FLASHBACK FRIDAYS: Apocalypto (2006)

In the waning days of the Mayan empire, one man will stop at nothing to save his family.

Jaguar Paw leads a simple hunter-gatherer life among his fellow Mayan villagers, providing for his pregnant wife, Seven and toddler son Turtles Run. While hunting with his father and some friends, Jaguar Paw becomes alarmed when the group stumbles upon a group of impoverished villagers seeking “a new beginning” as they pass through the jungle. However, Jaguar Paw’s father, Flint Sky, encourages his son to not let the “sickness” of fear affect him.

The next morning, Jaguar Paw’s village is ransacked by a group of vicious warriors, led by the fierce Zero Wolf and the sadistic Middle Eye. Jaguar Paw evades his captors at first, hiding his wife and son in an empty well before eventually being knocked unconscious. In the ensuing fracas, Flint Sky is killed in front of his son, while Jaguar Paw and his fellow male villagers are tied up and forced to march to the city. The women and children are either killed, violated or left to starve.

En route to the great Mayan city, the captors view numerous disturbing sights, including deforested crops, destitute, plague-infested populations and greedy merchants. Upon their arrival to the city, Jaguar Paw & Co. discover that they are to be sacrificed to the gods, but after a sudden solar eclipse, their fate is suspended. Eventually, Jaguar Paw escapes and leads his captors on a pulse-pounding journey through the jungle as he attempts to go back home and save his family.

Apocalypto is an unusual film in more ways than one. It came out in 2006 — a perfect time for me. At the time, I was a 13-year-old in Virginia who was first seriously considering a career in the movies, and this action-adventure film was one of the first that really opened my eyes to what the power of film was and what it could do. It also helped that it was a foreign language film; to a kid growing up in a largely homogenous small city, it was a window into a whole new world.

Part 1: Background and Context

Apocalypto was actor/director Mel Gibson’s first movie after his controversial, record-breaking religious epic The Passion of the Christ in 2004 — but apart from the “foreign language film” branding, Apocalypto was a much different movie. The Passion was an independent film largely financed by Gibson’s own Icon Productions; meanwhile, Apocalypto was a $40 million production released by Disney subsidiary Touchstone Pictures.

Although the violence, torture and alleged anti-Semitism in The Passion of the Christ drew significant detractors, others admired Gibson’s film purely as a daring artistic endeavor. The Passion smashed nearly every box office record for an R-rated film or a religious film, grossed $625 million worldwide and received three Academy Award nominations. It received acclaim from both Protestants and Gibson’s fellow Catholics, opened up a larger landscape for realistic Biblical epics and gave Gibson renewed clout after nearly a decade away from the director’s chair.

So how do you follow up that?

Any foreign language film is a gamble for American audiences. Perhaps no one other than Gibson would be able to pull off back-to-back epic films featuring unknown actors speaking dead languages.

Gibson directed Apocalypto on the heels of his record-breaking religious epic The Passion of the Christ.

“I think hearing a different language allows the audience to completely suspend their own reality and get drawn into the world of the film,” the director stated. “And more importantly, this also puts the emphasis on the cinematic visuals, which are a kind of universal language of the heart.”

Filmed mostly in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico and featuring a completely unknown cast of Native American and Hispanic actors, Apocalypto was non-traditional in a variety of ways. Nonetheless, it’s a deceptively simple story — an action/adventure flick about a guy who gets kidnapped, eludes his fate as a potential human sacrifice, and sprints back to the forest to search for his family. It’s a cat-and-mouse chase film with no sci-fi effects, explosions or cliches.

A pivotal scene in the film’s chase sequence. Left to right: actors Gerardo Taracena, Carlos Ramos, Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza, Raoul Trujillo, Richard Can and Rodolfo Palacios.

Part 2: Filmmaking Influences & Story Development

The roots of Apocalypto began to blossom largely thanks to Gibson’s unlikely partnership with Farhad Safinia, an Englishman who worked on post-production of The Passion. The two men immediately bonded over their mutual love of storytelling, and both Gibson and Safinia said that they wanted to make a high-quality action film with no CGI or complicated effects.

“We wanted to update the chase genre by not updating it with technology or machinery, but stripping it down to its most intense form: which is a man running for his life, and at the same time, getting back to something that matters to him,” Safinia said.

In addition to his and Safinia’s desire to make an old-school chase movie, Gibson also said that he wanted the film to explore pre-Columbian civilizations and why they fell. Just like The Passion, Apocalypto features no opening credits and includes a singular quote, in this case from Will Durant: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Farhad Safinia co-wrote the script with Gibson and also co-produced alongside Gibson’s longtime producing partner, Bruce Davey.

Gibson and Safinia considered doing a film about the Aztecs, but ultimately opted for the Mayans. “You can choose a civilization that is bloodthirsty, or you can show the Maya civilization that was so sophisticated — with an immense knowledge of medicine, science, archaeology and engineering — but also be able to illuminate the brutal undercurrent and ritual savagery that they practiced. It was a far more interesting world to explore why and what happened to them,” remarked Safinia.

Gibson and Safinia used several Mayan holy books, including the Popul Vuh, to give them historical and creative inspiration for the screenwriting process. They also examined accounts of Spanish conquistadors, who described the Maya in their journals.

The two men did a wide variety of location scouting during pre-production. They initially looked at jungles in Guatemala and Costa Rica before switching course and choosing to film in the Yucatán Peninsula. Most filming was conducted in the state of Veracruz, specifically the areas surrounding San Andrés Tuxtla, Paso de Ovejas and Catemaco.

While Gibson’s vision of the pre-Columbian Americas is undeniably intriguing (helped by some stunning cinematography), this is still an adrenaline-pumping action film at its heart. The real influence behind Apocalypto‘s brilliance might actually be George Miller — the acclaimed Australian filmmaker who first brought Gibson to prominence as an actor with the Mad Max trilogy. Gibson’s directorial style is very similar to Miller’s, with lots of on-screen violence, minimal dialogue and gorgeous images to boot. And that’s not the only connection: Apocalypto director of photography Dean Semler, one of the most acclaimed cinematographers in the industry, worked with Gibson, a fellow Aussie, on Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in 1981. The way Gibson cranks up the suspense and violence in the film really feels like a throwback to the ’80s heyday of Miller.

