DreamWorks Animation has created over 30 films that have delighted viewers. They are responsible for such productions as "Chicken Run," "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda," and "Madagascar." After the success of "The Prince of Egypt," which was one of my favorite movies as a kid -- adults as well as kids could enjoy it -- they decided to market their films to families. The problem is they decided to do this with a film called "The Road to El Dorado," and this was a horrible idea.
Completely ignoring The Holocaust that happened when Spanish conquerors came to South America, the film positions itself as a comedy about two young Spanish men who rescue the Aztecs in Cuba from an evil priest. This evil priest is eager to sacrifice humans to the gods. While there were sacrifices among the Aztecs, these sacrifices did not lead to as many deaths as did the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish killed 23 million native people.
Rather, the movie and DreamWorks make Hernando Cortez head of the voyage to Cuba-appear as a smaller villain. Cortez only makes an appearance at the beginning and end of the animated feature.
Miquel and Tulio, the main characters of the fictional El Dorado universe, are made to appear as if they are heroes as they rescue the Native people from the evil priest. This would seem to go against all intuition. We are even told that they are thieves back in Spain. To me, they seemed more like anti-heroes. Miguel is so arrogant that when (spoiler alert) Tulio says he wants to go to Spain to be treated like a king, Miguel says “Isn’t king kind of like a step down from God?”
The other problem I have with this movie is that the townspeople appear to be happy giving gold to the Europeans. In history, Natives of the Americas were happy to give gold to the Europeans because they thought they were gods. Even after the evil priest’s sidekick and the main girl Chel discovers that Miguel and Tulio are not actually gods, they still look happy to be serving Miguel and Tulio. It’s as if the white men are handed a silver platter.
The biggest issue is that this movie acts like the Spanish Inquisition never happened. Having two white heroes who save the people of Cuba isn’t comedy. It looks like denial on the behalf of the filmmakers that a horrible event in history never happened. DreamWorks is good at creating films for families with Antz and later on movies such as Chicken Little and Shrek. They should stick to what they do best with talking animals and ogres, and should not have meddled with terrible events in history.
