Was Gibson right to make these choices? Absolutely. Perhaps the main reason for which a lot of people may have skipped "Apocalypto" is the fact that it is spoken in a dead language and was cast with total unknowns.
"Apocalypto" was shot in an epic scale on a real jungle, with real size sets and mostly real animals, but it's the little details that stick with us: the ruthless warriors who fear nothing except for the sick, ominous, little girl the meeting eyes from an old woman and the son-in-law whose life she once made more than a little difficult, but that now can only show pity for his upcoming, tragic faith the happy and rich overweight kid enjoying his front row position to view barbaric events acting as if his rich dad had just gotten him free tickets on the fifty yard line. Besides, as Roger has said many times before, movies are probably not the best place to learn about historical facts. I believe these feel like a foreigner's version of such events but nonetheless, this is also a beautiful looking, emotional and incredibly exciting film which at times makes " The Last of the Mohicans" seem passive in comparison. "Apocalypto" can be questioned for being graphically and brutally violent It can also be criticized for having the audacity to portrait what seems like a seven foot Mayan in a race of extremely short people it can even be called out of not being historically accurate, after all, the Mayans were long gone when the Spanish arrived in present day Mexico during the 16th. Will he be in time to save them before a pack of very angry suitors (or the jungle itself) stops him? Can a civilization like this, technologically advanced (relatively speaking of course) but rotten in its core, go on forever? But unlike just about all of his peers, Jaguar Paw has been able to have his family spared by leaving them "holed up" in a most precarious situation.