Movies That Were Probably Made By a Spasm of Six Year-Olds on Acid: The Top 75 Action Films Poll Results Thread

the whole middle part is basically 'look at these disgusting savages (no, literally, they're disgusting savages)'
^^^

so it's like passion of the christ with more running

passion of the fugitive?

mostly. Mayans = Romans, Jesus = some schmuck from the wrong tribe

logan's passion

and in between there's lots of stabbing, beheading, disemboweling, etc.

you're selling me on this more than the ppl who like it, Shakey

what women want's getting my #1 vote in the romcom poll

something like that. basically, the mayans deserved to get conquered by the europeans because look at how savage and brutal they were.

Well that plays in more than one direction, doesn't it? The sense I came away with from the movie at the time (which I would need to rescreen to see if this reaction makes any sense or if I'm constructing memories based on Wikipedia summaries) is that it could be taken to mean that the Mayans would have had better luck repelling the Europeans had they not spent most of their time killing everyone around them.

There are also specific spoilery things I won't talk about since VG hasn't seen the movie that make it more ambiguous than whatever distasteful idea Mel had in mind when putting the thing together.

Ultimately, I just thought it was an enjoyable chase flick. Whatever actual violence was going on didn't even register to me as obscene or out of line; I literally have no memory of it, and you guys are talking like it's the entirety of the movie! (contrast with Bad Boys II where I very vividly remember both the bodies getting thrown out of the back of the hearse and the dude who got chopped up and put in a bin and the body parts flying all over the place during the siege on the bad guy's mansion, etc etc)

i checked the recording this morning and got as far as the epigram and was like "ohhhh boyyyy...."

This is the quote: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." - W. Durant

PS the good guys and the hero are also "savages". I didn't see it as racist.

i totally disagree that the movie is saying "look at what savages these savages were," it was a pretty faithfully researched and respectfully made movie, it took a LOT of care to not repeat cliches, if you come away thinking "disgusting savages" i think that says more about u tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_99mcINufQ

s1ocki what are u saying about dayo

Okay I've decided I will watch this. *deep sigh*

i totally disagree that the movie is saying "look at what savages these savages were," it was a pretty faithfully researched and respectfully made movie, it took a LOT of care to not repeat cliches, if you come away thinking "disgusting savages" i think that says more about u tbh

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lol like how human sacrifice was historically an aztec ritual and not a mayan one, even though the film depicted mayans?

sacrifice scene in the above clip is almost 100% bullshit - Mayans didn't rip out hearts, decapitate, and pile bodies at the bottom of pyramids fyi

mine did

This is the quote: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." - W. Durant

PS the good guys and the hero are also "savages". I didn't see it as racist.

― Unleash the Chang (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:59 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk the idea of a 'noble savage' is pretty problematic in its own right imo

Because Maya society was organised as independent city states, the local political and religious elites could independently initiate human sacrifices as they saw fit. De Landa notes that a common cause for temple sacrifices in many cities was the occurrence of "pestilences, dissensions, or droughts or the like ills". (p. 91) In such cases, slaves were usually purchased and after a variety of rituals were anointed with blue dye and either shot with arrows through the heart or held on an altar while the priest swiftly removed the heart using a ceremonial knife. In either case the heart was presented to the temple idol, which was also anointed with blood. (pp. 48–49) According to Bancroft, one tribe sacrificed illegitimate boys twice a year, again by removing the heart, but collecting the blood in a bowl and scattering it to the four cardinal compass points within the temple.

do you see how many blue bodies are piled at the bottom in that scene btw

(seriously this thread has delivered on so many levels, I can't even tell you guys)

human sacrifice - check
blue bodies - check
heat being cut out - check

hey s1ocks I'm reading the same wikipedia article and where does it mention they were thrown off of temples

it's in the 'dayo is being a big nitpicker' section

I'm not sure throwing the bodies off the temple is an offensive addition to the act of human sacrifice, if Mel just made that part up entirely.

