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Cultural Critique
People complain about forced diversity in Hollywood. Anachronistic casting and reworking classic characters as diverse a la every redhead becoming black are prime examples. It’s laziness. “Just make a tale set in the Global South!” They can but don’t; Gibson exposed them 🧵
Apocalypto is set in pre-columbian Mexico within a Mayan area. It is an awesome action film using the basic chase premise. It’s the opposite of CGI action and there is no grandeur of ancient days. We see temples and the contrast of wealth & poverty. It works.
Gibson isn’t woke and the film isn’t woke. It’s just a classic action film with set objectives. It is also not in English. It was a success.
Hollywood doesn’t want to do this because they are lazy. They want a known intellectual property with a baseline audience that will show up and then cast diversity. They could take the same basic plots and strip them of that IP clothing but that is a risk for failure
They also won’t do a historical thing without woke framing. Gibson avoided that. Hollywood wouldn’t pass up the chance to cram 21st century ideology and framing onto something from 1400.
They also wouldn’t be realistic. Gibson was not perfect but Hollywood would shy from any realism for Global South history. It’d be stone age wakanda. Everything was perfect and awesome! Apocalypto is a model, but no one will use it.
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