As strange as it may sound, Apocalypto also feels like a culmination of many of Gibson’s career highlights. A suspenseful chase film with minimal dialogue (Mad Max). A historical, albeit somewhat inaccurate, portrayal of a real moment in history (Braveheart). And, of course, a film entirely in a dead language (The Passion).

While the brutality of human sacrifice is a harrowing and visually stimulating spectacle, the subsequent chase sequences are truly epic and need to be seen to be believed. But even the drawn-out prelude to the sacrifice scene — where Jaguar Paw and his friends see the decay and disrepair of the once-great Mayan city — is exquisitely shot by Semler and builds the tension up while once again using dialogue sparingly.

Leading man Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw. Youngblood is from an Indigenous dance and music background and is also experienced in cross country running and boxing. A native of Belton, Texas, Youngblood is of Cree, Comanche and Yaqui ancestry.

Part 3: Non-Actors Acting

The acting is excellent, especially considering that they’re all completely unknown. Lead actor Rudy Youngblood, a Native American from Belton, Texas, has the physical build of an action star in addition to a great mix of raw charisma and vulnerability. Dalia Hernandez — in her film debut as Jaguar Paw’s wife, Seven — has an innocent look to her that makes her experiences in the film all the more harrowing and intense. Gibson explicitly said that he had to consider character archetypes and facial structures when he auditioned these inexperienced actors — as opposed to simply talent alone — and he thought that Youngblood had a convincingly heroic look to him. Youngblood was a high school track and field star who also had experience in boxing and traditional Native dance prior to becoming an actor. He performed all of his own stunts in the film.

Jonathan Brewer and Morris Birdyellowhead are two other actors who shine in brief but pivotal roles: Birdyellowhead as Jaguar Paw’s father, Flint Sky, and Brewer as Blunted, a friend of Jaguar Paw’s who’s frequently the subject of locker-room jokes due to impotency issues with his wife. While Blunted makes for good comic relief early on in the film, he’s also a loyal friend who is there for Jaguar Paw until the very end. Meanwhile, Flint Sky’s wisdom provides a guiding light for his son that permeates throughout the film. Both Brewer and Birdyellowhead are First Nations actors from Alberta, Canada.

Apocalypto has a murderer’s row of intimidating villains, highlighted by Raoul Trujillo and Gerardo Taracena, who play lead villain Zero Wolf and his second-in-command, Middle Eye, respectively. These two actors really shine, using subtle expressions and non-verbal cues to send menacing messages, particularly in the latter half of the film when their fellow warriors start biting the dust.

Based on how consistently good the acting is in Apocalypto, it’s hard to tell who’s relatively experienced and who isn’t, but Trujillo and Taracena were actually some of the more veteran actors on set. Taracena had a brief role in the 2005 Denzel Washington action flick Man on Fire, while Trujillo, a Native American from Taos, New Mexico, was an experienced actor, painter and traditional dancer before being cast in Apocalypto. A handful of other Mexican character actors also rounded out the cast, including Mayra Serbulo, Israel Contreras, Ricardo Diaz Mendoza, Fernando Hernandez, Carlos Ramos and Marco Antonio Argueta.

These actors were put through the ringer, filming in dense Mexican jungles and also learning a new language from scratch for the film. As mentioned before, Apocalypto‘s dialogue is entirely in the Yucatec Mayan language, accompanied by English subtitles.

A group of Mayan nobles gather for the pivotal human sacrifice halfway through the film.

Part 4: Historical and Academic Influences

“Maya civilization in the Central Area reached its full glory in the early eighth century, but it must have contained the seeds of its own destruction,” says archaeologist Michael Coe. “In the century and a half that followed, all its magnificent cities had fallen into decline and ultimately suffered abandonment. This was surely one of the most profound social and demographic catastrophes of all human history.”

True enough, we still don’t actually know exactly what happened to the Mayans before the Spanish conquest, and there are many theories out there.

At its height, the Mayans occupied most of southeastern Mexico in addition to Guatemala, Belize, and parts of El Salvador and Honduras. The Mayan civilization itself can be broken down into pre-Classic, Classic and post-Classic periods. The post-Classic Maya period (roughly 950-1530 AD) was basically the beginning of the end. Various cities were conquered by Europeans or by neighboring tribes. Some once-great Mayan cities were abandoned, and yet others continued to thrive only a few miles away. While Europeans made first contact with the Maya in 1511, the last Mayan city, Nojpetén, didn’t fall until 1697. There was even a tribe, the Lacandón people, who vanished into the jungle and lived completely uncontacted and unmolested until the 1920s!

Many experts believe that it was environmental problems — including drought, deforestation, or famine — that did these people in. Or maybe it was all of the above. But Apocalypto also hints at many other factors, not the least of which were widespread slavery, vicious human sacrifice, power-hungry leaders, vicious tribal infighting and excessive consumerism.

According to Gibson, the themes of Apocalypto aren’t necessarily specific to the decline of the Mayan culture and include relevant comparisons to modern day countries and peoples.

“It was important for me to make that parallel because you see these cycles repeating themselves over and over again,” Gibson said. “People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we’re susceptible to the same forces – and we are also capable of the same heroism and transcendence.”

Dr. Richard Hansen served as a historical consultant on Apocalypto. Formerly an anthropology professor at Idaho State University, Hansen now teaches at the University of Utah. An experienced archaeologist and an expert on the Maya, Hansen is also the director of the Mirador Basin Project, a conservation organization which preserves native rainforest in the Péten Basin of Guatemala. 

Gibson and Safinia enlisted the help of two consultants for Apocalypto‘s production: Dr. Richard Hansen, an anthropology professor and an expert on the Maya, and Hilario Chi Canul, a young linguistics professor at the University of Quintana Roo who translated the script into Yucatec Mayan. Both men proved invaluable on the production.

In addition to bringing in Semler as cinematographer, Gibson also looked to production designer Tom Sanders (a former Braveheart colleague) to recreate the awe-inspiring Mayan city for the film, using very little CGI or visual effects to come up with the finished product. The final human sacrifice scene featured over 700 extras.

