Apocalypto

Apocalypto
Apocalypto promotional poster
Directed by	Mel Gibson
Written by	Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia
Produced by	Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia Bruce Davey
Starring	Rudy Youngblood Raoul Trujillo Mayra Sérbulo Dalia Hernández Gerardo Taracena Rodolfo Palacios Bernardo Ruiz Juarez Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza Ricardo Diaz Mendoza Israel Contreras
Cinematography	Dean Semler
Edited by	John Wright
Music by	James Horner
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures (USA) Icon Entertainment (International) 20th Century Fox (Argentina)
Release dates	December 8, 2006 (theater) May 22, 2007 (DVD and Blu-ray)
Running time	139 minutes
Language	Mayan
Budget	$40,000,000
Box office	$120,175,867 (worldwide)

Template:Infobox movie certificates Apocalypto is a 2006 epic film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Rudy Youngblood. Set in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula during the declining period of the Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and destruction of his village.

The film features a cast of Native American descent, and its Yucatec Maya dialogue is accompanied by subtitles.

Trailer

In 2005 a trailer was released that was burned on thousands of DVD that depicted a different young actor playing the part of Jaguar Paw. Most of the prereleased material show this actor in snippets that encompass almost the entire movie yet upon release a different actor (Rudy Youngblood) appears as Jaguar Paw. No one has ever addessed this cast change and nothing can be found as to why the casting change or what happened to the young man originally cast as Jaguar Paw.

Plot

The film begins with an onscreen quote from Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

While hunting tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized and fearful refugees. The procession's leader explains that their lands have been ravaged, and asks for Flint Sky's permission to pass through the jungle. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return to their village, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the procession's state of fear seep into him. At night, the tribe's elder tells the village a fable of man forever unable to fill his want, despite having been given the capabilities of all of the animals. The villagers follow the story with music and dance, leaving Jaguar Paw to ponder.

The next morning, Jaguar Paw wakes from a nightmare to see strangers enter the village and set the huts ablaze. The raiders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), attack and subdue the villagers. Jaguar Paw slips out with his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) and his little son Turtles Run, lowering them on a vine into a small cave (a chultun, shaped something like a well) to hide them. Jaguar Paw returns to the village to fight the raiders but is subdued with the rest of the tribe. A raider whom Jaguar Paw attacked and almost killed, the vicious Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena), slits Flint Sky's throat while Jaguar Paw helplessly watches. Before the raiders leave the village with their prisoners, one suspicious raider severs the vine leading into the ground cave, trapping Jaguar Paw's wife and son within. The raiders and their captives trek toward the Maya city, encountering razed forests, failed maize crops, slaves producing plaster, and the sick and dying. A small diseased girl prophesies that a man bringing the jaguar will bring the raiders to those who will scratch out the earth and end their world. In the city's outskirts, the female captives are sold as slaves and the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid. The high priest sacrifices several captives by decapitating them after pulling out their beating hearts. When Jaguar Paw is about to be sacrificed, a solar eclipse stays the priest's hand. The priest declares the sun god Kukulkan is satisfied with the sacrifices. The eclipse passes, and light returns to the world.

Zero Wolf, told by the priest to "dispose" of the remaining captives, takes them to a ball field. The captives are released in pairs and forced to run the length of the field to win their freedom. The raiders target them with javelins, arrows, and slingstones as they run. Jaguar Paw is struck by an arrow through the abdomen but reaches the end of the field and breaks off the front portion of the shaft containing the arrowhead. As Zero Wolf's son, Cut Rock, approaches to finish him off with an obsidian blade, Jaguar Paw shoves the broken arrow into Cut Rock's throat. As Cut Rock bleeds out with Zero Wolf easing him into the next life, Jaguar Paw escapes through a withered maize field and an open mass grave. The enraged Zero Wolf and his raiders pursue Jaguar Paw into the jungle and back toward Jaguar Paw's home. Along the way, one of the raiders is killed by a black jaguar that has been disturbed by Jaguar Paw. As he flees, Jaguar Paw jumps over a high waterfall and survives, declaring from the riverbank below that the raiders are now in his territory.

