"Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto": two-fer review

[WARNING: spoilers.]

I recently rewatched "Dragonslayer" and sort-of rewatched "Apocalypto." I say "sort of" because I'd seen parts of it years ago, and I somehow misremembered that I'd seen all of it. When I rewatched "Apocalypto," I had only recently rewatched "Dragonslayer," and I initially thought that the two movies had nothing in common. But as I thought more about them, I realized they actually have some important themes and qualities in common. After reviewing both films, I'll discuss what I mean.

Dragonslayer

Peter MacNicol as Galen Bradwarden and Caitlin Clarke as Valerian

1981's "Dragonslayer" is directed by Matthew Robbins (the only film he's directed that I've seen) and stars a very young Peter MacNicol, Caitlin Clarke (on whom I immediately developed a puppy-love crush... I was barely out of elementary school in 1981), Sir Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, Peter Eyre, Albert Salmi, Sydney Bromley, and Emrys James. 

The story takes place in a somewhat fictionalized version of Europe, first in a remote, local setting called Cragganmore (in my youth, I heard this as "Krakenmoor," which still sounds cooler to me)—an old fortress across the water where the aging sorcerer Ulrich lives with his ancient and constantly carping servant Hodge (Bromley) and his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden (MacNicol)—then in the larger kingdom of Urland, ruled over by King Casiodorus (Eyre). Urland is being terrorized by the last of the dragons, an old beast named Vermithrax Pejorative, grown angry and spiteful in her old age and "constant pain." To stop the dragon from burning the cities and villages of his kingdom, Casiodorus has made a pact with Vermithrax: twice a year, at the spring and fall equinoxes, all the virgins are gathered in one place, and one virgin's name is drawn by lottery. She is then chained up, wheeled over to the dragon's lair, and left to die. This has been a more or less satisfactory arrangement for the dragon and for the king, but not for the kingdom's young daughters, who have known the terror of the lottery for years. As the story begins, a delegation of villagers, led by a young boy named Valerian (Clarke) and without the king's knowledge, has arrived at Cragganmore to ask Ulrich—last of the sorcerers—to use his powers to destroy Vermithrax—seemingly the last of the dragons—and save the kingdom's daughters. Ulrich, at first taken aback by the sight of one of the dragon's teeth, is hesitant at first, but he decides to help. The following morning, as he's about to leave, Galen expresses doubt that Ulrich can walk even a league given his age. At the same time, a knight arrives: Tyrian (Hallam, and not Tyrion as in Lannister), smug and insouciant. Tyrian is obviously here to stop anyone from undermining the king's lottery, but he takes a different tack, expressing doubts about Ulrich's magical capabilities and demanding a test of his power. This is the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the simultaneous rise of Christianity and pre-Renaissance skepticism. Ulrich gives Tyrian a dagger and invites the knight to stab him in the chest, smiling while avowing, "Don't worry: You can't hurt me." Tyrian delivers the blow; Ulrich stares meaningfully into the distance, blinks a few times, then collapses and dies. Tyrian leaves in sneering disgust; Galen and Hodge, crestfallen, cremate their master and gather his ashes into a leather pouch.

What follows is a clever adventure leavened with moments of humor, romance, and tragedy as Galen discovers Valerian is actually a woman (a virgin disguised by her father as a boy to protect her from the lottery), King Casiodorus's kind daughter Elspeth (Chloe Salaman) discovers she has been protected from participating in the lottery, and Christianity in the form of a priest (Ian McDiarmid, the Emperor himself!) comes to the villages of Urland to preach the holy word and attempt to banish the dragon through prayer. The priest gains a strong convert named Greil (Salmi). Galen also learns that Ulrich, knowing he was too weak to make the journey to the dragon's lair, had planned his own death; this results in a surprising (but only temporary) magical resurrection and a final duel with Vermithrax, whose three offspring Galen, armed with a magical spear given to him by Valerian's father (James), manages to kill.