lol I mean I like how you skipped over all the stuff that mentioned how human sacrifice was rare and not generally practiced unlike the aztecs

well mel didn't make it up - there's historical evidence for that being part of the aztec ritual, and also evidence for the aztec practicing it much more widely than the mayans. it was just convenient for mel to ascribe the aztec ritual to the mayans, why, it looks flashy and lets us know what disgusting savages the mayans were.

lol I mean I like how you skipped over all the stuff that mentioned how human sacrifice was rare and not generally practiced unlike the aztecs

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 5:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sfw if it was RARE, it happened, much like he portrayed it, movies are often about RARE EVENTS HOW OFTEN DO HOLY GRAILS GET DISCOVERED AND STOLEN BY NAZIS?!??!

The traditional view is that the Mayans were far less prolific in sacrificing people than their neighbours. Bancroft notes: "An event which in Mexico would be the death-signal to a hecatomb of human victims would in Yucatan be celebrated by the death of a spotted dog."(p. 704) But mounting archeological evidence has for many decades now supported the chroniclers' contention that human sacrifice was far from unknown in Maya society.[12][13] The city of Chichen Itza, the main focus of Maya regional power from the Late Classical period, appears to have also been a major focus of human sacrifice. There are two natural sink holes, or cenotes, at the site of the city, which would have provided a plentiful supply of potable water. The largest of these, Cenote Sagrado (also known as the Well of Sacrifice), was where many victims were cast as an offering to the rain god Chaac. A 2007 study of remains taken from this cenote found that they had wounds consistent with human sacrifice.[14]

Chaaci

guys, guys, it's just a chase movie

The traditional view is that the Mayans were far less prolific in sacrificing people than their neighbours. Bancroft notes: "An event which in Mexico would be the death-signal to a hecatomb of human victims would in Yucatan be celebrated by the death of a spotted dog."(p. 704) But mounting archeological evidence has for many decades now supported the chroniclers' contention that human sacrifice was far from unknown in Maya society.[12][13] The city of Chichen Itza, the main focus of Maya regional power from the Late Classical period, appears to have also been a major focus of human sacrifice. There are two natural sink holes, or cenotes, at the site of the city, which would have provided a plentiful supply of potable water. The largest of these, Cenote Sagrado (also known as the Well of Sacrifice), was where many victims were cast as an offering to the rain god Chaac. A 2007 study of remains taken from this cenote found that they had wounds consistent with human sacrifice.[14] They also threw them off the temple a lot.

[Citation needed]

come on, how would you get dead bodies off a temple?

man, wise up

[Citation unnecessary ]

Chaaci

Jooani loves that dude

djp <3

throughout my youth and young adulthood i have found myself often in situations where i either say to myself 'yippy kay yay motherfucker' or 'game over, man!'. top 2 otm.

man, I dunno why you would throw dead bodies into your one supply of potable water. what if they had herpes?!?

Yeah, I can't really get into badly-researched action movies. It's really lazy and it takes me right out of the movie. Like, I read that Giger did a semester abroad on LV-426, so I feel like his designs are probably pretty historically accurate. Which, in turn, informed some sick action.

everyone has herpes iirc

badly researched action movies = c'mon dude, those are usually the BEST action movies!

researched action movies = too well regarded to be thought of as action movies, get stolen by hipsters and analysed to death

Oh, so now we're belatedly talking about "Apocalypto?" I was totally expecting to hate it when I saw it, for all the obvious reasons, but I didn't hate it. Nor did I find it racist. I did find it a lot like "First Blood."

first blood...with aztecs*!

[citation needed]

I have decided I will a) watch this movie and b) never mention it again

hey I mean I liked the part where the blood squirted out of the guy's braincase just as much as everybody else, I'm just pointing out the racial politics are pretty suspect

The Mayans are the only people I'm racist against. My Aztec buddy says they can't drive.

hahaha

great poll Omar, this has been one of the best ILX poll threads imo. Worthy winner too