YMMV / Agora

• Americans Hate Tingle: In an inversion of Amenábar's usual situation, his film was critically acclaimed in Spain yet did not find much success abroad. Its perceived anti-Christian message was probably one of the main reasons: while Spaniards were mostly fine with it (a consequence of The Spanish Inquisition, several Church-sponsored absolute monarchies and the grueling Franco dictatorship) and the Vatican approved it too (as its message actually fits the Church's modern outlook in some fields), more conventional and Protestant Christian countries such as the United Kingdom and United States were obviously much less enthusiastic about it. This probably played a part in its very limited release in the US.
• Audience-Alienating Premise:
  • An ambitious, cerebral film that focuses more on ideas than action spectacle, and what action spectacle there is is largely focused on fanatical mobs mindlessly destroying science and culture or slaughtering those who disagree. This is the sort of movie destined to play very well in international film festivals but very poorly with the American public. That said, it was released on a spare 17 American theaters at its height and did well in its native country, so this trope is perhaps marginal.
  • Regardless of the storytelling nuances used, the story of Hypatia of Alexandria is basically that of a famous woman of science who was violently butchered by Christian zealots. Therefore, making a film about her under modern sensibilities without giving any kind of negative representation of Christians would be very difficult in any case, if not impossible, which would always stunt its reception in predominantly Christian countries.
• Anvilicious:
  • Belief Makes You Stupid and Ax-Crazy, be it Christianity, Paganism or Judaism. Even if the Christians are portrayed as the worst of the three, it is a spare margin. The film instead places Hypatia and her stance of religious tolerance (or at least indifference) as its moral center, which may cross into Religion Is Wrong considering she is the only atheist/agnostic in the film.
  • Help the poor and support freedom for all people. If you won't do it just because you are a humane and selfless person, then at least do it because otherwise they will all turn to any demagogue that helps them, potentially becoming his henchmen in whatever his designs are.
• Critical Dissonance: The film got good-to rave reviews from critics generally everywhere and absolutely cleaned house at the 2010 Goya Awards, becoming the second most awarded film in their history. However, it didn't attract much of a casual following, among other things due to its obscure topic and brainy nature, and in turn attracted a lot of controversy (even if the latter was almost certainly intentional, or at least expected, given the author's penchants).
• Ho Yay: Occasionally averted because Christian males were much closer than nowadays (for instance, kissing another man's hand was a sign of respect, not homosexuality), but there's some suspicious examples here and there. For the record, the director is homosexual.
• Offending the Creator's Own: Amenábar, an outspoken agnostic-turned-atheist, conceived this film as a message against religious intolerance, but the result did not endear many atheists and agnostics. The enormous licenses in history and religion were quoted often as a vital flaw, and some commentators even pointed out that, by deviating so much from real history and inserting an atheist/pro-science message in historical events where there was none, the film was actually doing a huge disservice to its cause by building its message on fallacious revisionism.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Even before its release, Agora was already known as the film that got Amenábar in trouble with many Christian denominations.
• Tear Jerker: The destruction of the Serapeum's library in the first part, and the death of Hypatia in the second. In between many people are quite cruel to one another.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The real Hypatia was apparently married to a fellow philosopher named Isidorus, which would have put an interesting and very different spin on many of the scenes between herself and Davus.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Perhaps inevitably, viewers familiar with the story of Hypatia might wonder whether all the cast, budget and care put into this film would have not worked much better with a script closer to the real events, which would have still even allowed a lot of the feminist/anti-intolerance message the film carries.
  • The film features a religious conflict between Christians and Greco-Egyptian Pagans in Alexandria, which only a couple centuries earlier had been a center of Gnosticism - a religious movement that was effectively an attempt to mix Christianity and Greco-Egyptian Paganism. We know through Epiphanius that there were still Gnostic remnants in the city during the era of Hypatia, and some scholars even suspect that Synesius himself was familiar with their doctrines due their apparent influences on his treatises regarding religion. However, they don't show up in the film at all, not even mentioned, and any nuance or reflection they could have prompted in the conflicted Christian and Pagan characters is lost.
• Uncertain Audience: Regardless of the director's intentions, this seemed to be the case on the film's reception. The product clearly didn't pander to Christians, given that it emphasizes one of the most unsympathetic events of their history, yet it hardly pleased science buffs and historians either, as it took too many liberties with history to be palatable to them (and amusingly enough, not even Kemetic/Hellenic Neo-Pagans would be able to wholly like it, as ancient Pagans are portrayed as similar to Christians). European film critics were the only group that approved Ágora, and this likely had much more to do with filmic style and Sword and Sandal nostalgia than any inherent draw.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Some critics noted the scientific, liberated Pagans were played by white actors, while the Parabalani were all swarthy types with Middle-Eastern accents, with all its political implications.

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