Originally Posted by Rahlgd
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I might just be snobbish because I've lived in Mayan communities/ studied Mayan but I noticed literally hundreds of innacuracies within the first couple of minutes. The variant of Yukatek they were speaking was a modern variety full of mis****ounciations of the actual historical ****ounciations. The "thouroughly researched" dipication of the Mayan culture was a poor attempt at a pre-colombian exploitation film at best and came across as "let's make them look as savage and retarded as possibly" themed adventure, I think quite a few film critics summed it up this way as well. What amazed me and outright offended the people I was seeing it with who were Maya themselves was the fact that Mel Gibson outright portrayed them as the epitome of how 18th century Europeans saw any "inferior race" at the time. Mayans at this time typically would have worn dyed robes but in the film they were portrayed as semi naked with caked on dirt all over them and throughout most of the film there were random sequences of them going into sporadic episode of what looked to be drug induced rave dances which I'm pretty sure was never part of any Mayan ceremony (I could be wrong though), this is what offended most people oddly and is when most of the people started to leave. All in all afterwards our neighbors thought it was offensive because it prtrayed them as dirty and dumb and they pointed out the fact that all the sites in the film were already in ruins (something I didnt catch) despite the fact that he Spanish hadn't arrived yet.
