IGN.com has posted a 103-second web featurette on Apocalypto. Nothing much new here, but here are a few key quotes:
“Apocalypto” means “new beginning”. However, to have a new beginning, something has to end.
I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but once again, Mel Gibson’s scholarship is a little shaky. “Apocalypto” is actually Greek for something like “uncover, disclose, reveal, unmask,” etc. Hence, for example, the Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, gets its title from the fact that it describes the things that were revealed to St. John in visions; that those visions reveal the end of one age and the dawn of another has nothing to do with it.
No great civilization has ever been conquered without having first destroyed itself from within. This is certainly true of the Mayans…
Hmmm, the way he says that last bit, it sounds almost like he was going to say something else, perhaps make a topical allusion.
There’s there things you have to do as a filmmaker, and one is to entertain. The second is to educate. And the third one is to lift your audience to a higher level.
Incidentally, I have not yet had a chance to listen to that Q&A; that Gibson did at Fantastic Fest in Austin a couple weeks back, but I will, in the very near future. In the meantime, the Associated Press reports that Gibson has already sat down for an interview with Diane Sawyer that will be aired October 12-13.
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