"Dragonslayer" has a surprising amount of blood and partial nudity for what is technically a Disney film (this was back when Disney was more daring in its live-action efforts; the movie was co-produced with Paramount). In the scene where Galen discovers Valerian is a woman, we get some from-behind nude shots of both Galen and Valerian. We also see multiple people being burned alive by the dragon. When one virgin is killed by the dragon's offspring inside the beast's cave, we witness the unsettling vision of one of the babies gnawing at a human leg right at the shin—and the body's foot, nearly chewed off, is moving loosely on its own, suggesting the baby has already made it through the bone. I first saw this movie in a theater in 1981 back when I was eleven or twelve; the sight of that girl's foot about to come off was seared into my brain. When Galen belatedly appears beside the girl's corpse with his magical spear, Sicarius Dracorum ("Dragonslayer"), he stabs and beheads two of the three reptilian offspring before beating the final one to death with a torch. The whole thing is bloody and visceral, and I haven't even gotten to Galen's desperate fight with Tyrian, which ends with a vicious stab to the gut. There must have been a time, long ago, when dragons ruled the air, sorcerers cast their spells, and Disney movies had balls.

The movie's story and script have held up well over time. The cleverness of Ulrich's plan is a major plot element. This being a 1981 production, Valerian—especially once she reveals to her whole village that she's a woman—comes off as feminine without being a man-hating girl-boss. She also plays a crucial role in Galen's ability to survive his first direct encounter with Vermithrax: Valerian makes a shield out of dragon scales, which is enough to protect Galen from most of the dragon's fiery fury. Ulrich, whom we see at the movie's beginning and end, is smartly written and characterized, as are both Galen and Valerian, who each have their own arcs to follow. Galen, who had arrogated to himself the role of "master" upon Ulrich's death, has to learn important lessons about humility and the wielding of power; Valerian meanwhile, transitions from young man to young woman but has to retain the inner strength she had gained while in the guise of a boy. And lurking in the background is the mysterious or ironic role of Christianity: as dragons and wizards kill each other off, a new age is about to begin, and could it truly be that the last wizards on Earth were, in some way, instruments of God facing off against the last dragon? Early on, Ulrich remarks to Valerian that there would be no dragons were it not for wizards, i.e., dragons are magical in origin. Perhaps on a metaphysical level, dragons and wizards are are kind of matter and antimatter: twinned and separate, but bring them together, and they annihilate each other. The story seems to suggest that magic lives on and is woven into the pagan fabric of this fictional version of western Europe (I assume this is meant to be early Europe despite Galen's and Valerian's American accents).

But as satisfying as "Dragonslayer" is, it isn't without its flaws. It's implied that Ulrich's Cragganmore lies outside of the kingdom of Urland, but Tyrian, an authority within Urland, strays outside to visit Ulrich at his keep. (I suppose the answer to that conundrum could be that Tyrian, being arrogant, feels that his authority extends as far as his ego.) Vermithrax, we know, is old and bitter and in pain. We also infer she's a she thanks to her offspring (so perhaps there was a male dragon sometime in her past... unless being a magical creature means parthenogenesis, even when elderly). But almost everything we learn about the dragon's personality and her pact with Urland's king comes to us through exposition, i.e., through the mouths of the human characters. Unlike Peter Jackson's wonderful rendition of Smaug (maybe the best thing about the Hobbit trilogy), Vermithrax doesn't talk, so there's little chance to develop her further as a character. In fact, how did Vermithrax get the name Vermithrax? That's a name that isn't pronounceable by a dragon's speech organs (at least in this universe; Smaug was capable of human speech); it can only be said by humans. And who named her? A wizard? An antecedent dragon? I would also like to have seen more about Christianity's conflict with local paganism and sorcery. I gather that, as depictions of the Dark Ages go, the movie mixed and matched several primitive historical eras, with ambiance being more important than accuracy. Some of the minor characters, like Tyrion and Hodge, could have used a bit more development, but I imagine the film would have become too long had the director chosen to weave in more details. And for a movie about magic, there weren't nearly enough "vulgar displays of power" for my taste. Most of the fireworks come at the very end.

