>without wiki or imdb name three characters or two of the
>tribes that were depicted?
Jaguar Paw
Cocoa Tree (Leaf? Bean? Dammit!)
Snake Tail

I think those guesses are correct, so I can see your point here. I wonder how much that has to do with the names being different than what I'm used to and my constant case of CRS. I definitely don't remember the names of the tribes, but I also didn't remember exactly where it was set. This prolly helps your stance because I prolly should have come away with a clearer idea of how these people were.
That said, I still think there are lots of characters I remember.
I remember the humor of Jaguar Paw's father,
I remember the loud mouth and eventual despair of the mother-in-law,
I remember the impotent man's resilience,
I remember the tumultuous father-son relationship of the rival tribe's two main hunters,
and I remember the different architecture and designs of each tribe separately.

Cultural whitewashing is evident, but I think it's unfair to say everyone is nameless when there are still discernible personalities on both sides.

Add that on top of all the famished looking, fucked
>teeth smiling, overly violent powers that be, and their is a
>lot of e-racing and stereotyping going on.

I can see this, but I wonder what his options for the physicality of the people is. Now, if the Aztecs were much more warlike than the Maya, this seems to be a definite problem. I don't know what would be lost placing this with the Aztec instead. Lazy. I don't like it.


>As scholars like Acuna and Murguia have pointed out (about
>history and Apocolypto) the very idea of human sacrifice is so
>misrepresented and over-blown that it denies the fact that the
>Maya's historical record was looted, destroyed and
>misinterpreted by the very colonizers who try to frame the
>Maya (and other indigenous groups) as savages. So for Mel to
>base a whole movie on the supposed violence for sport / human
>sacrifice bullshit is to continue that very problematic
>narrative.

I agree that everything was overblown, but I also want to take the movie as more of an allegory than true representation. Mel couldn't have known I would interpret it that way, and neither of us can say for certain how factual or allegorical he wanted it to be. I do know that I was not upset about the representation as one of the tribes as warlike because I did take it as an allegory, so I wasn't seeing only these people being represented. The first tribe was peaceful but overtaken by a stronger, vicious force from the outside. I accepted the tribes as extremes because it helped the dramatic tension - I always believed the characters I liked were in very real danger and it made me root for them.
As to the reinforcing of savage stereotypes - you are correct. I have no answers for this problem in past, present, or future examples. In some cases it really bothers me (The Searchers) in others I can get past it. It's a problem I don't like to think about very often because I still enjoy a good amount of John Ford movies, "Andrei Rublev," and this film. We need more education and more integration.


>
>Than their is Mel's "commentary" on the film were he says he
>left the real "gnarly stuff" out. LOL, what a fucn clown. If
>he knew shit about anything he'd know that one of the main
>reasons Europeans were able to colonize the Maya civilization
>is because, they were in a state of stasis. Their leaders had
>grown lazy and un-alert of possible foreign invaders. their
>last real war was with Vikings nearly 400 years prior. Maya
>had an abundance of food, land and what the European thought
>of as material wealth. Their was no famine, drought and
>in-fighting, that came after the white-man polluted the
>civilization with his flu, guns, ideas on ownership and
>Christianity.

All of this I was aware of but I honestly didn't think about it while watching. Let's not forget though that Mel also gave it a bit of a religious angle - the more forceful tribe ignored prophecy. I think it can be said that the stasis of which you speak was represented by the decadence of their violence. I felt famine and drought then were used to justify this stasis and desperate violence, so it was a whole chain of things really. Every time someone stepped up to be sacrificed there were shots of a fat kid (presumably in power or child of someone in power) giggling and clapping. It reminded me of that kid who was way too old to be sucking tit in "Game of Thrones."

>
>it's the same shit that makes me roll my eyes when a shitty
>movie about the slave trade, reconstruction, or jim crow
>America is made (ehhem... The Help).
Didn't see it.

> I find the movie, in
>particular it's story, ridiculous
I know I'm being an apologist for most of this stuff, but it's because I did enjoy this movie and the discussion is great too.