Zero Wolf's raiders fall to both the forest's elements and Jaguar Paw's traps. A heavy rain sets in, which begins to flood the ground cave in which Jaguar Paw's wife and son are still trapped. Jaguar Paw bludgeons Middle Eye in hand-to-hand combat and kills Zero Wolf by leading him into a trap meant for hunting tapir. He is chased by two remaining raiders out to a beach where they encounter the fourth expedition of Christopher Columbus making their way ashore in boats. The amazement of the raiders allows Jaguar Paw to flee. He returns into the forest to pull his wife and son out of the pit where they are hiding. He returns in time to save the family, and sees that his wife has given birth to a healthy second son. As the family walks near the coastline, Jaguar Paw's wife asks what the strange objects near the shore are. Jaguar Paw responds only that "they bring men". Jaguar Paw and his family go deeper into the forest, "to seek a new beginning", leaving the Spanish who are anchored in ships off the beach.

Production

Screenplay

Screenwriter and producer Farhad Safinia first met director Mel Gibson while working as an assistant during the post-production of The Passion of the Christ. Eventually, Gibson and Safinia found time to discuss "their mutual love of movies and what excites them about moviemaking." Safinia notes:

We started to talk about what films excite us and what he wanted to do next, and we specifically spent a lot of time on the action-chase genre of filmmaking. Those conversations essentially grew into the skeleton of ('Apocalypto'). We wanted to update the chase genre by, in fact, not updating it with technology or machinery but 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.

Gibson said they wanted to "shake up the stale action-adventure genre," which he felt was dominated by CGI, stock stories and shallow characters and to create a footchase that would "feel like a car chase that just keeps turning the screws."

Gibson and Safinia were also interested in portraying and exploring an ancient culture as it existed before the arrival of the Europeans. Considering both the Aztecs and the Maya, they eventually chose the Maya for their high sophistication and their eventual decline. Safinia notes:

The Mayans were far more interesting to us. You can choose a civilization that is bloodthirsty, or you can show the Mayan civilization that was so sophisticated with an immense knowledge of medicine, science, archaeology and engineering ... but also be able to illuminate the brutal undercurrent and ritual savagery that they practiced. It was a far more interesting world to explore why and what happened to them.

The two researched ancient Maya history, reading both creation and destruction myths, including sacred texts such as the Popul Vuh. In the audio commentary of the film's first DVD release, Safinia states that the old shaman's story (played by Espiridion Acosta Cache who is an actual modern day Maya storyteller) was modified from an authentic Mesoamerican tale that was retranslated into the Yucatec Maya language. As they researched the script, Safinia and Gibson traveled to Guatemala, Costa Rica and the Yucatán peninsula to scout filming locations and visit Maya ruins.

Striving for a degree of historical accuracy, the filmmakers employed a consultant, Richard D. Hansen, a specialist in the Maya, assistant professor of archaeology at Idaho State University, and director of the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson has said of Hansen's involvement:

Richard’s enthusiasm for what he does is infectious. He was able to reassure us and make us feel secure that what we were writing had some authenticity as well as imagination.

Gibson is interested in using unfamiliar languages on film, having already used Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew in his religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. In Apocalypto, the dialogue is entirely in the Yucatec Maya language. Gibson explains:

I think hearing a different language allows the audience to completely suspend their own reality and get drawn into the world of the film. And more importantly, this also puts the emphasis on the cinematic visuals, which are a kind of universal language of the heart.

Casting

Mel Gibson chose a cast of actors who were from Mexico City, the Yucatán, or who were descendants of indigenous peoples of Canada and the USA. It was important for the director that "these characters have to be utterly believable as pre-Columbian Mesoamericans." Some of the youngest and oldest cast members were Maya who knew no language besides Maya and had never seen a tall building before.

Gibson explained that he wanted to cast unknown actors so that they could play certain mythic types without the audiences associating them with prior roles. "In terms of casting it, you always have many choices. You can go against type, or with type. On this one I have purposely chosen an archetypal selection, casting it right with type, because of the obscure dialect and the unfamiliar period in which the story is set." In addition to the lead actors, some scenes required as many as 700 extras.

Costumes and Makeup

See also: Maya textiles

The production team consisted of a large group of make-up artists and costume designers who worked to recreate the Maya look for the large cast. Led by Aldo Signoretti, the make-up artists daily applied the required tatooes, scarification, and earlobe extension to all of the onscreen actors. According to advisor Richard D. Hansen, the choices in body make-up were based on both artistic license and fact: "I spent hours and hours going through the pottery and the images looking for tattoos. The scarification and tattooing was all researched, the inlaid jade teeth are in there, the ear spools are in there. There is a little doohickey that comes down from the ear through the nose into the septum – that was entirely their artistic innovation." An example of attention to detail is the left arm tattoo of Seven, Jaguar Paw's wife, which is a horizontal band with two dots above – the Mayan symbol for the number seven.

