Clive Davis asks, "A question for religiously-minded film fans: why is the new movie, The Nativity Story doing so badly when Mel Gibson’s version of The Passion did so well?"

Maybe because it didn't arrive with such incredible controversy, and with a media superstar associated with it. (Remember the early, strange stories that began emerging from the set that Mel was spending his own money to shoot a movie entirely in Aramaic? And then the firestorm the week of The Passion's release?)

All of that made The Passion go from being just another religious film to a cause celebre that everyone, pro or con, wanted to see to decide for themselves what the fuss was all about. And it sounds like Gibson is doing his damndest to recreate that same controversy with Apocalypto--even if the hype has little to do with the film itself, according to Michael Medved:

Perhaps Gibson is so eager to transcend the humiliation of his drunk driving incident, and to bury the lingering suspicions that “The Passion” (despite its huge commercial success) was a right-wing, hate-filled screed, that he’s saying stupid things that he believes will endear him to the “progressive” Hollywood establishment.

Clearly, the film (with dialogue in the ancient Yucatec language, with subtitles) represents a major risk and he needs great reviews to get the attention required for decent box office performance. By cooking up some preposterous lefty interpretation of Mayan collapse (is the big chieftain with the body scarring and the elaborate tattoos and the distended ears and the carved piece of jade in place of his nose supposed to represent George W. Bush?) Gibson may be trying to position his adrenalin-soaked, breathlessly paced chase picture as an “important, daring” message movie that indicts the U.S.

Even if there’s no basis whatever in the substance of the film for Mel’s alarmist, we’re-all-guilty-and-doomed commentary about US society, the attempt to fabricate a political subtext for a visceral, straight-ahead action-adventure may prove an effective strategy. The positioning of a relentlessly fast-moving thriller set in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula more than five hundred years ago as some searing, timely indictment of “over consumption” and “political corruption” in Bush-era USA, may force some high brow critics to take “Apocalypto” more seriously than they would without the pretentious preaching surround it’s release. There’s another advantage concerning the movie’s distribution overseas: Gibson’s comments will help to produce the warm reception in France that’s all-but-guaranteed for any work plausibly classified as anti-American.

Update: Thoughts on the film itself, here.