There are few post-911 filmmakers as deranged and affected as Mel Gibson. It felt as if he had lost it completely after ‘Passion of the Christ’, but instead he found the means to articulate his bloodlust in the high-flying style, breaking with the adage of ‘first time tragedy, second time farce.’ 

Instead Mel Gibson pursued his visions of ritual blood and sacrifice to a transcendent end. Apocalypto. One of the most significant visions of historical fantasy to materialize since ‘Caligula’.…

I really don’t get this guy. Every project involves a meta-commentary on a different genre, but with nothing more than a ‘wink-wink, I know what story I’m telling’ degree of subtlety. In this case, I have no idea how this self-reflexivity serves the viewer. It’s not clumsy necessarily. It’s more like empty calories. Some really unfortunate wheel-spinning with some real talent. There was even a meta-‘Thanksgiving’ (the release date) happening with the family members having a generic Trump era political…

Watching this in 2019 and I feel just as ‘seen’ as I did in 2006. That’s how good science-fiction hits. You feel all of the sudden that you are being watched. That your moment in time is being viewed remotely through some alien lens. LeGuin said it best: good SF describes the present. 

But guess what? The fact that the experience of this film is NO different than it was in 2006 (except I now see that Danny Huston sucks…

This film attempts to deal with two major modern crises: masculinity and empire. And so it’s fitting that the two main characters are American and British. It could very well be a psyop to coddle the wounded pride of both nations. I guess you could include Italy in there as well. 

The result is a Cold War-Space Race thriller re-skinned with auto manufacturers. Replace the the tedious group-think and bureaucracy of NASA/Government with Ford. Meanwhile the Ferrari Team, who we…