The special effects also mostly hold up, but to use the terminology of today's Millennials and Zoomers, some of the VFX are, by today's standards, janky. The film was one of the first to use a then-new technique called go-motion, which meant photographing robotically controlled moving models and adding blur to create smoother, more realistic creature movements (unlike stop-motion, which involves photographing unmoving-but-adjustable miniatures). Still, certain flame effects and model effects could stand to be improved through the subtle use of modern CGI. Many of the film's practical effects, though, still hold up fairly well. When we first encounter Vermithrax, we initially see her only partially—a heavy tail here, an enormous talon there, giant horns on a face obscured by some foreground object. It's a lot like a horror-movie buildup, and we don't get the full reveal of the dragon until we're about two-thirds of the way through the story. Nowadays, especially after "Game of Thrones," I think we take animated dragons for granted, but back in 1981, this was top-of-the-line animation. Even by today's standards, it's impressive and beautiful if not entirely smooth.

I also tip my hat to composer Alex North, a fifteen-time Oscar nominee. His score for this movie is wild and all over the place, ranging from dramatic and operatic to lightly whimsical during humorous moments. His leitmotifs for the dragon evoke mystery, awe, and horror; his soundtrack for ceremonies and kingly pomp and circumstance evoke the primitivity of the Dark Ages. I have to sit my brother Sean down to listen to North's score: Sean is a professional cellist with unconventional tastes; I imagine he'd either love North's score or hate it.

Watching "Dragonslayer" again after so many years brought back fond memories. I recalled my crush on beautiful, winsome actress Caitlin Clarke, who died at age 52 of ovarian cancer. I was weirdly saddened by that news despite not knowing a thing about the actress—her true character, her individual quirks, her other performances (she did a lot of stage work and also taught acting toward the end). It was amusing to see Peter MacNicol back when he was young; I think I remember him best as the boss who occasionally stuttered like Porky Pig on "Ally McBeal." I don't recall ever seeing Sir Ralph Richardson in any other production (scratch that: he was apparently in "Dr. Zhivago," which I did see ages and ages ago), but he carried himself in the manner of a classically trained Shakespearean actor.

And this is going to sound strange, but as I was watching "Dragonslayer" this time around, I realized that the movie's cinematography—the lighting, the landscapes, the panoramas—perfectly matched my mental image of what author Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Land" must look like in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant trilogies. If anything, "Dragonslayer" influenced how I imagined The Land since I didn't start reading Donaldson until I was in junior high. The movie came out in June of '81; I started junior high later that year, in September, and began reading Donaldson soon after.

All in all, the flaws I mentioned above are relatively minor, and I happily recommend this movie to anyone who'll listen. Given the jankiness of the special effects by today's standards, I understand if younger audiences don't get into the movie. But for us old farts, "Dragonslayer" is a smart, exciting adventure with a very interesting twist and a huge, menacing enemy. It's also a bit of a throwback to a time before political correctness and wokeness ruined the moviegoing experience. Women in this movie (except for Vermithrax) are beautifully feminine, strong without being insecure nut-cutters; the dragon isn't some tragically misunderstood beast but a truly evil entity. Some of the male characters are physically weak, but they find reserves of inner strength, and the story—with the arrival of Christianity as its backdrop—is smart enough not to be the typical, formulaic hero's journey. Go see this movie.

Apocalypto

L to R: Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), Curl Nose (Amílcar Ramírez), and Blunted (Jonathan Brewer)

Mel Gibson's 2006 "Apocalypto" stars Rudy Youngblood, Raoul Trujillo, Mayra Sérbulo, Dalia Hernández, Gerardo Taracena, Jonathan Brewer, Rodolfo Palacios, Bernardo Ruiz Juarez, Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza, Ricardo Diaz Mendoza, and Israel Contreras. Set in what is arguably a fictitious period of history when Mayan civilization is collapsing and the conquistadores are only just arriving, the story centers on Jaguar Paw (Youngblood), son of his tribe's chieftain, and his pregnant wife Seven (Hernández) as they fight for survival after a rival tribe invades and captures the men, who are to become slaves, playthings, or sacrifices for the Mayan capital. Jaguar Paw manages to escape the capital, and the rest of the movie is a chase led by Holcane warrior Zero Wolf (Trujillo).

