apoplectic.
When Steve Doocy (sp?) asked what Gibson thought about the ongoing anti-Jewish "conference" in Iran, Gibson feigned to know nothing about it, saying "I dont watch TV."
Maybe it was my perception, but Gibson seems to have lost his natural joviality since his DUI arrest where he was rightfully admonished by the general public for his a-holish comments about "Jews being the cause of nearly all wars," or whatever it was he said.
Gibson is a flaming idiot. No better than Babs, Danny Glover, or any other hollywood dingbat.
I went to see the Nativity instead. Very uplifting!
*4,000 unborn babies murdered every day
*embryos used for experiments, stored and frozen for future "use".
*Terri Schiavo tortured to death by dehydration
Ping!
What? he really has gone off it.
Try this, Mr. Gibson: "What's human sacrifice if not 43 million innocent unborn babies slaughtered and flushed down the toilet, efficiently enough that the women who bore them can get back to work before thier freaking lunch hours are over?"
Mel, totally missed your time. This was your chance. You're done. You blew it.
Did he really say that?
God help him.
You could say that about any civilization that gets reorganized out of existence by another civilization that impinges successfully on it, which is exactly what happened to the New World societies, which were ravaged by Old World diseases propagated in the Columbian Exchange (see, Secret Judgments of God, which discusses both the colonial and precolonial epidemics which attacked New World societies after first contact).
Gibson's Apocalypto is based in part on the boutique idea of the last decade, that (classical) Mayan civilization simply exhausted its resources and thus undermined its own abilities to organize people, competencies it tried to leverage by intensifying the organizational activities in order to try to meet the crisis. Postclassical Mayan cities are also thought to have been in crisis before the Spanish arrived, as witness the formation of the defensive League of Mayapan in the Yucatan, and perhaps for some of the same reasons, but the full story may not have been elucidated yet.
This exhaustion thesis is also being pushed concerning central Mexican civilization, and it is supported by forensic studies of excavated burials, which show deteriorating health among the people.
The collapse of the Mayan Classic cities occurred centuries before contact, and the Postclassical Mayan city of Tulum in the Yucatan, which Gibson's fictional city resembles sitewise, fell to revolt at least 50 years before the arrival of the Spanish (about the time of first contact, in other words).
The fate of the city depicted in Apocalypto turns, however, not on its afflictions, but on a "judgment of God" formed in secret and then delivered to the frightened Mayan warriors by a plague-stricken but inspirited girl, who pronounces an oracular doom on the city. The rest of the film is the unfoldment of her doomsday pronouncement of divine judgment, which is contrasted with the cynicism of the head chac officiating at the ceremonies and declaiming to the vast crowds below.
The bottom line is that the arrival of the Spanish in the New World was, in Gibson's opinion at least, as expressed through his film, the descent of the hand of God Himself on the civilizations of the New World and the fulfilment of His fatal judgment of their lurid perversions and brutalities. Noah's neighbors got the Flood, Lot's got the brimstone, and the Mayan kings and priests got the conquistadores.