Oscar-nominated makeup artist Aldo Signoretti supervised the extremely detailed jewelry, makeup and tattoos that the Mayans wore in the film. Propmaster Simon Atherton, another Braveheart veteran, designed all of the ancient weapons used onscreen.

Jaguar Paw, his father Flint Sky, and their fellow villagers after a successful tapir hunt early in the film. Left to right: actors Rudy Youngblood, Morris Birdyellowhead, Amilcar Ramirez and Jonathan Brewer.

Part 5: Reception

Apocalypto was a critical and commercial success when it was released in December 2006, grossing over $120 million worldwide against a production budget of $40 million. Many critics praised the film, while some disliked it for historical inaccuracies and for its graphic violence.

Unfortunately, Apocalypto got overlooked at many awards shows for completely different reasons. The film was released only a few months after Gibson’s now-infamous DUI arrest in Malibu, where he drunkenly made anti-Semitic comments to the arresting officer.

“Say what you will about Gibson – about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews – he is a serious filmmaker,” remarked A.O. Scott of the New York Times. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe quipped: “Gibson may be a lunatic, but he’s our lunatic, and while I wouldn’t wish him behind the wheel of a car after happy hour or at a B’nai Brith function anytime soon, behind a camera is another matter.”

Gibson directs actor Gerardo Taracena how to “slit” fellow actor Morris Birdyellowhead’s throat.

Gibson’s film also gained several passionate defenders among fellow members of the Hollywood community. “I think it’s a masterpiece,” remarked Quentin Tarantino. “I think it was the best artistic film of that year.”

“I was totally caught off guard,” said Oscar-winning actor Edward James Olmos. “It’s arguably the best movie I’ve seen in years. I was blown away.”

“Many pictures today don’t go into troubling areas like this: the importance of violence in the perpetuation of civilization,” said Martin Scorsese. “I admire Apocalypto for its frankness, but also for the power and artistry of the filmmaking.”

In addition to gaining critical acclaim from general American audiences, the film was largely well-received by Mexicans and Native Americans. Both Rudy Youngblood and Morris Birdyellowhead won acting awards from the First Americans in the Arts (FAITA) organization. Gibson also screened the film to audiences at the Latino Business Association in Los Angeles and to various Native American organizations in Oklahoma. While accepting the Chairman’s Visionary Award for the Latino Business Association, Gibson stated that his goal for the film was to dispel the myth that “history began with Europeans.” In a poll, 80% of Mexicans labeled Apocalypto as either “good” or “very good.”

Hilario Chi Canul, the linguist who translated Apocalypto‘s script into the Yucatec Mayan dialect. Canul is a professor of Maya at the University of Quintana Roo in Mexico, and is also an accomplished public speaker and researcher.

To be sure, Apocalypto had its fair share of detractors, many of whom were dissatisfied about the representation of the Maya. Mexican journalist Juan Pardinas remarked, “This historical interpretation bears some resemblances with reality, but Mel Gibson’s characters are more similar to the Mayas of the Bonampak murals than the ones that appear in the Mexican school textbooks.”

Other commentators stated that the savagery present in Apocalypto — specifically the human sacrifice scenes — was more representative of the Aztecs than the Maya.

“The first researchers tried to make a distinction between the ‘peaceful’ Maya and the ‘brutal’ Aztec cultures of central Mexico,” said researcher David Stuart. “They even tried to say human sacrifice was rare among the Maya.”

Dr Hansen responded by stating, “We know warfare was going on…there was tremendous Aztec influence by this time. The Aztecs were clearly ruthless in their conquest and pursuit of sacrificial victims, a practice that spilled over into some of the Maya areas.”

On the DVD commentary, Gibson and Safinia stated that the depiction of latter-day Mayan culture was relatively consistent with what was going on elsewhere in 15th-century Central America, where culture-borrowing was not uncommon as various civilizations began to crumble and — in the case of the Maya — vanish unexpectedly. Therefore, the argument becomes that Mayan and Aztec cultures could have blended together more than anticipated in the decades leading up to European contact.

It’s also worth mentioning that the ancient Mayans themselves didn’t view themselves as one unified people group. Much like the ancient Greeks, the Mayans were primarily clustered around city-states and were never one cohesive empire like the Aztecs or the Romans.

This would explain why the peaceful forest-dwellers like Jaguar Paw are completely unprepared for the vicious neighboring tribes to invade, kill and kidnap early on in the movie. While many Mayan experts have claimed that nobility were far more likely to be sacrifice victims than commoners, the film implies that the drought and deforestation has become so severe that the Mayan rulers are willing to basically sacrifice thousands — regardless of socioeconomic status — in order to appease the gods. During the human sacrifice scene, the high priest makes references to the ongoing drought and seeks to appease the god Kukulkan, a notable Post-Classic Mayan deity.

The architecture of the Mayan temple is more or less accurate, but it’s blended from several different eras of Mayan civilization, not just the Post-Classic Maya period in which the film takes place.

“We wanted to set up the Mayan world, but we were not trying to do a documentary,” said production designer Tom Sanders. “Visually, we wanted to go for what would have the most impact…our job is to do a beautiful movie.”

“There was nothing in the Post-Classic period that would match the size and majesty of that pyramid in the film,” admitted Hansen. “But Mel was trying to depict opulence, wealth and consumption of resources.”

To that end, audiences can see quite a bit of the forces that contributed to the Mayans’ collapse. In the lengthy sequences where Jaguar Paw and his friends are being taken to the Mayan city, we can see the stark contrast between the high-bred, extravagant nobility versus the sick, starving people begging in the street. The Mayan slave trade is depicted, with many of them creating lime stucco cement, which was used to paint the temples and wreaked havoc on the local ecosystem.

Conclusion

In a rare hour-long interview in 2016 while promoting his film Hacksaw Ridge, Gibson referred to his basic philosophy of filmmaking, summed up by what he calls “the three Es.” If you can entertain and only entertain, that’s totally valid. But if you entertain and you educate, that’s better. And if you can entertain, educate and elevate, then you’ve done your job.

