End Times-era Moviemaking

I never could bring myself to watch Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. And I’m afraid that now, after doing just a hair of research, I feel much the same about Gibson’s latest project, Apocalypto. No Fin de los Tiempos for me, thanks. A short history of my apocalypse fears: As a little Catholic kid, steeped in the traditions of mysticism (and unquestioning faith), I feared for the world based upon one of my older cousin’s prediction that Ronald Wilson Regan was the anti-Christ. Note that there are six letters in each of his three names, said the cousin. Ronald Reagan was to bring about the end of the world on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of his presidency. My math might have been a little off, but I recall that I was quaking in my Roos on June 6, 1986. And years later, I all but hid on my closet in New Year’s Eve 2000.

In any case, this latest Gibson flick takes inspiration from the fact that various biblical texts are in agreement with the old Mayan belief that the big end-all will take place on December 21, 2012, when, coincidentally, the earth and sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy. There’s a free preview of Apocalypto tonight at Oak Street Cinema, if you’re into this sort of thing.


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