The story begins in the jungle with a hunt for a tapir. We quickly establish that Jaguar Paw is a skilled hunter, and his best friend Blunted (Brewer) has some problem preventing him from impregnating his wife (one possibility is what we, in modern times, would call "shooting blanks"; another possibility, not faced in the story, is that his wife is incapable of getting pregnant). Blunted's inability in this area makes him the butt of the tribe's jokes; even the chieftain Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead) pulls good-natured pranks on Blunted. The village is primitive but generally at peace, hunting the jungle for resources and living life day by day. One day, though, the fearful members of another tribe come stumbling through, creating unease among Jaguar Paw's people. And soon after, a raiding party of Holcane warriors appears and plunders the village, which they burn. One psychotic Holcane warrior, Middle Eye (Taracena), kills Flint Sky in front of Jaguar Paw. Jaguar Paw manages to hide his pregnant wife Seven and his son Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Báez) in a deep pit before being taken away by the Holcane.

The story now splits between Jaguar Paw's captivity and Seven's struggle to (1) figure a way out of the pit, (2) take care of Turtles Run, and (3) handle her incoming baby as she begins to go into labor. Jaguar Paw and his fellow captive villagers, meanwhile, are led through the Mayan capital, with its bustling markets, its putrid construction areas denuded of vegetation and running with filth, and finally the city's immense central temple, where the captured men are hand-painted with blue dye and led up to the temple's top tier to be sacrificed. In a harrowing scene, two of Jaguar Paw's fellow villagers are laid face-up upon a sacrificial stone; their hearts are removed by the priest, and their heads are cut off and cast down the temple's front steps to the waiting, cheering crowd below, followed by their now-headless bodies. Jaguar Paw is next in line to be sacrificed, but a solar eclipse darkens the sky, and the priest declares that the gods are pleased with the sacrifices that have already been done. The rest of the prisoners are taken to a nearby field where they will be subjected to a cruel game: run across the dirt to the tall vegetation at the field's far end without getting hit by stones, arrows, and spears, and make it past the "finisher," Zero Wolf's son Cut Rock (Mendoza), who stands ready to bring down anyone who makes it to the far side of the field. If they manage that, they are free. Meanwhile, still in the pit, Seven has to kill a predator that accidentally falls in, and all her attempts at climbing out end in failure (the vine that had let her descend into the pit had been cut by a Holcane warrior who didn't see her at the pit's bottom). Heavy rains come, and Seven gives birth as the pit fills with water. As the water rises, she and her son are naturally buoyed closer to the pit's edge. Jaguar Paw watches several of his friends die in the cruel field-crossing game, and his friend Blunted is mortally wounded. When Jaguar Paw's turn to run comes up, he evades every projectile but is struck in the side by Zero Wolf's well-aimed arrow. Cut Rock closes in to finish him, but Blunted, still alive, grabs Cut Rock's ankle while Jaguar Paw stabs Cut Rock in the throat. Zero Wolf is furious that his son has just been killed, and the chase is on: Jaguar Paw leaves Blunted's corpse behind and runs full-tilt into the jungle, Zero Wolf and his warriors—including the psychotic Middle Eye—in pursuit.

"Apocalypto" works as a chase movie, but like other "historical" efforts that Gibson has been involved with ("Braveheart," which he directed and starred in; and "The Patriot," which he starred in), it fails miserably in terms of accuracy, freely borrowing from various periods of Central and South American history, taking gross liberties with late-Mayan "post-classical" village and city architecture, and perhaps most egregiously, utterly flubbing the timeline for the arrival of smallpox and the arrival of seagoing Europeans. So "Apocalypto" should be viewed as a metaphor or a fairy tale, but not as anything remotely accurate—this despite Gibson's claim to have roped in a whole team of professors and historians to make sure he was more or less on track. YouTuber Nick Hodges, who runs the channel History Buffs, had some choice, loud, angry words for Gibson's film, which he saw as complete trash from a historian's perspective, sloppily playing fast and loose with the facts and largely confusing Mayan civilization with Aztec. Meanwhile, the prestigious Motion Picture Academy nominated the movie for three Oscars (makeup, sound editing, sound mixing), and prominent personalities as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Edward James Olmos heaped effusive praise on Gibson's effort. The movie is also immersive, Gibson claims, because it's entirely in Yucatec Mayan: there is no English to be heard anywhere.

