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Vulture Asks: What’s Your Favorite Eclipse?
Cinematic eclipses are often dramatic and violent, and sometimes deeply stupid.
The entire plot is set into motion when rare plant enthusiast Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis at his most nebbish and cute) witnesses a “to-tal-e-clipse-of-the-sun,” as Greek chorus girls Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon sing it in a song titled just how it sounds: “Da-Doo.” Because this is at its heart a sci-fi B-movie, the eclipse causes a green zap of alien sentient plant-life to arrive on earth, nestled among the zinnias. Because this is a Mel Gibson action film, they don’t actually get spared — they are instead turned loose to be used as human targets for javelin practice, a horror that Jaguar Paw escapes, and that lets Apocalypto transform itself into a lengthy foot chase through the jungle, culminating in a final scene that’s as appallingly funny as the one that ended the original Planet of the Apes. The adult supporting cast is stacked ( Andor ’s Denise Gough and Genevieve O’Reilly, Ted Lasso ’s Nick Mohammed), but the film really works because of how fully it puts us within Alex’s feelings of loneliness and uncertainty and then pulls us out of it thanks to, of course, the beauty of friendship, shared goals, and belonging.
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