Apocalypse Then

I'm not much of a Mel Gibson fan, but in 'The Passion', he really took his skills to the next level. I can see why many non-Christian critics didn't appreciate it; however, their over-the-top criticisms were unwarranted. Many of them are saying the same things about Apocalypto as they did with Passion.

.."it's porn" and suggesting that Gibson is a 'sicko'.

I would like to compare their reviews of non-Gibson movies, like 'Saw', or 'Devil's Rejects'. They should explain why Gibson gets ripped, while the demented crap gets a free ride.
Posted by: Farley at December 15, 2006 09:10 AM Joe Bob Briggs, noted Drive-in movie critic, has yet to issue any sort of statemt pro or con about Gibson's latest effort.

Until he does I will suspend judgment.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 09:22 AM The Hollywood press give Tarantino (et al.) a pass on the over the top violence because Tarantino (et al.

) is one of them. They see him (them) as kindred holding the same views and values as them. Thus his (their) foibles and failures are excusable, and the merits are ampliphied.

Conversely Gibson is not seen as one of them (at least not anymore). Thus Gibson is to be excoriated for his foibles and failures, and his merits downplayed.
Pretty much every group engages in this sort of practice.

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 09:48 AM This is a little off-topic but, the critics weren't very kind to The Nativity Story, which we found to be suprisingly artful, earthy, and good.
It kind of makes you wonder if they can be open to Christian themes.
I attended the passion, but couldn't watch most of it.

It really was too bloody and violent for me. I knew/know in my heart Jesus' sacrifice and didn't feel the need to watch it in gory detail, which I understood was mild compared to the reality.
The Nativity Story shows the brutality of the era, but is done in an informative, emotional, yet not too graphic way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I resent the critics power to keep an audience from a film with their narrow minded reviews. I don't want to see that happen to The Nativity Story. It was a pleasant surprise, since I didn't know what to expect.

Thanks.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 09:49 AM "We know that the Mayans practiced ritual human sacrifice (just as we know that Islamo-fascists behead captives)..

The idea that evil cultures exist and that people must sometimes struggle against them is no longer popular in Hollywood. "
Got to love the political references in her comments on the movie. She liked it because it gives western civilization a clean slate on what otherwise would have been close to genoicide, ostensibly because the civilization being wiped out was evil.

Fine.
"Gibson likens Mayan civilization to American civilization. "We're all afraid," Gibson told Entertainment Weekly.

"That's something I've been finding out more recently -- how racked by fear we are as a society." We are discarding our values, Gibson implies. We are engaging in Mayan barbarities in Iraq, sending our own citizens off to die on the altar of fear.

"Apocalypto" opens with a quotation from historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within." Durant is correct -- but the film's exposition of Durant is utterly wrong. If American (and Western) civilization falls, it will not be because our fears drove us to "Mayan barbarities," but because, like Gibson, we failed to distinguish good from evil.

""
Maybe she just never went to the press conference. A hundred bucks says she'd be singing a very different tune if she did.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 10:30 AM Megan Bashan is a superb critic.

I particularly liked her "The idea that evil cultures exist and that people must sometimes struggle against them is no longer popular in Hollywood. While at times he concentrates too much on the veins and tendons of the bloody business, Gibson is an able ambassador for this truth."
Apocalypto is a marvelous and gritty film, like Braveheart and the Passion, with real fighters at work including Christ in His way.

The liberal critics do indeed faint in the prissy Victorian manner at these films about men with real chests. I'm waiting for him do one about the Marine Corps.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 10:32 AM One of the biggest points of Passion of the Christ was to depict just how much Jesus Christ suffered.

How many of us grew up in a church that had a stylistic crucifix, with just a tiny trickle of blood coming from Jesus' wounds? Even prior movie depictions portrayed a scourging and crucifixion that didn't seem, well, all too bad.
But Gibson's Passion truly changed that sanitized vision for this age.

Scourging almost to the point of death and then the actual crucifixion were terrible, awful bloody messes. They were extermely violent actions. Crucifixion was the most shameful and agonizing way a person could die, and there's no way to portray it easily without sacrificing authenticity.

Citics who called it "porn" and whined and moaned about the violence just didn't get it. I wonder, though, how many of those same critics gushed over the gratuitously violent, bloody and stupid "Kill Bill" or the "Saw" movies or the latest slasher flicks or what have you.
Or, how many of them praised "Saving Private Ryan"?

