Forgotten Mel Gibson Historical Action Tarantino Calls a 'Masterpiece' is Now on Prime

Summary

• Tarantino's outspokenness about the film industry became one of his trademarks.
• A forgotten Mel Gibson epic is one of his favorite films.
• Other legendary directors also sing the praises of this movie.

Director Quentin Tarantino doesn't play many games in Hollywood – he's always been refreshingly straightforward about which movies he thinks are overrated, even when the rest of the world disagrees.

For example, when talking about Alfred Hitchcock's iconic North By Northwest Tarantino calls it 'a very mediocre movie'. His opinion on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is that it's 'such a boring one. It's boring. And he [Sean Connery's character] is not an interesting character.'

On the other hand, Tarantino is quick to praise movies that he enjoys, including some that have been forgotten by critics and audiences. His list of masterpieces includes a Mel Gibson film from almost twenty years ago.

An Ambitious Epic

Mel Gibson is hard to pin down. Even ignoring his bigoted outbursts and troubling personal life, his movies are a bit all over the place. He directed the gory but heartfelt Passion of the Christ, the grimy war epic Hacksaw Ridge, and the overwrought (but super fun) Braveheart.

But one of his movies has slipped under the radar, and in some ways it was his most ambitious fillm of all.

Apocalypto is set in the Mayan kingdom at its pinnacle: a world of indulgence and opulence, but one that is beginning to crumble. Its leaders decide to commit a mass human sacrifice in order to appease the gods, and a raiding party captures the members of a village to use as offerings. Their captives include the young warrior Jaguar Paw. He manages to hide his son and pregnant wife in a well before being marched off to be sacrificed, and will spend the rest of the movie plotting to get back to them.

Trying Something New

Apocalypto is set at the end of the Mayan Empire, just before Spanish conquistadors would begin their wholesale destruction of the Mayan people. It was notable for being performed entirely in Yucatec Maya language (or as close as the creators could approximate it).

The screenplay was co-written by Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia, who had met Gibson while working as an assistant on The Passion of the Christ. As Safinia later told The Washington Post, the two discussed creating an action-chase movie that stripped the idea of a chase down to its bare bones – no technology, no CGI, no car crashes, just 'stripping it down to its most intense form, which is a man running for his life, and at the same time getting back to something that matters to him.'

Negative Publicity

Apocalypto was Gibson's followup to the massively successful The Passion of the Christ. It had a cool idea, a unique angle, and looked incredible. Unfortunately, it was also released only six months after Gibson was arrested for drunk driving and went off on an anti-Semitic tirade that was caught on tape.

Surprisingly, none of this stopped Apocalypto from being number one at the box office when it was released. With a budget of $40 million, it grossed more than $120 million. Critical response to the film was mixed, but it was largely praised for its visual style. Still, it seemed to fade into obscurity relatively quickly, probably because Gibson's reputation continued to spiral downward.

High Praise

Quentin Tarantino called Apocalypto a 'masterpiece', telling Film Ink:

'I think it's a masterpiece. It was perhaps the best film of that year. I think it was the best artistic film of that year.'

Tarantino isn't alone in his admiration for the film. Martin Scorsese has praised it, along with British director Edgar Wright. In 2013, Spike Lee named Apocalypto as one of his all-time favorites.

With that many big-name artists behind it, maybe it's time to give Apocalypto another shot.

Sources: The Washington Post, Far Out Magazine.