Replies

"Apocalypto" hardly fits the traditional definition of a summer film. Set 500 years ago, pic will be filmed in an obscure Mayan dialect, ... It will star a neophyte cast indigenous to the region of Mexico ... And it likely will carry an R rating, unless Gibson tempers the onscreen depiction of violent scenes he wrote in his script.

This could be very interesting.

A cast "native to the region" in a "Mayan dialect" with "onscreen depiction of violent scenes." Could this be the answer both to the critics of the violence in Passion of the Christ and to the Azatlan fanatics pushing bizarre fantasies about who "owns" the northern parts of Mexico and the western parts of the United States? (FYI, Aztec and Mayan cultures never spread farther north than about 50 miles north of what is now Mexico City and did not spread coast to coast in Mexico, therefore the fantasy of Azatlan being some sort of Mexican "homeland" is offensive, particularly to nations that do have a heritage based claim to those lands, like the Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo,Western Apache,and Zuni - they killed Mayans and Aztecs for fun...)

Show the "peace loving nature loving native culture" of the Mayans and Aztecs for the bloodthirsty, brutal and grotesque thugs that they were, particularly if you can convey just how tiny their actual holdings were, and you might just reshape the landscape of multiculturism in the southwestern US.

Add to that the knee jerk reaction of most PC critics to defend or even celebrate violence committed by "indegenous peoples" as culturally protected, imune from moral judgement, and Gibson may just put his critics into an unbearable position.

And "Apocalypto" is a Greek term meaning "an unveiling" or "new beginning."

I think Mel may have been misunderestimated.