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 10:40 AM "The idea that evil cultures exist and that people must sometimes struggle against them is no longer popular in Hollywood."
Now how would you react when you learn that Gibson is likening present day America to the evil Mayan civilization.
Thought so.

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 10:43 AM So you donn't see America as a nation/civilization that is rotten from the inside out and in danger of destroying itself?
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 11:08 AM "So you donn't see America as a nation/civilization that is rotten from the inside out and in danger of destroying itself?"
How can you say that about a country that exemplifies the virtues of "western" civilization?

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 11:12 AM Because it no longer does.
Posted by: pentamom at December 15, 2006 11:24 AM Exactly. I'm not saying that we are like the Mayan civilization, but the roots of their sins is in the heart of America.

We're just too "civilized" to express our sin in such a way.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 11:29 AM "Because it no longer does."
But I thought western civilization was beyond reproach - that it was the greatest thing in the world.

Isnt that why its being exported to the Middle East? And now you tell me that America no longer exemplifies Western Civilization. I know Europe doesnt.

Then what does?
Is the inimitable Western Civilization declining? How can something so superior to everything else possibly decline?

After all, hasnt western civilization been superior to all other civilizations since its inception? How can something so perfect fall apart?
And before you tell me that, because of the Left, it is declining, let me remind you that the so-called Left is also a creation of Western Civiliztion.

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 11:30 AM Tarantino likes to explore new ways of killing people, and glorifying it.
Gibson had told some tragic/heroic stories that involved violence, and protrayed the violence as horrific, not glorified.
Context is everything.

Posted by: MH at December 15, 2006 11:36 AM take a deep breath, and take off your Wicked Witch of the West hat. "How about a little FIRE, Scarecrow?"
When you have an argument not constructed entirely on the backs of strawmen, I'll be here.

Posted by: pentamom at December 15, 2006 12:11 PM Spottswoode,
The Mayan civilization was ALREADY GONE when the Spanish came. They were not destroyed by your "evil western civilization." Historians aren't really sure exactly what led to their fall, but it wasn't due to the white man, western civilization, or any of your desired scapegoats.

Know your history before you try to step in and make a completely "straw man" point!
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 01:27 PM "The Mayan civilization was ALREADY GONE when the Spanish came."
Oh really.

And who were the conquistadores killing. Mayan civilization may have gone, if you define civilization as a system of government. There were still people there, and they still had beliefs influenced by Mayan civilization.

"Know your history before you try to step in and make a completely "straw man" point!"
Who wrote the history books? Whose accounts were used - Mayans or Conquistadores?

The conquistadores had no qualms about admitting that they killed thousands, but that doesnt mean there arent systemic biases at work in the history. I know my history. Apparently you know yours too, but you never checked where it came from.

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 01:41 PM Pentamom,
Its a straw man for sure :D. I was just having fun. I like how praise for the movie stopped the moment people found out the true motives behind it.

Solon and all, so happy that it mocked another civilization, till they realise that it mocks their own. I love the irony.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 01:43 PM Spottwoode,
The Conquistadors killed AZTECS, and further down the map, INCAS.

They did not actively go after Mayans, unless you are counting diseases which were unintentional.
As for the Mayans being there, "still influenced by Mayan civilization," they STILL ARE.
Civilizations rise and fall.

That is the way of things. One competing civilization comes in and takes over from another. It always amazes me that Liberals will go on and on about the Aztecs, yet we don't hear you whining about the Saxons being overrun by the Angles, or the Normans then overrunning both.

I could give you multitudinous similar examples.
There is nothing that makes the Aztecs the "good guys" and the Conquistadors "the bad guys." The Aztecs were so good at overrunning and conquering their neighbors that they were HATED by them, and those same Indian neighbors jumped in and HELPED the Conquistadors, or they never would have been able to bring about their downfall.

Powerful nations of ANY sort often conquer other nations...

why are the Conquistadors your particular "boogie men?"
And, as for the histories..

