Apocalypse Island

A few months ago I caught this special on The History Channel, Apocalypse Island.  It was about this Archeologist who claimed to have found a Mayan Monument on an island several miles off the coast of Chile.  It was thousands of miles from where any known Mayan civilization had ever existed.  The documentary centered around his efforts to return to the Island with a colleague who was supposed to verify his findings.  This was inter-cut with interesting details about Mayan history, and of course, the usual business about 2012 doomsday prophesies. 

It started out fairly compelling.  Hand-held video footage documented the archeologists' efforts to charter a boat and stock up on supplies.  There was much made of the fact that the island was very hard to get to and that they only had a brief window of opportunity to view the monument before the monsoon season hit.  The video documented their trip on the boat, their arrival on the island, and the fact that they had to take a smaller boat to land on shore because there was no open coast where the main craft could land.

This is where things started to fall apart.  They had hammered the point over and over and over again that this was a dangerous undertaking, that the location was extremely remote and inaccessible, and that the two men would be making the trek completely alone.  Yet, the moment they landed on the island, there were constant panoramic shots and aerial shots of the two men hiking across the island.  This was supposed to be real documentary footage, not a re-enactment.  But who was filming this footage?  It was all very clear and cinematic.  There were distant wide shots of the two tiny figures navigating through the mountains.  There had to be an entire crew working on this; a crew with a helicopter and trucks filled with production equipment.  As I noticed this problem, the implications of this elaborate footage completely undercut the image of these two men braving treacherous obstacles to reach a mysterious and remote location.  It turned the whole thing into a joke.

I actually started to feel like an idiot that I had wasted any of my time watching this.  It was the most obviously staged thing I'd ever seen on television, and that's really saying something.  When they finally reached the so-called "monument", it didn't look like anything more than a natural out-cropping of rock to me.  Oh, there were a lot of expressions of amazement on the part of the archeologists.  They were clearly impressed and convinced that they were looking at a piece of ancient Mayan construction.  I guess we were just supposed assume that they knew what they were talking about.  It might look like rocks to us, but they were experts.  Whatever.  Then came the final piece of insultingly obvious staging.  One of the men had to make the "dangerous" climb to the top of the monument, risking his life to confirm its authenticity.  One problem though.  The man's assent up the face of the monument was shot from the top of the monument looking down.  I guess a camera man risking his life to climb that thing doesn't count.

I can't believe the History Channel would put this sort this sort of thing on the air.  I know they're not always a paragon of integrity, but this was ridiculous.  The whole thing was aimed at people who buy into the whole 2012 doomsday prophesy.  I suppose they figure those people will believe anything.  They might be right.