Simon Atherton, an English armorer and weapon-maker who worked with Gibson on Braveheart, was hired this time to research and provide the Maya weapons. Gibson let Atherton play the cross-bearing Franciscan friar who appears on a boat at the end of the film.

Set Design

See also: Maya architecture

Director Mel Gibson wanted Apocalypto to feature sets with actual buildings rather than relying on computer-generated images. Most of the step pyramids seen at the Maya city were models designed by Thomas E. Sanders (Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan)[4]. Sanders explained his approach, "We wanted to set up the Mayan world, but we were not trying to do a documentary. Visually, we wanted to go for what would have the most impact. Just as on Braveheart, you are treading the line of history and cinematography. Our job is to do a beautiful movie."

While many of the architectural details of Mayan city are correct, they are blended from different locations and eras, a decision Farhad Safinia said was made for aesthetic reasons. While Apocalypto is set during the post-classic period of Maya civilization, the central pyramid of the film comes from the classic period, which ended in A.D. 900. Furthermore, the temples are in the shape of those of Tikal in the central lowlands classic style but decorated with the Puuc style elements of the north west Yucatan centuries later. Richard D. Hansen comments, "There was nothing in the post-classic period that would match the size and majesty of that pyramid in the film. But Gibson … was trying to depict opulence, wealth, consumption of resources."

The set design of Apocalypto also blended elements of Maya art from different eras and locations. The mural in the arched walkway combined elements from the Maya codices, the Bonampak murals (over 700 years earlier than the film's setting), and the San Bartolo murals (some 1500 years earlier than the film's setting).

Filming

Gibson filmed Apocalypto mainly in Catemaco, San Andrés Tuxtla, and Paso de Ovejas in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The waterfall scene was filmed on a real waterfall called Salto de Eyipantla, located in San Andrés Tuxtla. Other filming by second-unit crews took place in El Petén, Guatemala, and in Great Britain. The film was originally slated for an August 4, 2006, release, but Touchstone Pictures delayed the release date to December 8, 2006, due to heavy rains and two hurricanes interfering with filming in Mexico. Principal photography ended in July 2006.

Apocalypto was shot on high-definition digital video, using the Panavision Genesis camera.[5] During filming, Gibson and cinematographer Dean Semler employed the use of Spydercam, a suspended camera system allowing shooting from atop. This equipment was used in a scene in which the captive villagers are led through the river:

We had a Spydercam shot from the top of [the] 150-foot (46 m) waterfall, looking over an actor's shoulder and then plunging over the edge –- literally in the waterfall. I thought we’d be doing it on film, but we put the Genesis [camera] up there in a light-weight water housing. The temperatures were beyond 100 degrees at [the] top, and about 60 degrees at the bottom, with the water and the mist. We shot two fifty-minute tapes without any problems – though we [did get] water in there once and fogged up.

A number of animals are featured in Apocalypto, including a Baird's tapir and a black jaguar. Animatronics or puppets were employed for the scenes injurious to animals.

Distribution and Marketing

While Mel Gibson financed the film through his Icon Productions, Disney signed on to distribute Apocalypto for a fee in certain markets. The publicity for the film started with a December 2005 teaser trailer that was filmed before the start of principal photography and before Rudy Youngblood was cast as Jaguar Paw. As a joke, Gibson inserted a subliminal cameo of the bearded director in a plaid shirt with a cigarette hanging from his mouth posing next to a group of dust-covered Maya. A clean-shaven Gibson also filmed a Mayan-language segment for the introduction of the 2006 Academy Awards in which he declined to host the ceremony. On September 23, 2006, Gibson pre-screened the unfinished film to two predominantly Native American audiences in the US state of Oklahoma, at the Riverwind Casino in Goldsby, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, and at Cameron University in Lawton. He also did a pre-screening in Austin, Texas, on September 24 in conjunction with one of the movie's stars, Rudy Youngblood. In Los Angeles, Gibson screened Apocalypto and participated in a Q&A session for Latin Business Association and for members of the Maya community. Due to an enthusiastic response from exhibitors, Disney opened the film on more than 2,500 screens in the United States.

Themes

According to Mel Gibson, the Mayan setting of Apocalypto is "merely the backdrop" for a more universal story of exploring "civilizations and what undermines them."

File:Posterredux.jpg

The Australian version of the Apocalypto film poster. The original theatrical poster acquired a nomination in the 36th annual Key Art Awards for the best Action Adventure poster.