Regardless of historical accuracy, Apocalypto stands alone as both a bloody, heart-pounding action film and as a unique artistic achievement. I still find myself mesmerized by it whenever I rewatch it. Check it out.

• Directed by Mel Gibson
• Produced by Mel Gibson, Farhad Safinia and Bruce Davey
• Written by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
• Executive Producers — Ned Dowd and Vicki Christianson
• Director of Photography — Dean Semler
• Music by James Horner
• Editor — John Wright
• Casting Director — Carla Hool
• Production Designer — Tom Sanders
• Costume Designer — Mayes C. Rubeo
• Starring Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernández, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez, Raoul Trujillo, Gerardo Taracena, Ricardo Diaz Mendoza, Rodolfo Palacios, Amilcar Ramirez, Israel Conteras, Bernardo Ruíz, Richard Can, Carlos Ramos, Israel Ríos, Ariel Galván, Maria Isabel Diaz, Mayra Serbulo, Iazua Larios, Ammel Rodrigo Mendoza, Marco Antonio Argueta, Fernando Hernandez, Maria Isidra Hoil
• Rated R for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

“Any Gibson-haters hoping to see the heart ripped out of his success may well find themselves disappointed by Apocalypto‘s relative merits.”

–Anton Bitel, Film4

“Outrageously entertaining and thrillingly kinetic. While the ancient dialects and weighty quotations suggest an arthouse epic, Apocalypto is basically a really good period popcorn flick.”

–Paul Arendt, BBC

“Apocalypto isn’t simply an effective movie, but an immensely powerful one.”

–David Keyes, Cinemaphile.org

“Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that Apocalypto is a remarkable film.”

–Todd McCarthy, Variety

“A stunning achievement…one of the most visceral, primal and thoroughly engrossing films I have seen in a long time.” 

–Matthew Lucas, The Davidson County Dispatch

“Gibson’s passionate spectacle of human destruction and doom packs a terrific visceral punch.”

–Jeff Meyers, Metro Times

“No matter what your interest is in the film — entertainment or information — Apocalypto delivers the goods, and then some.”

–Todd Gilchrist, IGN Movies

“Apocalypto turns out to be not a case of Montezuma’s revenge but of Gibson’s. It’s something entirely unexpected — a sinewy, taut poem of action.”

–Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

“Offers non-stop excitement…an electrifying epic in every sense of the word.”

—Pete Hammond, Maxim

“Brutal, compelling and utterly convincing, Apocalypto is an adventure that stuns, overwhelms, and above all else, entertains.”

–Linda Cook, Quad City Times 

TRIVIA

• A humorous reference to Midnight Cowboy is included in Apocalypto. When Zero Wolf is walking his captives through the forest on the way to the Mayan city, a tree suddenly collapses and nearly crushes several prisoners. Annoyed, Zero Wolf yells, “I am walking here!” — just like Dustin Hoffman’s character famously did in Midnight Cowboy.
• When filming the exhilarating waterfall scene in the latter half of the film, a cow that was trying to cross upstream got caught in the current and went over the falls. Gibson and the crew thought that the creature was done for, but amazingly, it picked itself up at the bottom of the waterfall and walked away only slightly dazed.
• For the waterfall jump scene, Rudy Youngblood jumped from a harness from the top of a 15-story building in Veracruz, which was then digitally super-imposed over the actual waterfall in post-production. Gibson gave Youngblood a ribbing about doing the stunt, which prompted Youngblood and the stunt crew to goad Gibson into making a leap himself.
• The filmmakers had to take extra care to protect the digital cameras from the unpredictable rainforest climate. They were covered with space blankets to reflect the extreme heat, and temperatures were closely monitored thanks to special thermometers attached to the cameras.
• Principal photography was completed in July 2006. The release of the film was delayed until December due to hurricanes and flooding in Mexico. Cast and crew helped with flood relief, as over a million Mexican citizens were displaced due to the disaster.
• Some critics took issue with the solar eclipse, which stops the human sacrifice scene halfway through the film. Many of the Mayan people are depicted as frightened of the eclipse, but critics argued that this wouldn’t have happened, as the Mayans were highly-skilled astronomers. On the DVD commentary, both Gibson and Safinia stated that their intent was to show how the Mayan aristocrats would use astronomical events to control the common people.
• The film is dedicated to the memory of Abel Woolrich, who plays a brief role and who passed away unexpectedly before the film was released.
• Gibson turned down the lead role in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center in order to make Apocalypto. The role eventually went to Nicolas Cage.
• The silhouetted character on the poster is actually not Jaguar Paw, but one of the antagonists, Middle Eye (played by Gerardo Taracena).
• Gibson originally wanted to shoot on location in Costa Rica or Guatemala, but the jungles there were too thick. He did, however, make some notable philanthropic efforts in that part of Central America, donating $500,000 to Richard Hansen’s conservation group, the Mirador Basin Project. Gibson later bought a rural estate on the Costa Rican coast.
• When the prisoners pass through a construction site on the way to the Mayan city, they see numerous slaves covered in white powder. The white powder being mined and processed is lime, which was used for building and covering the Mayan pyramids. If inhaled, it causes irritation and inflammation; as a result, the workers had brief life expectations, as can be seen by a slave who coughs up blood on camera. Raw lime is caustic enough that it was even used in ancient cultures to accelerate the decomposition of corpses.
• Final body count: 114.
• Early on in the film, Jaguar Paw and his fellow villagers listen to an ancient story told by an elderly shaman about humans abusing natural resources. The actor playing the storyteller, Espiridion Acosta Cache, was actually a tribal elder himself. Safinia said that the story told in the film was a modern-day approximation of a similar traditional story translated into Mayan.
• Included in 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Schneider.
• Gibson made a brief, tongue-in-cheek appearance in the film’s trailer. He showed up in a couple of frames with a full beard, smoking a cigar.

FLASHBACK FRIDAYS: Saw (2004)

The Saw franchise has become a juggernaut in modern-day horror. Despite receiving mixed reviews from mainstream critics, the original 2004 indie horror flick spawned a massive franchise. Six sequels, including a 3-D film. Two spin-off films, Jigsaw and Spiral, that continue similarly demented games in the same universe. A video game. There’s even a theme park attraction called Saw: The Ride at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England.

