#WHERE WAS APOCALYPTO FILMED MOVIE#
The movie does not, as some critics have charged, portray the Mayan culture as being ignorant of eclipses. It also had war, imperialism, torture and human sacrifice. The Maya civilization had its great accomplishments in architecture, mathematics and astronomy.
The Mayan culture it had its diverse regions and social classes.Īn earlier belief that Mayan culture was peaceful has been debunked by archaeology, including the decipherment, in recent decades, of Mayan hieroglyphs. All the Mayans didn’t live in the ceremonial centers visited by tourists. But Mayan civilization was complex and multi-layered. An action movie nearly always requires bad guys, and in this film all the significant characters – both villains and heroes – are Mayan.Ĭritics have charged that “Apocalypto” presents the Maya as unicivilized savages. The bad guys in “Apocalypto” are Mayan – but then, so are the protagonists. Besides, “Apocalypto’s” plot is admittedly fiction – historical fiction, but fiction nonetheless. As a matter of fact, historical howlers are quite common in historical movies. Some of Gibson’s earlier movies, “Braveheart”, which he directed and starred in, and “The Patriot”, which he starred in, were filled with historical inaccuracies. That’s all true, but not particularly suprising. And it’s hard to locate the film’s setting, geographically.
Though set in the early 1500s, the actors speak the Mayan language of today’s Yucatan Peninsula, which nobody spoke in the 1500s. The art, architecture and setting of the movie mixes aspects of different epochs and regions within the Mayan civilization. Historically, there was much diversity within the Mayan culture itself. In contrast, the Mayan culture had various rises and falls in different regions. Another difference is that the Spaniards (and their Indian allies) overthrew the Aztecs when their empire was at its height. The Mayan Civilization was never a unified empire as was that of the Aztecs. They peopled a large geographical area, in present-day eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The history of the Mayan culture spans millennia. Mel follows up in “Apocalypto” with all dialogue in Yucatec Maya, with subtitles. Gibson’s previous blockbuster, “The Passion of the Christ”, was in Aramaic and Latin with subtitles. The movie was filmed in the state of Veracruz on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, where six pyramids were constructed for filming. The protagonist is a Mayan hunter named “Jaguar Paw” portrayed by actor Rudy Youngblood. To summarize the movie, without giving it away for those who haven’t seen it (I hate it when people do that!), “Apocalypto” deals with the downfall of the Mayan civilization. Ricardo Cajas, “Racism Commissioner” for the Guatemalan government, has blasted the movie as racist Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” has been criticized for inaccuracies and for misrepresenting the Mayan culture. (Pirated DVDs, of course, had been available on the streets before that). “Apocalypto”, a thriller dealing with the Mayan civilization, opened in Mexican theaters on January 25th. “It also gave us in the art department the ability to really show how we would take pristine farmland and turn it into a devastated landscape.“Racist” Apocalypto Opens In Latin America “Mel was to be able to have little model soldiers and basically play out how he wanted the battles to play out on the field,” Robison says. After an extensive hunt, they discovered an area called Goulburn that could serve as the ridge, as well as farmland in Bringelly that would double as the battlefield and could be used as a back lot of sorts for other locations.īefore shooting began, Robison and his team created a nine-by-12-foot model of the ridge and battlefield. “I was able to find a lot of detailed photographic research on the battle.” The production designer and his team searched outside Sydney to find a spot that could stand in for Hacksaw Ridge. “The battle of Hacksaw Ridge is really very well documented,” he says. Robison relied on archival materials as he began formulating his designs. Shooting took place in Australia, where production designer Barry Robison was tasked with re-creating WWII-era Virginia and Japan.
The film follows the true story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who saved dozens of his fellow infantrymen without carrying or firing a gun during the capture of the Maeda Escarpment, or Hacksaw Ridge. In his latest movie, Hacksaw Ridge, Gibson takes on Okinawa, one of the bloodiest battles in World War II's Pacific theater. From Braveheart to Apocalypto, director Mel Gibson has never shied away from an epic battle scene.
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