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In order to defend Mel from his critics, the Mel's underlying theme had to be pointed out. Critics claimed that Mel was, among other things, a violence junky using Mayans to essentially make a slasher flick with no theme. I pointed out in my previous posts that Mel was making a point - that the Mayans represented the culture of death and the Spanish Christians arriving symbolized the culture of life - i.e. Western civilization, Christianity, and sanity. This is not a popular position among liberals. To bring out this point, the end of the movie had to be discussed and sums up my defence of Mel, where, inadvertently, Spanish Christians saved Jaguar Paws life.

When one is debating and defending the theme of the movie on Freerepublic - some parts of the movie may be exposed. I think I've shown part of Mel's motivation for making this movie - having a contrast between the Mayan culture of death and Western culture and Christianity.

Well, I noticed right away the iron cross, the metal helmets.

The two Mayans forgot about Jaquar Paw...they were so taken by the 3 "giant" boats and white men.

It would like you and I witnessing a flying saucer land and aliens disembarking.

Suddenly, killing Jaquar Paw was not important to them.

And the Jesuits taught me that the Aztecs were brutally defeated and killed as savages by Cortez & Associates, Inc..

Even the Spaniards knew that you have to kill a lot of people before you can 'save' them...if you get my drift.

Your reply is pseudo-intellectual snobbishness and of no defense. Others have made the same point without giving away the ending. You are of the ilk that gleefully goes around telling others the ending of movies so others will think you are in the know. It makes one feel important and that you know something others don't. Most are through with that after high school.

Reviewers accomplish the same thing, but they don't feel a need to give away the ending. They have the ability to communicate without resorting to ruining the movie for others. Yes, you have ruined the movie for me.

I think too much is read into the arrival of the Spaniards. The movie really does not depict whether the Spaniards are good or evil. It just depicts them as arriving.

The more noticeable message was that of the "Noble Savage" being corrupted by civilization, in this case, Mayan civilization. For example, the forest tribe village life was depicted as one notch short of idyllic, while evidence of environmental pollution and its afteraffects on nature and humans were depicted substantially and repeatedly. In addition, there were depictions of many kinds of vice that civilization brought. Beyond this, I think at least some folks believe that Mayan civilization was in decline in the 1400s and early 1500s, with a lot of civil war in addition to or as a result of the posited negative effects of depleting the topsoil through excessive agriculture (note: I am not a historian so my views of Mayan history might be off).

So I think the message was more conventional and more politically correct than most others seem to. I saw it as somewhat of a departure from his immediately previous films in this regard. The message is that Western civilization could be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the decadent Mayan civilization if it does not learn from them. This is for me what the Durant quote at the beginning of the film seemed to portend to the viewer...