Although it is not directly expressed in the film, the background to the events depicted is the collapse of the Maya civilization, which the filmmakers researched before writing. According to historian Michael D. Coe, "Maya civilization in the Central Area reached its full glory in the early eighth century, but it must have contained the seeds of its own destruction, for in the century and a half that followed, all its magnificent cities had fallen into decline and ultimately suffered abandonment. This was surely one of the most profound social and demographic catastrophes of all human history." Coe lists "environmental collapse" as one of the leading causes of the fall of the great empire, alongside "endemic warfare", "overpopulation", and "drought". "There is mounting evidence for massive deforestation and erosion throughout the Central Area. The Maya apocalypse, for such it was, surely had ecological roots," explains Coe. The corrosive forces of corruption are illustrated in specific scenes throughout the movie. Excessive consumption can be seen in the extravagant lifestyle of the upper-class Maya, their vast wealth contrasted with the sickly, the extremely poor, and the enslaved. Environmental degradation is portrayed both in the exploitation of natural resources such as the over-mining and farming of the land, but also through the treatment of people, families and entire tribes as resources to be harvested and sold to slavery. Political corruption is seen in the leaders' manipulation, the human sacrifice on a large scale, and the slave trade. The film shows slaves being forced to create the lime stucco cement that covered their temples, an act that some historians consider a major factor in the Maya decline. One calculation estimates that it would take five tons of jungle forestry to make one ton of quick lime. Historical consultant Richard D. Hansen explains, "I found one pyramid in El Mirador that would have required nearly 650 hectares (1,600 acres) of every single available tree just to cover one building with lime stucco... Epic construction was happening... creating devastation on a huge scale"

The filmmakers intended this depiction of the Maya collapse to have relevance for contemporary society. The problems "faced by the Maya are extraordinarily similar to those faced today by our own civilization" co-writer Safinia stated during production, "especially when it comes to widespread environmental degradation, excessive consumption and political corruption." Gibson himself has stated that the movie is an attempt at illustrating the parallels between a great fallen empire of the past and the great empires of today, saying "People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we're susceptible to the same forces – and we are also capable of the same heroism and transcendence." The film serves as a cultural critique – in Hansen's words, a "social statement" – sending the message that it is never a mistake to question our own assumptions about morality.

However, Gibson has also stated that he wanted the film to be hopeful rather than entirely negative. While the title, Apocalypto, connotates destruction in English, Gibson has defined the title as "a new beginning or an unveiling — a revelation"; he says "Everything has a beginning and an end, and all civilizations have operated like that." The precise translation of the Greek word (αποκαλύπτω or apokalýptō) is in fact a verb meaning "I uncover," "disclose," or "reveal." Gibson has also said a theme of the film is the exploration of primal fears.

Reception

File:Tn2 apocalypto 3.jpg

This scene from Apocalypto was filmed at a waterfall in San Andrés Tuxtla.

The film was released in the United States on December 8, 2006, to generally positive reviews from film critics. Richard Roeper and guest critic Aisha Tyler on the television show Ebert & Roeper gave it "two big thumbs up" rating. Michael Medved gave Apocalypto four stars (out of four) calling the film "an adrenaline-drenched chase movie" and "a visceral visual experience." Overall, the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 116 out of the 178 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 65% and a certification of "fresh".

Contrary to the omens that the film would not have a warm reception in Mexico, it registered a wider number of viewers than Perfume and Rocky Balboa. It even displaced memorable Mexican premieres such as Titanic and Poseidon. According to polls performed by the newspaper Reforma, 80% of polled Mexicans labeled the film as “very good” or “good”.

Apocalypto gained some passionate champions in the Hollywood community. Actor Robert Duvall called it "maybe the best movie I’ve seen in 25 years." Actor Edward James Olmos said, “I was totally caught off guard. It’s arguably the best movie I’ve seen in years. I was blown away.”

Controversies

Apocalypto has been criticized for historical inaccuracies, for questionable interpretations of history, and for scientific inaccuracies. Writer-producer Safinia addresses such concerns by stating, "The final decision when making a film is, 'What is the right balance between historical authenticity and making it exciting visually as well?' The film is an all out entertainment thrill ride, and that is what it was always designed to do."

Representation of the Maya

Apocalypto has been criticized by activists in Guatemala, including Lucio Yaxon, who charge that the film depicts Maya as savages. Anthropologist Traci Arden complained that Gibson "replays, in glorious big-budget technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserve, in fact they needed, rescue. This same idea was used for 500 years to justify the subjugation of Maya people". She agrees that sacrifice was a fact of Maya life, but finds Gibson's film biased because "no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities." Apocalypto also sparked a strong condemnation from art professor Julia Guernsey, who said, “I think it's despicable. It's offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity and alternative world views that might not match our own 21st-century Western ones but are nonetheless valid.”

