A Spanish film company is gonna release this big pile of YIKES next year and well.... YIKES.

This El-Dorado rip-off is supposed to be a retelling of Spain's conquest of the Philippines... but seems to portray the colonizers as the good guys while the one king who saw right through their crap and fought back would be the bad guy.

Here's the thing. When the Spaniards came, most of the tribes welcomed them. But there was one who was suspicious. Lapu Lapu, the king of Mactan island. He distrusted the colonizers. Saw them as conqerors using the Filipinos' hospitality as their ticket in. He fought back and killed Magellan and stalled their reach to Mindanao.

Lapu Lapu was right. Once they were in, the Spaniards brought 300 years of subjugation and exploitation to the island. Yeah, sure. Filipinos had a lot of in-fighting (like every other society) before they came. But what the Spaniards did was shit on a large scale. Our culture virtually destroyed because Christianity. Priests raped a lot of women. Men were treated like second class citizens. Women were treated like slaves. Women enjoyed more freedom during the precolonial era.

I'm not one to judge a movie before it comes out. But this is worrying. Even if they stay true to history, they could credit Lapu-Lapu's heroism to the Flyn Rider knock-off in typical White Savior™️ fashion. I seriously hope I'm wrong and they do deliver and present the colonizers as the two-faced opportunists they were. But even then, I can already see some problems. Like:

After ruling us for 300 years, you'd think they'd remember what we actually look like. DEFINITELY NOT LIKE THIS!!!

Moana's right there!!! They could've copied characters off of that instead of characters from El Dorado for fuck's sake!!!! And why the hell is the king of Cebu, which is just off the coast of Mactan, PALE!!! Glutathione didn't exist back then!!!! WTF?!

My country's real suspicious about this movie. They plan to check it thoroughly before releasing it in local theaters. If necessary, ban it. I'm not gonna judge people if they choose to watch.

But please. Whatever this movie's spin is going to be, it is important to know the truth about this part of our history before going in to see it. Lapu Lapu is a hero. The Spaniards are conquerors who brought 300 years of suffering when the Filipinos let them in.