Just because something "isn't about race" doesn't mean that it therefore cannot be racist.
Someone else has already pointed out the sins of the movie in terms of race, so I'll just direct you to their comment on another journal (http://seaya.livejournal.com/223234.html?thread=878594#t878594): The extent of the racism is so caricaturish, though, that it goes beyond actual races and makes the Other actually non-human. They play so fast and loose with different peoples that they're all homogenised into one fantastically exaggerated ur-category without any distinction between Incas, Mayans, Amazonians and the frickin' undead. There's no clear distinction in this film between spear-chucking natives and flying kung-fu child zombies. It drags indigenous South American people into the realm of total fantasy. I don't know why I'm phrasing this like a rebuttal, because I agree with you, but somehow this is beyond racism. It's like it went through racism and came out the other side.
That's interesting about ancient cultures of white people being explained away in the same way (I hadn't known that), but it's worth pointing out that those cultures were not mentioned in this movie. Only the South American culture (which seemed to be a strange hybrid of Incan and Mayan cultures) was.
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Someone else has already pointed out the sins of the movie in terms of race, so I'll just direct you to their comment on another journal (http://seaya.livejournal.com/223234.html?thread=878594#t878594):
The extent of the racism is so caricaturish, though, that it goes beyond actual races and makes the Other actually non-human. They play so fast and loose with different peoples that they're all homogenised into one fantastically exaggerated ur-category without any distinction between Incas, Mayans, Amazonians and the frickin' undead. There's no clear distinction in this film between spear-chucking natives and flying kung-fu child zombies. It drags indigenous South American people into the realm of total fantasy. I don't know why I'm phrasing this like a rebuttal, because I agree with you, but somehow this is beyond racism. It's like it went through racism and came out the other side.
That's interesting about ancient cultures of white people being explained away in the same way (I hadn't known that), but it's worth pointing out that those cultures were not mentioned in this movie. Only the South American culture (which seemed to be a strange hybrid of Incan and Mayan cultures) was.