However, some Mayans were not offended by the film. Sara Zapata Mijares, president and founder of Federación de Clubes Yucatecos-USA, a group of Yucatec Mayans in the United States, called it "a great picture", although she commented that the film "should have had a little bit more of the culture. It could have shown a little more why these buildings [pyramids] were built."

Furthermore, some writers felt that Gibson's film was more truthful about the Maya than other representations. Mexican reporter Juan E. Pardinas wrote that "this historical interpretation bears some resemblances with reality […]. Mel Gibson's characters are more similar to the Mayas of the Bonampak's murals than the ones that appear in the Mexican school textbooks". "The first researchers tried to make a distinction between the 'peaceful' Maya and the 'brutal' cultures of central Mexico", David Stuart wrote in a 2003 article. "They even tried to say human sacrifice was rare among the Maya." But in carvings and mural paintings, Stuart said: "we have now found more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and Mayas – including a Maya ceremony in which a grotesquely costumed priest is shown pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living sacrificial victim." Stuart also noted evidence of child sacrifices.

Historical consultant Richard D. Hansen states that the impact the film will have on Maya archaeology will be beneficial: "It is a wonderful opportunity to focus world attention on the ancient Maya and to realize the role they played in world history."

Human Sacrifice

Apocalypto has been criticized for more closely portraying the human sacrifice of the Aztecs rather than the Maya. Archaeologist Lisa Lucero said, "the classic Maya really didn't go in for mass sacrifice. That was the Aztecs." Anthropology professor Karl Taube said, "We know the Aztecs did that level of killing. Their accounts speak of 20,000." According to the film’s technical advisor, the film was meant to describe the post-classic period of the Maya when fiercer influences like the Toltecs and Aztecs arrived. According to Hansen, "We know warfare was going on. The Postclassic center of Tulum is a walled city; these sites had to be in defensive positions. There was tremendous Aztec influence by this time. The Aztecs were clearly ruthless in their conquest and pursuit of sacrificial victims, a practice that spilled over into some of the Maya areas."

Anthropology professor Stephen Houston made the criticism that sacrifice victims were more likely to be royalty and elites rather than common forest dwellers, as shown in Apocalypto In contrast, the MSN Encarta encyclopedia article by anthropology professor William R. Fowler states that for major favors, worshipers “offered the gods human sacrifice, usually children, slaves, or prisoners of war.” Anthropology professor Karl Taube criticized the film’s apparent depiction of widespread slavery, saying, “We have no evidence of large numbers of slaves.” Another disputed scene, when Jaguar Paw and the rest of captives are used as target practice, was acknowledged by the filmmakers to be invented as a plot device for igniting the chase sequence. Some anthropologists objected to the presence of a huge pit filled with rotting corpses near their fields of the Maya. Richard D. Hansen acknowledges that this is "conjecture", saying that "all [Gibson was] trying to do there is express the horror of it."

Arrival of the Spanish

According to the DVD commentary track by Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia, the ending of the film was meant to depict the first contact between the Spanish and Maya that took place in 1502 during the fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus.

Anthropologist Traci Arden criticized the presence of the Spanish expedition in the last five minutes of the story, claiming that "the Spanish arrived 300 years after the last Maya city was abandoned." However, despite the end of construction at many famous postclassic centers, such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal, they had not been abandoned at the time of the Spanish arrival, and there were still many comparatively smaller Maya cities such as Mayapan, Tiho, Coba, Chetumal, Nito, and Tayasal, also known as Petzen Itza, survived until 1697 before being conquered by the Spanish.

The thematic meaning of the arrival of the Europeans is a subject of disagreement. Apocalypto critic Traci Arden wrote that the Spanish arrivals were Christian missionaries and that the film had a "blatantly colonial message that the Maya needed saving because they were rotten at the core." Others disagreed with Arden’s view that the Spanish were portrayed as saviors of the Maya, citing an equivocal or ominous depiction instead. They point out that the hero Jaguar Paw chose to avoid the new arrivals at the close of the film rather than joining them and that the Oracle Girl had prophesied about the coming of those who would "Scratch out the earth. Scratch you out. And end your world."

