St. Albans, Hertfordshire born and bred.
Obv.
I just wanted a chance to point out that Emmerich is a hack… maybe not a german hack of Uwe Boll dimensions, but certainly a hack.
And I think Peter Weir is a genius… and Braveheart was epic well crafted entertaiment. History be dammed.
What was the inquisition, after all? What were the Salem Witch Trials? Does this give people fair lisence to show Europeans as savage brutes?
While neither of those were human sacrifice by any reasonable definition, I would not find a movie about the Inquisition “racist” if it showed Spanish Christians murdering people, because they actually did do that and it was a really terrible thing.
I don’t understand your comment, are you arguing that the existence of evil acts by Spaniards and Americans means that an Australian director can’t make a movie about Mayans/Aztecs practicing human sacrifice?
Gallipoli is one of my favourite movies of all time. I thought Braveheart was goofy fun, like an episode of 24, so I basically agree.
Thing is though, I’m not exactly sure why Mel hates us so much, what did we ever do to him?
Church of England, that’s my theory
Gallipoli is a classic.
This was just ‘meh’ to me…but also not really what I was hoping it would be.
Yea so I am a little late to the party (only by about 6 months from the last post).
Just saw this movie. Loved it. Fuck the racist comments. Fuck the historical inaccuracies. I had no idea what this movie was about. I thought it would be some National Geographic style documentary flick about an Amazon tribe or something. Never read the previews.
I totally did not expect it to be a total all out action flick. This was better than 300. Almost up there with Gladiator and Braveheart.
Fuck this movie rocked.
Seconded, I saw it a few days ago. If anything, it’s more of a diatribe against religious ignorance, rather than anything racial, even if Mel Gibson is probably too dense to have intended that. Good flick.
H.
Somewhat off topic but here’s a critique of Bravehearts inaccuracies from around the time
I couldn’t even get past the first half an hour. Mother-In-Law jokes? That’s what you have for us? So, fucking lame. Call me when you stop with the same tired gender politics, Melvin.
Given the setting you probably shouldn’t have expected the characters to be postmodern feminist metrosexuals…
Given the year it was made I expected more than the same old cliches. Only the HD separates it from Father Knows Best.
Or maybe he was trying to point out how we assume every other era or culture is magically different, when really we’re just spinning the same wheel over and over again? I rather enjoyed the mother-in-law joke.
H.
Saw the movie again last night on DVD, a great little ride with amazing art directions and great directing. I’m really not a fan of Gibson as a filmmaker, but I really liked his mayan survival. Nothing to serious here, it’s not a historical movie, just an action flick set in the jungle.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this, I managed to miss reading too many specifics about what the film is actually about but I wasn’t expecting action flick in the Jungle. As an action flick it was ok, if a little silly at times, but like braveheart, I’d imagine that if I tried to take it too seriously it would really start to annoy me.
When Gibson isn’t hung up on the English or Religion he does churn out a half decent popcorn action flick. But I really don’t see why there was much of a fuss made about the film to begin with. Strip away the gimmick of being shot in Mayan or whatever the language was they used and it’s stock action material down to the “I bet we get to see that again” trap they used on the piggie at the beginning.
Exactly. I think it serves no other purpose, and I believe Gibson just wanted to have fun. Thanks to the Passion (which I viscerally hate) he has enough money to do whatever he wants, so why not build an entire Mayan city (which he did) and shoot his version of the italian cannibal movies of the 70’s, but without the cannibals. I truly view this film as an exploitation film, and as such it’s great fun, even if the first part is a little long.
Although one can argue that The Passion was the best exploitation flick ever since the italian gore fests of the 80’s…
Well, he (Gibson) is certainly dim enough to believe that misogyny is hard coded in our genes.
So I saw the Blu-ray version which was just released. This is definitely a high-definition showcase movie. Absolutely no CG, hundreds of extras with meticulously hand-made clothes and extremely complex makeup, and an entire rebuilt Mayan city! All this stuff looks amazingly realistic, as in “might have looked that way in real life”, although I’m sure someone will nitpick ornaments as typically Aztec instead of Mayan or whatever.
Sadly, the National Geographic aspect is the only strong point of the movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a two-hour movie with a thinner plot, and that includes any action movie I’ve ever seen. Even the blood & gore stuff was surprisingly subdued – lots of explicit killing, sure, but no comparison to the extended quasi-pornographic torture scenes of the Passion.
Just in case anyone was wondering, of course there aren’t any mother-in-law jokes or general “misogyny” in the movie. The opening sequence simply shows how primitive people would have obsessed over expanding their family when this was the only grand goal available to them.
Though I have to say that Mel Gibson does come across as slightly less intelligent and articulate than G.W. Bush in the making-of featurette…
Call it what you like, but the only person ‘obsessed over expanding their family’ is the mother-in-law, who harangues the guy when he gets back from the hunt. The rest of the guy’s peer group - that’s the other guys on the hunt - make fun of him for his lack of offspring; more accurately, they make fun of him for his nagging mother-in-law. If, as you say, the primitive people were obsessed with expanding their family, the other men would have taken his lack of procreation seriously - it would have been a knock against all of them - but he’s not mocked for shooting blanks, he’s mocked because his wife’s mother nags him.
My absolute favorite part of this was the moment marking our hero’s transformation from panicked flight to making his dad (posthumously) proud by letting go of fear–by throwing a angry hive at the orcs pursuing him.
It could only be improved by adding the subtitles “No, not the bees! Auugh my eyes, my eyes!” to the dismayed shouts.