Collectively, the Saw franchise has grossed $477 million in the US and Canada and over $1 billion worldwide.

It’s easy to forget the humble beginnings, though. At one point, Saw was a tiny short film, made by a couple of Australian filmmakers on a shoestring budget. And then it became an indie feature, shot on a mere $1.2 million over the course of 18 days on an LA soundstage.

And then overnight, it was a massive success.

If you haven’t seen the original Saw (for whatever reason), here’s the run-down:

Two strangers, Adam and Lawrence, awaken in a filthy industrial bathroom, chained at the ankles to pipes across the room from each other. Lying in between them is an elderly man who has — quite literally — blown his brains out. In one hand, he holds a revolver, and in the other, a cassette tape recorder. Soon enough, both Adam and Lawrence find their own cassette tapes in their pockets, and after retrieving the recorder from the dead man’s hands, they discover the rules of the game: Adam must simply escape the bathroom to avoid his deadly fate. Lawrence must kill Adam, otherwise his kidnapped wife and daughter will die along with him. They both have until 6 PM that day to do it. The two men also discover various clues around the bathroom, including a pair of hacksaws that don’t work on their chains, but could potentially cut through their feet.

Lawrence reveals that they’re the victim of the so-called “Jigsaw Killer,” who technically doesn’t kill anyone deliberately, but puts his unfortunate victims in twisted life-or-death games. If they survive, Jigsaw assumes that they’ll be grateful for every breath they take. Lawrence only knows this because, six months ago, he was interrogated by Detective David Tapp, the lead on the case. Tapp clearly has Lawrence as a person of interest, and while Lawrence’s alibi holds up, he’s requested to watch the testimony of Amanda, the only survivor of Jigsaw’s traps, who insists that he helped her survive.

We soon realize that neither Adam nor Lawrence is who he seems to be. Lots of bloody twists and turns lies ahead as time begins to run out, leading to an explosive conclusion.

Now let me be clear: I’m not saying the Saw franchise is award-worthy cinema. I know that they’re gory and twisted and certainly not for kids or teens. They fall into the “guilty pleasure” category for me. I’m aware of their flaws and problems, but I admire the ingenuity and craft that goes into making them; they clearly helped revitalize the horror genre alongside other, higher-budget fare like the Scream movies. The franchise gave us a new horror icon: Jigsaw, played brilliantly by veteran character actor Tobin Bell. And it launched the careers of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, who’ve gone on to bigger and better films while still retaining their horror roots.

Wan and Whannell met each other in film school at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia in the late 90s. After seeing the success of low-to-no budget thrillers like The Blair Witch Project and Darren Aronofsky’s Pi, the duo wanted to write and direct something similar. Since they didn’t have a ton of money to spend, Wan and Whannell thought a film set entirely in one room would be feasible — perhaps an elevator, told from the perspective of the security cameras.

After awhile, Wan pitched an idea to Whannell about two men getting kidnapped and chained to opposite ends of a bathroom, with a corpse lying between them, and then they would have to piece together the puzzle of why they’re there and what they must do to escape. Whannell liked the idea and thought about it for awhile, coming up with a working title of Saw.

The idea of John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, didn’t come until months later.

Of course, in the series of films, Jigsaw is the most important character. In the first Saw, he’s mostly unseen, but remains a ubiquitous presence as the brilliant, unhinged mastermind behind the gruesome scenarios depicted. The main behind the (pig) mask, John Kramer, was a gifted engineer and family man whose life unraveled after he was given an inoperable cancer diagnosis. He becomes a serial kidnapper who places his unfortunate victims in life-or-death games in order to test their will to live — or more importantly, their ability to appreciate their blessings. The traps are often ironically symbolic of a glaring moral failing in the victim’s life and often serve as a catalyst to make a greater moral point.

“Congratulations, you are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore.”

At the time, Whannell was working a job that he hated and began experiencing intense migraines. Fearing that he had a brain tumor, he checked himself into his local clinic in Melbourne. While waiting for an MRI, Whannell wondered what he would do if he was given, say, six months to live. How would he react? What would he do? That led to him creating Jigsaw as a killer who would do similar things to morally bankrupt people, but give them only a few minutes to live.

Wan and Whannell were able to construct a feature script within the next year or so, finishing it by 2001 (Wan would eventually get sole story credit, although they wrote the script as a team). A producer in Sydney liked the script and optioned it, but the deal fell through after a year due to a lack of interest from various film bodies in Australia. Wan and Whannell only had about $30,000 for the budget, and it became clear that more funds were needed. They shopped the script around a bit more until Stacey Testro, their agent, suggested that they travel to Los Angeles and pitch the script to major Hollywood studios. Although Wan and Whannell were reluctant to go, they acquiesced. To provide proof-of-concept, Whannell enlisted the help of several colleagues to film a short seven-minute version of a scene from the feature-length script. Starring Whannell and directed by Wan, the scene was the now-infamous “Reverse Bear Trap” scene, and the role that Whannell played was later filled by drug addict Amanda (played by Shawnee Smith) in Saw (The short, shot on 16MM film, is available both online and on the special edition DVD/Blu-Ray and is known to fans as Saw 0.5)

It didn’t take long for the usual suspects in Hollywood to take notice. After sending copies of the DVD to numerous studios, Wan and Whannell were swamped with offers almost immediately after hitting the tarmac at LAX.

Can you imagine Saw as a DreamWorks production? Don’t laugh — it almost happened. Despite being newbies to the LA industry, both Wan and Whannell were shrewd enough to turn down offers that jeopardized the script, including from DreamWorks, who clamored for the script’s rights, but were less enthusiastic about the two no-name Aussies behind it.

“Leigh and I just loved the project so much, and we wanted a career in filmmaking,” Wan later said. “So we stuck to our guns and said, ‘Look, guys, if you want this project, we’re coming on board — Leigh has to act in it and I have to direct it.'”

