Given Gibson’s cinematic history, experts on the ancient Maya are looking forward to his upcoming epic, Apocalypto, with a mixture of curiosity and dread. They’re pleased that Hollywood will feature a period of world history still little understood but worry that once again a movie may sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of a good story.

“A lot depends on how well they depict the Maya. It may serve as a really good springboard into a lecture,” says archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. “Or it may be something we have to nip in the bud in that first lecture.”

Gibson wasn’t available for comment, and the public relations firm for his Icon Productions declined to offer any details on the film’s plot.

But according to the film’s website, Apocalypto promises “a heart-stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end-times of the once-great Mayan civilization.” The story centers on a kidnapped hero’s bid to escape a mass sacrifice at one Maya center. According to another description of the plot in Time magazine’s March preview, a ruler orders the mass sacrifice of hapless captives to appease the gods and avert a drought.

The only problem, and big cause for worry among archaeologists, is “the classic Maya really didn’t go in for mass sacrifice,” Lucero says. “That was the Aztecs.” Other concerns: the modern-day Mayan Yucatec language spoken in the film is not the language of the ancient Maya, and the film’s Mexican shooting locale is not the classic Maya homeland, says Penn State archaeologist David Webster.