Eclipse

Student associate Edgar Martin del Campo at SUNY Albany criticized Apocalypto for not showing the Mayan knowledge of astronomy because the Maya were in awe of the eclipse. However, in the DVD commentary, Gibson and Safinia affirm that the Mayan royalty and priests had actually predicted the eclipse and that the human sacrifice ceremony was a dumbshow to control the populace. According to Safinia, the filmmakers were commenting on how the people in any society who control the information can manipulate it to achieve their own political ends.

Another complaint was the scientific accuracy of the actual portrayal of the solar eclipse. In the film, the eclipse occurs much too quickly, and it is followed by a full moon on what appears to be the evening of the same day, an astronomical impossibility: solar eclipses only occur during the new moon.

Awards

Apocalypto has been recognized with numerous awards and nominations. For his role as producer and director of the film, Mel Gibson was given the Trustee Award by the First Americans in the Arts organization. Gibson was also awarded the Latino Business Association's Chairman's Visionary Award for his work on Apocalypto on November 2, 2006, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California. At the ceremony, Gibson had said that the film was a "badge of honor for the Latino community." Gibson also stated that Apocalypto would help dismiss the notion that "history only began with Europeans.”

Won

• Central Ohio Film Critics Association- COFCA Award for Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
• Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards - DFWFCA Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler
• First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor (2007) - Rudy Youngblood
• First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor (Supporting) (2007) - Morris Birdyellowhead
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actor (2007) - Gerardo Taracena
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actress (2007) - Dalia Hernandez
• Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing for Music in a Feature Film (2007) - Dick Bernstein (music editor), Jim Henrikson (music editor)
• Phoenix Film Critics Society - PFCS Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler

Nominated

• Academy Awards, USA - Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup (2007) - Aldo Signoretti, Vittorio Sodano
• Academy Awards, USA - Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Editing (2007) - Sean McCormack, Kami Asgar
• Academy Awards, USA - Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing (2007) - Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, Fernando Cámara
• Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA - Saturn Award for Best Direction (2007) - Mel Gibson
• Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA - Saturn Award for Best International Film (2007)
• American Society of Cinematographers, USA - ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases (2007) - Dean Semler
• BAFTA Awards- BAFTA Film Award for Best Film not in the English Language (2007) - Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey
• Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards - BFCA Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2007)
• Chicago Film Critics Association Awards - CFCA Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2006)
• Golden Globes, USA - Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film (2007)
• Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards - Key Art Award for Best Action-Adventure Poster (2006)
• Imagen Foundation - Imagen Award for Best Picture (2007)
• Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing in a Feature Film: Dialogue and Automated Dialogue Replacement (2007) - Sean McCormack (supervising sound editor), Kami Asgar (supervising sound editor), Scott G.G. Haller (supervising dialogue editor), Jessica Gallavan (supervising ADR editor), Lisa J. Levine (supervising ADR editor), Linda Folk (supervising ADR editor)
• Online Film Critics Society Awards - OFCS Award for Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
• Satellite Awards - Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language (2006)
• St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards - Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2006)

Cast

• Rudy Youngblood - Jaguar Paw
• Dalia Hernández - Seven
• Jonathan Brewer - Blunted
• Morris Birdyellowhead - Flint Sky
• Carlos Emilio Báez - Turtles Run
• Amílcar Ramírez - Curl Nose
• Israel Contreras - Smoke Frog
• Israel Ríos - Cocoa Leaf
• María Isabel Díaz - Mother-in-Law
• Iazúa Laríos - Sky Flower
• Raoul Trujillo - Zero Wolf
• Gerardo Taracena - Middle Eye
• Rodolfo Palacios - Snake Ink
• Ariel Galván - Hanging Moss
• Bernardo Ruiz - Drunkards Four
• Ricardo Díaz Mendoza - Cut Rock
• Richard Can - Ten Peccary
• Carlos Ramos - Monkey Jaw
• Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza - Buzzard Hook
• Marco Antonio Argueta - Speaking Wind
• Aquetzali García - Oracle Girl
• María Isidra Hoil - Oracle Girl
• Abel Woolrich - Laughing man

Soundtrack album

Further information: Apocalypto (soundtrack)

The soundtrack to Apocalypto was composed by James Horner in his third collaboration with director Mel Gibson. The soundtrack lacks a traditional orchestral score and instead features large array of exotic instruments and vocals by Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

See also

• Kings of the Sun, a 1963 Hollywood treatment of the Mayas.

External links

• Official Movie Site
• Official Teaser & Theatrical Trailer
• Apocalypto at IMDb
• Apocalypto Reviews at Metacritic
• Apocalypto at Rotten Tomatoes