Producer Gregg Hoffman from Evolution Entertainment was told about the short film by a colleague. After watching it, he was blown away. He contacted his producing partners, Mark Burg and Oren Koules, and they met with Wan and Whannell in early 2003. They gave the duo total creative control, 25 percent of the film’s profits and a $1 million budget. Burg, Koules and Hoffman created a horror genre subsidiary, Twisted Pictures, to finance the film. It was a risky gamble; the trio even had to take out a second mortgage on their office headquarters in order to get the ball rolling on the project.

Apart from Whannell, who was playing the character of Adam, no one was cast yet. Cary Elwes, known for his charismatic performances in The Princess Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, was sent a copy of the original Saw short film on DVD and was hooked. He said he loved the “uniqueness and originality” of the story and met with a UCLA neurosurgeon to prepare for his role as Dr Lawrence Gordon.

Shawnee Smith, who played the drug addict-turned-Jigsaw victim Amanda, is not a fan of horror and initially rejected the role. She reconsidered when she watched the original short, in which Whannell played the role that she was to play. Humorously, Wan had had a crush on Smith for years. He had suggested her for the role of Amanda and assumed she’d say no!

For the small-but-pivotal role of Jigsaw, the filmmakers cast veteran character actor Tobin Bell, who had appeared briefly in blockbusters like Goodfellas, Mississippi Burning and The Firm.

“I did Saw because I thought it was a fascinating location for a film to be made,” Bell stated in a 2010 interview. “These guys locked in a room, to me, was fresh. I did not anticipate the ending when I read the script, so I was quite caught by surprise. And it was clear to me that if the filmmakers shot the scene well, the audience would be caught by surprise as well. The film was worth doing for that moment alone.”

Eighteen days.

It’s the eyebrow-raising number that should ring a bell to every Saw fan. While most feature films take months to shoot, Saw had a mere 18 days while shooting in downtown Los Angeles over the months of September and October 2003. The primary challenge was to film around actors’ busy schedules. Danny Glover, who played the role of Detective Tapp, shot his scenes in only two days.

The schedule was so tight that Wan couldn’t even rehearse with his actors. He did, however, insist that all of the scenes with Lawrence and Adam in the bathroom had to be shot in chronological order so that Whannell and Elwes would get a better idea of what their characters would be experiencing. The bathroom sequences were filmed over a period of six days.

“It was a really tough struggle for me,” Wan confessed in a 2010 interview with The A.V. Club. “Every day, it was me fighting to get the shots I did not get. I had high aspirations, but there’s only so much you can do. I wanted to make it in a very Hitchcockian style of filmmaking, but that style of filmmaking takes time to set up and so on. The film I ended up with was more gritty and rough around the edges, due to the lack of time and money that we had to shoot the movie with. Ultimately, that ended up being the aesthetic for the film.”

The infamous bathroom set was actually the only set that was constructed from scratch for the film, according to production designer Julie Berghoff. All other rooms were existing portions of the studio lot redressed and decorated for the film.

All artists are self-critical, of course, and Wan would later say in retrospect that the “ideal” budget for a film like Saw would be $3-5 million instead of the meager figure of $1.8.

“I think even back then, James would cringe a lot after Saw, just because he kept saying he had his film that he was running in his head and the film onscreen didn’t match up to it,” Whannell said of his best friend. “But I was much more encouraging about the film. I was like, ‘As long as we get the story right and we tell it decently, we’ll be okay. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have these sexy crane shots or whatever. It’s really just the film itself.'”

After production wrapped, Wan and Whannell did a few guerrilla-style reshoots over a couple of days before heading into post-production.

“I didn’t have enough takes. We were basically shooting rehearsals,” the director said. “So I had a lot of gaps in the final product when we were trying to cut it with (editor) Kevin Greutert. He and I really pulled our heads together and tried to work out what was the best way to piece together what we had shot. We ended up basically cooking up a lot of things in post to put the film together.

“We did a lot of things to fill in gaps throughout the film. Whenever we cut to newspaper clippings and stuff like that, or we cut to surveillance cameras, or we cut to still photography within the film. Now people say, ‘Wow, that’s such a cool, experimental style of filmmaking.’ But we really did that out of necessity to fill in gaps we did not get during the filming.”

Lions Gate picked up the distribution rights for Saw after it was completed. The expectations were, to be polite, modest from the studio’s perspective. Then in January 2004, Saw was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Thanks to positive reactions from audiences for three consecutive nights in Utah, Lions Gate refused to send Saw to the direct-to-video graveyard and instead planned for a theatrical release on Halloween weekend.

“The screening for Saw at Sundance was the first time we had screened the film publicly like that,” Whannell recalled. “We had only finished the film a couple of weeks before, if that. James and I spent the entire screening out in the lobby of the theater, pacing around.”

“I think the only part of the film we stuck our heads in for was the ending, because that was our favorite part to watch. Even when we were screening our film everywhere, when it was coming out, everywhere from Texas to Tokyo, we would be too nervous to watch the entire film, but we would always come in for the ending. No matter what language the audience spoke, people loved that ending. It got a great reaction.”

After further enthusiasm from audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival, Saw opened at #3 at the box office on Halloween weekend, and in the process, eclipsed its entire budget. It was, quite literally, a financial success overnight, grossing over $18 million its opening weekend in North America. During its initial run, Saw finished as a massive success for its budget, grossing $55 million in the US and Canada.

Overseas, the reaction was equally strong among audiences. Despite only being in cinemas for four to six weeks, Saw grossed over $3 million in the UK, $6.4 million in Italy, $3.1 million in France, and $3.1 million in Wan and Whannell’s home country of Australia.

Altogether, a film that cost $1.2 million to make in less than a month grossed $103 million worldwide. A sequel, Saw II, was greenlit by Lions Gate the Monday after it premiered.

Whannell returned to write Saw II and III, which cemented Jigsaw as the series’ iconic creation and introduced numerous other characters (and some more grisly traps). Wan chose to avoid pigeon-holing himself and declined to direct the sequels, although he and Whannell stuck around as executive producers.