.there is plenty of evidence outside of the Spanish histories corroborating much of what was written, and -- since the Spanish histories were written by priests and such, and were often not that flattering of the Conquistadors -- there is no reason, other than your own personal bias, to assume that everything they wrote was a lie or exaggerated.
And, finally, I find it laughable that so many Liberals whine about the loss of the Aztecs and Mayans and all, when they would NEVER have chosen to live in that civilization.

..unless, of course, they imagine that THEY would have been one of the powerful.

They forget that these civilizations were very, very class based, and one could not rise above one's class (except in very, very rare instances based on battle heroics). In the Aztec world, you could be KILLED for daring to wear an article of clothing from a class not your own.
The passivists who decry the "terrible" Conquistadors would not have done very well in a civilization that glorified the warrior.

And, of course, YOU would certainly never end up as a sacrifice in your mind. The fact that so many did..

.well, we'll just ignore that.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 02:21 PM "Civilizations rise and fall.

That is the way of things. One competing civilization comes in and takes over from another."
If that is the case, then can one civilization claim to be superior to another, since it is going to fall anyway?

"It always amazes me that Liberals will go on and on about the Aztecs, yet we don't hear you whining about the Saxons being overrun by the Angles"
Lets see. In one case white dude shows up and kills not white dude. No prior interaction.

No real justification. In other case, white dude kills white dude in series of ongoing wars and constant interaction. Ummm.

Yeah.
"There is nothing that makes the Aztecs the "good guys" and the Conquistadors "the bad guys.""
No.

The Aztecs werent good guys. But the Conquistadors were the bad guys, mostly due to their motives and methods. They did it for the Gold, as I recall.

Greed is generally associated with, well, being bad. And their methods, well they committed mass murder on a scale that wiped out a lot of people. If the Aztecs had been doing it on the same scale, there wouldnt be very many people left by the time the Conquistadors showed up.

"there is no reason, other than your own personal bias, to assume that everything they wrote was a lie or exaggerated."
I never siad they were lying. But theres no reason to believe that they told the whole truth either.

I think theres a whole other side to the story thats missing. One that the priests, amongst others, would have paid little attention to.
"that so many Liberals whine about the loss of the Aztecs and Mayans and all, when they would NEVER have chosen to live in that civilization"
In all fairness, I doubt any conservative on this board would have wanted to live in Spain or Portugal during the inquisition.

What makes you think that their civilization was in any way worse than its contemporaries? A lack of history maybe?
"They forget that these civilizations were very, very class based, and one could not rise above one's class"
Oh right.

Cos, you know, that wasnt the case with feudal Europe. Or just about anywhere during that particular time period. Kinda moot dont you think?

"The passivists who decry the "terrible" Conquistadors would not have done very well in a civilization that glorified the warrior."
Errr. You dont have to be a pacifist to deplore mass murder on the conquistador scale - especially when the sole justification for it was, well, gold.

God knows Europe didnt glorify warriors.
"And, of course, YOU would certainly never end up as a sacrifice in your mind. The fact that so many did.

..well, we'll just ignore that.

"
Tell me, whats the difference between a ritual sacrifice where you put someone on a pyre, and a not so ritual sacrifice, where you send out men to die for the glory of your nation? And then of course theres that quaint habit of witch hunting/burning. Is that not a sacrifice for the good of the community by any other name?

Sure they sacrificed people. But didnt people of the wonderful "western civilization" burn innocent people albeit after declaring them witches ( I m assuming the Aztecs/ Mayans didnt go through the formality of dehumanising before killing their sacrifices)?
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 03:38 PM Spotteswood - your arguments are worthless, I tell you!

You are dealing with people on here who worship the ground Mel Gibson walks on. In their eyes he can do no wrong ever. If we woke up tomorrow to the news that Mel had killed all 6 of his children and his wife they would blame it on the "liberal media" and the "Hollywood elites" and go right on worshiping him.

He made "The Passion". That gives him a lifetime pass to do or say anything. The fact that his movie is an indictment of America means zilch to them.

Posted by: at December 15, 2006 04:14 PM Darius - "worship the ground he walks on." O-kay, whatever. Step away from the keyboard before you hurt yourself.

Of course Gibson can do wrong. He can make another ridiculous "Lethal Weapon" movie starting the bigotted Danny Glover, for one.
Posted by: at December 15, 2006 04:23 PM Darius: NOTHING that anyone earth could do would grant them a lifetime pass to do or say anything.

Grow up.