Apocalypto
Directed by Mel Gibson
- Kevin Ward2 July 2025I have been on vacation on the Maya Riviera for a week which included a visit to Chichen Itza. Amazing vacation, highly recommend. Inspired me to rewatch Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. It’s still an pretty incredible film, even if it didn’t quite hold up as well as I thought it would. Starting with the good, I loved the use Yucatec Maya language. I wish more films had the courage to film in authentic languages even when they know their audience doesn’t speak it. Prey, for example, could have been even better if it was filmed with Comanche dialogue (and not just in English with a Comanche dub option). Native American actors and that it was shot on location in Mexico, give the film an incredibly authentic feel. The parts that didn’t hold up as well as I remember are most of the opening 25 minutes or so, that establishes Jaguar Paw and his fellow villagers. There’s lots of sexual jokes that come off as very juvenile. Most of the relationships depicted feel like western stereotypes ported over onto a Maya story. One villager, for example, has an overbearing mother-in-law demanding he produce some grand children, which is played as a joke. There was actually very little from the opening that I liked all that much. Once the ransacking of Jaguar Paw’s village happens though, it’s an incredible and cinematic journey that culminates in essentially a epic chase sequence seeing the hostile Maya tribe chasing Jaguar Paw all the way back to his village. And I loved how a Jaguar and a snake played a role in assisting Jaguar Paw’s escape and how some of his captors saw that as a bad omen. There’s clearly inaccuracies in it’s depiction of the Maya culture, too, though. One pivotal scene hinges on the Jaguar Paw’s captors being surprised when solar eclipse occurs and blots out the Sun. But we know the Mayans to be some of the most advanced astronomers the world has ever seen, having erected Chichen Itza with specific dimensions and positioning to create shadows indicating the equinoxes. They had accurately predicted solar eclipses hundreds of years into the future. The idea that they wouldn’t have known that a solar eclipse was happening this day is preposterous. That’s the one that stuck out to me, though I’m sure there are plenty more. I was glad I had a good excuse to rewatch this film finally. It had been at least 15 years since I had seen it and it was nice to go into it with some fresh context about the Maya culture.
Apocalypto Trivia
Apocalypto was released on 8 December 2006.
Apocalypto was directed by Mel Gibson.
Apocalypto has a runtime of 2h 17m.
Apocalypto was produced by Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey, Sergio Miranda.
In the Maya civilization, a peaceful tribe is brutally attacked by warriors seeking slaves and human beings for sacrifice for their gods. Jaguar Paw hides his pregnant wife and his son in a deep hole nearby their tribe and is captured while fighting with his people. An eclipse spares his life from the sacrifice and later he has to fight to survive and save his beloved family.
The key characters in Apocalypto are Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), Zero Wolf (Raoul Max Trujillo), Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena).
Apocalypto is rated 18.
Apocalypto is a Thriller, Action, Adventure film.
Apocalypto has an audience rating of 7.9 out of 10.
Apocalypto had a budget of US$40M.
Apocalypto has made US$120.7M at the box office.