Now, if you know anything about the Saw sequels, you’ll know the plots get more complicated and the traps get more twisted. Unfortunately, lots of film critics and media markets attempted to cast Saw in the same vein as the Hostel franchise or Rob Zombie movies: pointless, gratuitous torture porn with no redeeming qualities. I disagree, but that’s not the point. The point is that Wan and Whannell were the creative faces of a franchise that had somewhat deviated from their original vision.

Wan admitted that he wanted Saw to be more of a psychological mystery-thriller, like David Fincher’s Seven. Whannell, for his part, thought that the original Saw‘s twist ending didn’t automatically leave the door open for a sequel.

“We thought that was a great ending to a film,” Whannell said, referring to the original. “The sequels have explored the mythology of Jigsaw and who this person is, and I was involved in writing two of them — the first two sequels. So I’ve been a part of that. It’s been great to explore that, but there is something about that ending of Saw we thought was quite final, that door shutting and everything going dark.”

“In hindsight, I wish I had more input in what direction the sequels should have gone,” Wan later stated. “There wasn’t anyone telling me I could not be a part of it. If I could do it over, maybe I would have been more involved in the storytelling or the storyline. I wouldn’t have necessarily wanted to direct the sequel, but at least I could have kept it in the direction that it was going.

“Now having said that, I think the producers did do a great job, to a great degree, to continue the mythology. All the sequels have worked thus far, but for me, I felt that people ended up concentrating on certain things that were not necessarily, for us, what the film was about, like the blood and guts of the traps. I keep reminding people that the reason why I think the first film works so well was because it was fresh, it was unique, and it had a really cool twist ending that made people say, ‘My God, did you see that?’ And I felt some of that was kind of lost in the process. But I don’t have a time machine, and I think the producers did do a great job, as did the writers that got to continue this mythology that Leigh and I planted from the first film.”

Some audience members — myself included — felt like after Saw III, the traps and plots suffered and the movies lost a good amount of their psychological/emotional impact. In some cases, it seemed as if the hardcore Saw fanboys/fangirls just wanted the films to revolve around the traps and games, not the traps and games servicing a broader story. Regrettably, some of the sequels seemed too gimmicky as a result.

“It’s interesting what elements of a film an audience grabs onto,” Whannell continued. “For James and I, the Jigsaw element of the first film was a small part of it. For us, the juice of it was what was happening with these two guys in this room. That was the story of the first film, but the audience really loved the traps, and they really grabbed hold of that, so of course the sequels made that the focus. I think the sequels have retrospectively tainted that first film with the impression that that’s what the film is about. But for us, Jigsaw and his message was sort of a small part of the first film that got extrapolated on. And I think people just respond to it because they love hypotheticals.”

Tobin Bell, not exactly a traditional leading man type, couldn’t have been happier about playing John Kramer/Jigsaw in the sequels, even if he, by his own admission, isn’t a fan of horror films.

“The negatives have a life of their own. And part of that is what Saw is about. It’s about appreciating what we have,” Bell explained in a recent interview with Screen Rant. “It’s a strange contradiction to what you’re seeing on screen, that this conceptual, philosophical idea is somehow a vein that runs right through the middle of Saw. I think it’s made it possible and rewarding for me to make the films, because of that.”

“I think it is cool. Years from now, when people forget about all the negative connotations and look back at it, it’s like you were part of a movement, like it or not. And that’s cool. That is awesome,” said Wan.

“It changed our lives. Sure, it really wasn’t the film I set up to do, yet it ended up being this cultural phenomenon that we never expected. I never expected that my first little, as I refer to it, my student film would ultimately go on to have such a cultural impact.”

Whannell, who’s since made films such as Upgrade and The Invisible Man, agrees wholeheartedly.

“In a lot of ways, Saw didn’t just change my professional life, it changed my personal life. Because of Saw, I live thousands of nautical miles away from my family in Melbourne. Because of Saw, I met my wife and I have a whole new group of friends on the other side of the world. There have been all these sort of aftershocks from Saw in every aspect of our lives, not just in the obvious aspect of, ‘Hey, yeah, your life changed. You hadn’t made a film before, and now you have. And you’re making a living doing it.’ But in so many other ways, it’s hard for me not to have a lot of affection for that original film. It’s like a moving diary of a part of your life.”

FLASHBACK FRIDAYS: Friday (1995)

Note: I’m starting a new blog series called “Flashback Fridays”, to be published on Fridays and discussing past films that have become personal favorites and/or important in my own development as an artist and film reviewer.

I first watched Friday on a Friday, my freshman year of college (hehe). It’s such a quotable and entertaining popcorn flick that really does improve upon repeat viewings. And although it’s undeniably goofy, full of stoner humor and illicit neighborhood affairs, Friday also has important themes that resonate beyond the mean streets of South Central LA that the film’s leading man, Ice Cube, has so proudly represented.

Speaking of which, Cube — the legendary MC with the decorated career as a solo artist and as a member of N.W.A — co-wrote Friday’s script in addition to starring as leading man Craig. Cube had originally decided to try his hand at screenwriting thanks to the late John Singleton. Singleton directed the critically acclaimed 1992 drama Boyz in the Hood, which was Cube’s feature film debut, and he once told him that if you could write a hit song, you could write a hit movie as well. Cube collaborated with his fellow rapper/producer DJ Pooh to write the screenplay, which was largely based on humorous experiences of their own upbringings.

Cube and Pooh both admitted that they were sick of seeing hood movies that were overly bleak and dark. “In the hood, you gotta laugh, man,” Cube said. “Because if you don’t make fun of shit, it would just be depressing. And who wants to be depressed all the time?”

“Everybody was looking at our neighborhood like it was hell on Earth, like the worst place you can grow up in America. And I’m like, Why? I didn’t see it all that way. I mean, I knew it was crazy around where I grew up, but we had fun in the hood.”

“We came up with a rough idea of a movie that would take place in a day: a regular Friday in the hood,” said DJ Pooh. “We started building around that. Me and Cube grew up around the same neighborhood, so we knew a lot of the same people. We started thinking about people we knew, what was going on, stuff that happened in our lives growing up, and just laughing and clowning about a bunch of different scenarios.”

Both men began collaborating on a script, even doing so over long distance phone chats when Cube was touring in Europe. Both were inspired by goofy, adult-themed fare like House Party and the Cheech & Chong movies.

