Gibson's deep, deep thoughts

An Exclusive Interview with Mr. Mel Gibson!ComingSoon.net: You've said that you made this movie to "entertain, educate and lift to a higher plane of awareness." That last one's kind of a lofty goal, so is that a good reason to make a movie nowadays?

Mel Gibson: I think if you can do all three of those things, you're kind of firing on all cylinders. Whether or not I actually achieved it is up to an audience member to extrapolate. From my sensibilities, I did, but those are only my perceptions.

CS: What was it about the Mayan people or that era that got you interested in trying something like this?

Gibson: Well, no, it wasn't that. At first, I was just trying to make a chase film, but I wanted to make it a chase film that didn't have automobiles, so I thought of a foot chase. And I thought, "Well, where would you have a foot chase? You'd have a foot chase in some place that was a long time ago. And let me see, where can that be? Oh, this is interesting. No one's really looked at this much before. And what's more interesting is that the civilization dates back to millennia before the Europeans arrived." And that to me, musing on what might have happened before Europe arrived—because we have this conceit that history began when we got here--I thought that was interesting. Most people do it when the boats arrive, and then the fun starts, but I wanted to do it the other way around, and look what was before all that.Comment:  So Gibson was trying to "educate" us with a message about the fall of civilization. And his reasons for choosing the Maya were about as shallow as you'd suspect.