Episode review
Apocalypto (2006) Review
The short version
We both gave it an 8. Apocalypto is two hours of nonstop action, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat from the boar hunt to the last shot. Chris calls it one of his favorite period pieces. For me it is the perfect action movie formula: one guy being hunted, taking out the men chasing him one at a time.
How we pitched it
A Maya hunter named Jaguar Paw hides his pregnant wife and son in a deep pit to keep them safe from a neighboring tribe's raid. He is captured, shackled and marched off to be sacrificed. From there he has to use his wits to escape, stay hidden, and race the clock to get back to his family before the pit floods.
What was Mel Gibson thinking?
Gibson was coming off The Passion of the Christ, a movie he paid for himself that made a fortune. His next move was a movie about the Maya, with no stars and the whole thing in Yucatec Maya. It is about as far from the Hollywood formula as a big director gets. You go in expecting Braveheart, or maybe conquistadors, and you get something nobody else would have made.
The first time I saw it, it was on DVD in the living room with my mom and dad. What I remember most is the climate around it. Gibson was already controversial over The Passion, then came his arrest a few months before Apocalypto opened, and suddenly this was a movie by "Mel Gibson, the crazy person." All I knew was that I loved Braveheart and this looked like another period action movie.
Chris saw it around the time it came out too. He was a first year history major and big into that period, so he was sold before it started.
The baby face and the heels
Chris's big point on casting is that it is perfect. Many of the extras were local indigenous people, not actors, and Rudy Youngblood, who plays Jaguar Paw, is ideal for the part. You are pulling for him the whole time.
My explanation for why: he has a tough, rugged face that still looks innocent, almost childlike. He is the baby face. The men chasing him are all rougher and gnarlier. They are the heels, and you can see it in their faces before they do anything.
A village worth living in
It opens on a boar hunt, and my honest first thought was that these guys are living well. I sit at a desk all day wrecking my back, staring at a screen. I would rather be out chasing animals through the jungle.
What sells it is the ribbing. The hunters bully one guy nonstop, feed him the boar's testicles, put something on him that burns, and the whole village laughs. He laughs too, because he knows he is one of the boys. He is part of the tribe, so none of it is personal. Contrast that with now: no community, everyone isolated, everyone taking everything personally. And instead of the big game, their whole village gathers around a fire at night to hear the elder tell stories. That seems a lot better than what we have.
The raid
Then the raid hits, and it is brutal. The standout for me is Jaguar Paw saving his dad with a flying spear tackle straight out of Goldberg's playbook. Chris liked the move before it even more: Jaguar Paw throwing his club to knock Middle Eye's out of his hand.
The raiders' leader, Zero Wolf, rolls in with that headpiece and he is perfect casting: older, naturally big, still jacked. The right face, the right body, the right age.
Chris was a history major, and his point here is that this kind of raid was real. Taking captives from smaller towns for sacrifice happened across Mesoamerica. It is also how Cortés later won with a few hundred men: he turned the peoples the Aztecs had been preying on against their capital, Tenochtitlan. The city Jaguar Paw is taken to is much smaller than that, which fits.
Then there is Jaguar Paw leaving his pregnant wife and son in the pit to go help everyone else. Good business decision? We are not convinced. I would have taken my family and kept running.
Middle Eye is the best heel in the movie
Middle Eye is the one guarding Jaguar Paw, and he is sadistic for a reason. Jaguar Paw beat him in the fight, and he wants to be Zero Wolf, the main guy. He is not, so he copes by being cruel. Everyone knew a guy like this in high school: you are not him, pal.
Zero Wolf sees it too. When Middle Eye throws a struggling prisoner off a cliff, Zero Wolf walks up, pulls a knife, and offers to do it Middle Eye's way. Middle Eye backs down. Chris says he has the best facial expressions and reactions in the film, and he generates real heel heat. He holds a grudge the entire movie.
The pyramid
When they reach the city it gets strange. The prisoners get painted blue, and the people are lost in religious fanaticism, commerce, selling slaves, and something that looks a lot like drugs. The priest at the top is clearly somewhere else entirely.
