Mel Gibson says a fascination with ancient cultures and great civilizations is what led him to make his upcoming movie Apocalypto, starring unknown Mexican actors speaking in the Mayan tongue of Yucateco.
"What I'm doing is making an action-adventure film of mythic proportions," Gibson, sporting a plaid flannel shirt, jeans and a long salt-and pepper beard, told a news conference Friday. The movie is scheduled to begin production November 14 and will be shot almost entirely in the jungle of Mexico's Veracruz state.
Apocalypto will be light on dialogue and heavy on images and action. It's set 600 years ago, prior to the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America.
Gibson wrote and will direct the film, which he describes as "a story about a man and his woman, his child and his father, his community," adding that the man "is put in an incredibly heightened, stressful situation ... has to overcome tremendous obstacles. So it's a universal story in that respect."
The film's title, Apocalypto, a Greek word for an unveiling or new beginning, "just expresses so well that I want to convey," Gibson said. "I think it's just a universal word. In order for something to begin, something has to end. All of those elements are involved. But it's not a big doomsday picture or anything like that.
Yeah.