The project was simple enough — on paper, at least. Craig, played by Cube, is a down-on-his-luck 20-something who gets framed for theft and subsequently fired from his job on a Friday (his day off, no less). His stoner buddy, Smokey (played brilliantly by Chris Tucker), wants Craig to cut loose, forget about his responsibilities and smoke a few joints, but it’s not easy. The duo get up to hilarious shenanigans while trying to avoid Craig’s no-nonsense parents, his high-maintenance girlfriend, and neighborhood enforcer Deebo, who are coming and going throughout the day. But things get serious when one of Smokey’s pot deals goes awry, and he has to pay his supplier $200 by the end of the night — or get killed.

Sounds like a reasonably straight-forward buddy/stoner comedy. Except that Ice Cube, a rapper known for violent and often-political lyrics, wasn’t exactly a guarantee box office hit with suburban soccer moms.

“Ice Cube was the toughest man in America, and when you take someone who delivers hard-hitting social issues in hardcore gangsta rap, and who has a hardcore view on politics, you would never think comedy,” admitted the director, F. Gary Gray.

Gray had worked on several of Cube’s music videos, but had never made a feature film. He had written a script for a short film that Cube had financially supported, but eventually Gray took interest in the script for Friday. After they tried to self-finance the film unsuccessfully, New Line Cinema optioned the script, but gave Friday a tiny budget of $3.5 million and a shooting schedule of only 20 days.

Gray, another South Central LA native, elected to shoot in his old neighborhood to give it as authentic a look as possible. Due to Cube’s inexperience as a leading man, New Line also insisted on pairing him with a more experienced comedic actor, settling on Chris Tucker to play Smokey. Despite a bad first audition, Tucker seemed to have the chemistry to mesh well with Cube onscreen.

“Smokey was the most challenging role to cast, because someone had to have the energy to bounce off the calm demeanor that Cube has,” casting director Kim Hardin said in a Complex magazine retrospective of the film. “Cube was laid-back with his comedy.”

“We knew nobody in Hollywood would understand the comedy in Friday,” Cube admitted. “Hollywood wasn’t ready for it. When we wrote it, we intended to raise the money ourselves and do the movie—it was always greenlit in our eyes. It was just about writing it and raising the money. And keeping the budget low.”

The lack of a budget could’ve been daunting, but a hard-working cast and crew overcame the limitations and crafted a classic, which included memorable cameos from comedic geniuses like Faizon Love, Tony Cox, Bernie Mac and Tommy “Tiny” Lister. Many moments were improvised.

“Gary was a serious anchor, like an old soul who knew that, in spite of all this camaraderie, there was a film that had to be delivered at the end of the day, and his neck was on the line,” confessed producer Pat Charbonnet. “We absolutely believed in him and his ability to pull it off, which is why we chose him as director. You have just so much energy crackling, and at age 24, Gary already had an astounding ability to steer that ship to shore.”

Probably Gray’s biggest challenge was being aware of the lack of time and budget, but also being willing and able to give his actors the freedom to improvise (Chris Tucker’s famous line, “You got knocked THE F–K OUT!” wasn’t in the original script).

“A one-page scene could stretch to two pages after all the ad-libbing,” Gray said in the Complex retrospective. “Then you’d end up having a four-hour movie. I would tell them, ‘Hey, I want you to improvise, but I want you to be at least conscious of time.'”

One of the emotional anchors in Friday is Craig’s parents. He resents their house rules, but there’s clearly a great level of mutual respect. In one particularly powerful scene, Craig’s dad (played by the late John Witherspoon) stumbles upon his son arming himself with a pistol in preparation for whatever might happen to him and Smokey that night. Acutely aware of the dangers, Craig’s dad still encourages him to avoid violence if possible, and if he can’t, to fight like a man — with his fists.

Speaking of real world violence, Gray understood the dynamics of different places where they chose to film.

“We were off the 126th St. campus,” Gray said, referring to the hilarious convenience store scene early on in the film (in which he has a cameo). “Anything off of that block was ‘off campus,’ so we had to deal with the elements. It was an area that was a cross section for a lot of gangs.”

“Cube was a huge star, and with being a huge star from the streets, comes street politics. To drive down Normandie towards 126th St., past El Segundo and into different neighborhoods, with this camera, car, and lights? We had to have armed security follow us, because we just didn’t know what was gonna happen. We didn’t know what the reaction was going to be. While we had a lot of love in my neighborhood, you just don’t know if that love extended outside of that neighborhood.”

Thankfully, there were no major incidents while filming in the area and Gray was even able to pay some locals to be extras in the movie.

Gray, Tucker, Cube and many others were seriously anxious when the film was being edited. After a rough cut screening, they weren’t sure if Friday would be a hit with audiences. But sure enough, it was. The film was widely acclaimed by audiences and earned back its $3.5 million budget the first week of release. That’s right: Friday grossed $6.5 million its opening weekend en route to a $27 million gross in North America. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes was a stellar 91 percent.

Quentin Tarantino named Friday as one of his favorite 20 movies of the past 25 years. Various pro athletes began going by the nickname “Deebo” in honor of Tiny Lister’s character. The film spawned two less successful sequels, Next Friday and Friday After Next. And the famous “Bye, Felicia” internet meme was born. The movie was a hilarious modern-day classic. It also resulted in Ice Cube becoming a bonafide comedy presence. Soon afterwards, he shifted gears in favor of a more family-friendly public image in his films, but he couldn’t resist proving the naysayers wrong.

“We knew we had something,” said a very proud Cube. “It wasn’t really understood by mainstream media, but it was accepted by the hood. We were in a space that people rarely get in with neighborhood comedies. It was a proud moment. Everybody thought that I was Mr. Neighborhood Terror and all I could do was talk about all the bad shit that was going on. Coming out with a movie like Friday, to me, was like a vindication.”

As for me, Friday never gets old. It’s so goofy and quotable, and it has some nice messages about self-defense, family and positive masculinity sprinkled in. And you don’t have to smoke weed to enjoy it, either…but it sure might enhance the comedy!