Elcano & Magellan: The First Voyage Around the World

Magellan is no hero. He's a colonizer. A lot of blood was shed and innocent lives lost. Why make a movie about colonizers?

Who's gonna watch this? White supremacists?

This fast-paced, 1.5 hour, animated film is fictionalized history meant for Spanish kids. The plot is for the fleet to sail west, past the Americas, get spices from the Moluccas, and sail back to Spain, all while avoiding the Portuguese. The portion that Filipino reviewers (who haven't even seen this movie) complain about lasts for about 5-7 minutes, when the protagonists make a brief stop in Cebu and Mactan islands. Lapu-lapu, the Mactan chief, appears for a few seconds and is a brave, muscular guy, as opposed to the corpulent Humabon, the king of Cebu. The battle of Mactan lasts for about a minute. There is nothing about "colonization" in this film. It is all about survival and discovery in the first circumnavigation of the world. Oh, and by the way, I am also Filipino.

The animation looks like this was made in the early 2000s and that's putting it mildly.

This film depicts the glorified version of Spanish colonizers and not the real truth where they killed indigenous Filipinos to take over their land. Magellan was not a hero, he was the REAL villain. He died fighting Lapu-lapu and as he should.

Ban this from our theaters. if you support this abomination, it only means the colonizers still won over us even today, after 500 years. it's like making a fun, family-friendly 3d-animated movie about columbus taking over and erasing american indians from their homeland or the whites selling africans as slaves. "grabbed the helm of history and changed its course forever"??? by oppressing, murdering, raping my race? they're profiting from the defeat of our ancestors and trivializing the shame that our race had to go through for centuries. i can't believe how there are still filipinos who are excited about this. indeed, our textbooks did not educate us enough to antagonize the enemy. instead, we support them. i am utterly heartbroken. the creators of this show should have known better. if no one's starting a petition, i will.

in behalf of my fellow men who are deeply blinded by colonial mentality, i apologize to rajah humabon, rajah tupas, jose rizal, francisco dagohoy, tamblot, antonio luna, andres bonifacio, bienvenido santos, and nvm gonzales. im so sorry. 😭 sirs, your descendants failed you. it seems your lives and works were wasted 💔💔