We went back and forth on why nobody makes a run for it at the top when they cut the bonds. One argument: roundhouse one of them and go. The other: there are a hundred thousand people below worshiping the man with the knife, so where are you going? We agreed you still give it a college try.
My favorite detail up there is Zero Wolf. He is the biggest man in the city, surrounded by skinny, drugged out people, and he looks completely unmoved. Almost annoyed. If might makes right, why is he not in charge? Chris's answer: the people up there are treated like gods, and you do not change a whole city's mind by killing its king.
Chris also raised a plot hole. The sick girl in the village is presumably meant to have smallpox, but the Spanish brought smallpox, and the ending shows them arriving. How does she already have it?
How I would survive the killing field
After the eclipse, they turn the leftover prisoners into target practice: run a hundred yards while they throw spears and sling stones at you, with Zero Wolf's son waiting at the end with a club.
I have a plan. Run twenty yards, turn around and backpedal like a defensive back so you can see everything coming, and dodge. Pick up a spear that missed, and put it in the finisher. Chris's version: serpentine, then when you are close enough that they stop throwing for fear of hitting their own guy, hit him with a juke or a spin move and a Heisman, and disappear into the corn.
Chris also points out how accurate those weapons are, running or not. Makes sense when your food depends on it.
It turns into Predator
Jaguar Paw runs from a real jaguar, and the terror on his face in slow motion looks genuine. Then he runs through the night, barefoot through the jungle, which takes insane endurance. Chris credits the organ meats.
Then something hit me. He dives off a waterfall. He sinks into a mud pit and comes out covered head to toe. I have seen this movie before, with Arnold. Apocalypto turns into the end of Predator, and nobody talks about it. Chris: the hunted man picking off his hunters one by one is exactly the action formula he loves.
Then the beehive. Jaguar Paw throws a hive at the men chasing him, and Chris, who goes to war with yellow jackets on his deck every summer, fully approves.
The birth in the pit
Meanwhile it is pouring rain, the pit is filling, and his wife goes into labor down there. I could not believe they were doing it. I can put myself right back in that living room in 2006, and this is the exact moment my mom got up and walked out. It was not the decapitations or the hearts being cut out. It was the birth.
The boss fight
Jaguar Paw and Middle Eye finally meet, and it is exactly what a final fight should be. No long drawn out struggle. Whoever gets leverage first wins, Jaguar Paw is faster, he gets one clean shot and an uppercut with the club, and it is over. You can almost hear the announcer say "fatality."
Those ships
The ending is up there with the most jaw dropping in any movie. This was only my third time seeing it, and the first in about twenty years, and this time it struck me as completely random and kind of hilarious. The last two raiders finally catch Jaguar Paw on the beach, and they barely seem to want to kill him anymore. The big guy who wanted it is dead. Then they look up and see Spanish ships.
Chris thinks it is a phenomenal touch, because that is exactly what happened next. After two hours inside one world, you get something so alien it is like aliens landing on the beach. It stops a blood feud dead in its tracks. And then you wonder what the first conversation on that beach sounded like, one side speaking Maya and the other Spanish. A lot of hand gestures and trinkets.
Why I give it an 8
It is a high paced, adrenaline fueled action movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat. My one nitpick: where are the bugs? If I learned anything from Platoon, it is that the jungle is full of them, and these people are running around it nearly naked.
Why Chris gives it an 8
It is easily one of his favorite period pieces, action packed start to finish, brutal throughout, and a sobering reminder of how things used to be. And he wants people to stop hating on subtitles. A movie spoken in its own language just plays better.
Behind the scenes
A few things we dug up for the episode:
- Gibson has said Rudy Youngblood really was running from a live jaguar in the chase, kept back only by a tether. "You can't train a jaguar."
- During filming, severe flooding in southern Mexico reportedly displaced at least a million people, and the crew helped with relief.
- The teaser trailer reportedly has an almost entirely different cast from the finished film.
- The crowds at the temple were largely local people, not actors, in real sets outdoors. You would not get that on a movie set today.
Listen to the full episode
Sixty five minutes on Apocalypto, from the boar hunt to the ships.
Also on the show: The Patriot, Platoon, There Will Be Blood. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.