There seems to be some doubt among posters here as to the broader outlines of this story--the religious motivation for building the statues, and the environmental disaster this wrought. However, in broad outline this agrees with the best educated guesses of recent anthropology; see for example Chapter 1 of Clive Ponting's _A Green History of the World_. After noting that by the time of the first visits of Europeans to Easter Island in the 18th century the island had been stripped of all its trees, and that some of this lumber would have been used for building, cooking and the like, Ponting continues: "The most demanding requirement (for lumber) of all was the need to move the large number of enormously heavy statues to ceremonial sites around the island. The only way this could have been done was by large numbers of people guiding and sliding them along a form of flexible tracking made up of tree trunks spread on the ground between the quarry and the (site). Prodigious quantities of timber would have been required and in increasing amounts as the competition between the clans to erect statues grew. As a result by 1600 the island was almost completely deforested...."
Thus in its broadest outlines the story told here is correct, and there must have been a kind of apocalyptic dread among the more enlightened of the residents, as the island was inexorably denuded.
This portrait of a dying society, if done well, would have alone been enough to make Rapa Nui a highly interesting movie. But unintended comedic elements prevent us from taking it very seriously.
On being presented with a huge statue, the result of months of work, the chief simply says "not big enough! Build another one!" ...he couldn't be bothered to vet the project in the design stage? Lines like this, and "don't bother me, I've got chicken entrails to read", and other idiotic plot twists that would constitute spoilers, dash cold water on this film as the tragic if formulaic reenactment of the final days of a doomed civilization.
As others here have said, Easter Island itself is breathtaking; the beauty of the setting is one of the better things about Rapa Nui. And the story had great potential. But this movie is impossible to take seriously, and that is a shame.
Thus in its broadest outlines the story told here is correct, and there must have been a kind of apocalyptic dread among the more enlightened of the residents, as the island was inexorably denuded.
This portrait of a dying society, if done well, would have alone been enough to make Rapa Nui a highly interesting movie. But unintended comedic elements prevent us from taking it very seriously.
On being presented with a huge statue, the result of months of work, the chief simply says "not big enough! Build another one!" ...he couldn't be bothered to vet the project in the design stage? Lines like this, and "don't bother me, I've got chicken entrails to read", and other idiotic plot twists that would constitute spoilers, dash cold water on this film as the tragic if formulaic reenactment of the final days of a doomed civilization.
As others here have said, Easter Island itself is breathtaking; the beauty of the setting is one of the better things about Rapa Nui. And the story had great potential. But this movie is impossible to take seriously, and that is a shame.