On the level of mythology, one of the major themes of "Apocalypto" is the tidal nature of creation and destruction, of beginnings and endings and new beginnings. Jaguar Paw's village life is overturned when the marauding Holcane warriors arrive; his wife Seven's life enters a new phase with the birth of her second child; all of the natives' lives are changed when they sight the first Europeans landing on their shores, bring foreign culture, greed, and new diseases. Wave upon wave of destruction and creation, of endings and beginnings, infuse this tense story with the rhythm of labored breathing. Gibson and his team did research on creation stories like the Popol Vuh (see here and here) to gain a sense of this cosmic rhythm. There might almost be something of mythological value in Gibson's tale that goes beyond all the pierced guts, severed heads, and bashed-in skulls.

At the time the movie came out, Gibson had been dealing with alcohol-related scandals, so he was already on the outs with certain reviewers. Some critics went so far as to accuse Gibson's film of being a white man's twisted fantasy about brown-skinned civilization. To say this, though, requires one to cherry-pick the data, to deliberately ignore the parts of the movie that show humanity, nobility, gentleness, humor, love, wit, and civilization. "Apocalypto" might feel like a relentless parade of barbarity, and on a certain level, that's what it is. But Gibson is smart enough, as a filmmaker, to infuse the movie with deeper themes and complexity than a mere prolonged chase scene can provide.

In the end, I would call "Apocalypto" both watchable and rewatchable. While it's not even close to being the greatest film I've ever seen, nor is it even close to being one of Gibson's best-directed films, it's still a very good film on its own terms, i.e., as entertainment, not as history. Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw conveys determination and desperation; both Raoul Trujillo as Zero Wolf and Gerardo Taracena as Middle Eye are positively scary villains. What the movie lacks in historical accuracy it makes up for in sheer grit and gore. Watch and feel.

Discussion

I had originally thought that, in reviewing "Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto" in a single, two-fer review, I would be dealing with two films that had nothing in common. But as I pondered both stories, I began to realize that they do, in fact, have certain elements in common.

Take the matter of the solar eclipse, which appears in both movies. In "Dragonslayer," the resurrected Ulrich's final fight with the dragon takes place during a solar eclipse, a cosmic sign that would have been saturated with meaning in pagan Europe. By the time the eclipse is over, Vermithrax is dead, having titanically plunged into a lake. In "Apocalypto," the ritual human sacrifices stop when the eclipse happens. A cynical moment passes between the high priest and the watchful king, who quietly nod to each other; both know the solar and lunar calendars (the Mayans, as we know from their complex calendars, were experts at tracking celestial movements), so they know how to time their rituals and what ritual words to use to convince the masses of their power and their association with the sun-deity. While "Apocalypto" is by far the bloodier of the two films, neither film shies away from bloodshed as a necessary part of existence and the maintenance of social order. Central to both stories is the significance of human sacrifice: in Galen Bradwarden's world, virgin sacrifice directly results in the appeasement of the dragon. In the world of "Apocalypto," the eclipse symbolizes the propitiation of the gods, who use the sky to signal that, today, they require no more sacrifices. Both stories also feature the arrival in force of Christianity. While Christianity appears weak and vain (but subtly powerful?) in "Dragonslayer," it is implied to be a much more powerful and sinister force at the very end of "Apocalypto."

But "Dragonslayer" does something at the tail end of its story that undermines Christianity's arrival. As Galen and Valerian walk away from Valerian's village to start a new life together, Galen moans that he wishes they had a horse. And a horse appears! Galen's amulet, inherited from Ulrich and important at the start of the film, has been destroyed by the end of the movie as the way to kill Vermithrax. Yet despite Galen's destruction of the amulet and his abandonment of Cragganmore—still full of Ulrich's magical items—Galen himself still retains some magic within him. There is still magic in the world. The dragon's death doesn't signal the end. And while "Dragonslayer" is a work of fantasy fiction, a historical point is being made: Europe to this day is the ground on which many ancients forces continue to contend, from Christianity to magical paganism to rational skepticism. In the New World of "Apocalypto," Jaguar Paw has several visions of the future and at a guess, these visions will continue. But now that Christianity has arrived on foreign shores, his visions will be subsumed under the Christian label of prophecy as a new worldview comes to take over the old.

So both of these movies are about beginnings and endings. They are also at least tangentially about clashes in fundamental worldviews, with the Christian worldview on the precipice of taking over large chunks of the world. Maybe the universes of "Dragonslayer" and "Apocalypto" aren't as far apart as they might seem at first.