History Film / Gold

* ''Film/Gold1974'', a British/South African co-production starring Creator/Roger Moore.

* ''Film/Gold2017'', a Spanish film starring Raúl Arévalo.

[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gold2017.png]]
-->''In early 16th century, for many Spaniards whom poverty and hunger had driven into becoming soldiers, the just discovered Indias offered dreams of fame and fortune. So there they traveled in great numbers, with everything to win and nothing to lose except life.''
-->''They were tough, arrogant, cruel people, often divided by quarrels and birthplaces. They killed without any scruple and died without any protest in the search of the dreamed gold. But while they walked into the unknown, these men and women gave birth, unwittingly, to a new world and an amazing epic.''

''Gold'' (''Oro'') is a 2017 Spanish HistoricalFiction film directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. Based on and expanded upon a short story by Creator/ArturoPerezReverte, it tells the journey of a 16th century Spanish expedition marching through the Mesoamerican jungle in an ill-fated attempt to find the legendary gold city of Tezutlan.

----
!!''Gold'' provides examples of:
* ActionGirl: Ana asks to be given weapons and join the fight, and despite being an untrained civilian and initially a bit scared of fighting, she quickly adapts and gets a handful of kills by gun and dagger. TruthInTelevision during the Spanish conquest of America, by the way.
* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:Contrary to the legend, Tezutlan is just a coastal village with gold-colored roofings. All the efforts, deaths and kills for the legendary treasure were for nothing.]]
* AmbiguousSituation: Depending on how you interpret the crew's intense expressions when Don Gonzalo orders Marchena to play a vihuela song, they might be affected by its nostalgic lyrics, offended at the old captain for bringing up a palace commodity in midst of the jungle, or just weirded out by how out of place it feels there - or maybe all of it at once.
* AntiHero: The entire group qualify as a VillainProtagonist bunch, given that they are technically greedy conquerors who make a living of invading, sacking and raping in foreign lands. However, most of them are still pauper immigrants who moved to the New World as their only way to escape hunger and misery back in Spain, and their pillaging is actually not very different from what native tribes do to each other themselves.
* BadassCrew: The protagonist expedition, formed mainly by veteran soldiers from one of the strongest armies of the Old World. They continiously lay waste on hostile tribes and enemy forces, despite being travelling through an uncharted DeathWorld and getting outnumbered all the time by enemies who play at home.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Out of forty men and women, only Dávila and Barbate survive to reach Tezutlan. However, they find out there's not gold, only yellow-colored clay, so they will probably be hanged when they return to the colonies for having nothing to compensate all the trouble with. At least they are still alive and safe for now and have taken possession of the Pacific Ocean, which should give them a bit of clout... if they return alive.]]
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Marchena is a bumbling coward most of the time, but he gets a moment of battle rage, butchering natives with a dagger through the tricked wall.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Mediamano's village was burnt down and his wife was killed, possibly in the same attack.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: Even the most conventionally evil member of the expedition, Ensign Gorriamendi, is open to fight along with Indians and women if they wish to do so (in contrast to some crewmen who openly antagonize the Indian allies and see women of any race as just booty). Also, although he worked as a slave hunter in the past, he seems to actually care little for racial differences given that he is just as nonchalant murdering Spaniards as he is killing natives. Though it might surprise some, this attitude was TruthInTelevision with some frequency as well, as Spanish conquistadores accepted anybody who wanted to wield a weapon for them regardless of their nationality and gender (often for pragmatic reasons, as their job's high mortality meant they couldn't be picky), and usually saw slavery of Indians in a "just business" way rather than out of racial theories (which is the reason many of them ended up marrying native women after settling down).
* EveryoneHasStandards: The soldiers might be serial rapists by modern standards, but when they see Father Vargas attacking Quetza only for having voluntarily slept with Ulzama, they immediately stop him and give him a scary beatdown for the trouble.
* EyeScream: Sgt. Bastaurrés ''bursts'' the eye of an enemy with his thumb during a close quarters scuffle. Later, a soldier gets a dart directly to the eyeball. It's nice in neither case.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: A very common trait among the expedition members, including not only soldiers like Romero and Gorriamendi, but also non-combatants like Father Vargas, who merely puts up a resigned ThisIsGonnaSuck face when he gets abandoned to his death in a swamp. Considering that solely joining the Conquest of Mexico required a crapton of guts for the average European at the time, it is not that surprising they are that biase with the possibility of dying.
* FashionableAsymmetry: Many of the soldiers wear asymmetric armor, presumably a result of the battle damage and lack of supply lines.
* GeneralFailure: Don Gonzalo, the expedition's captain. Aside from being petty and tyranical, he also has a spectacular disregard for his men's lives, depends on his lieutenants for true military action, and has a clear favoritism towards his wife. As a result, the men soon cause a mutiny against him and execute him on the spot.
* GeneralRipper: Ensign Gorriamendi, especially towards Dávila.
* GuileHero: Sergeant Bastaurrés sends Dávila and Mediamano to patrol before the soldiers revolt and execute Don Gonzalo, not wanting Dávila to be present when Gorriamendi takes possession of Doña Ana. Mediamano deduces this and goes along the plan, even threatening to let Dávila get lost in the jungle if he tries to return.
* HungryJungle: Filled with strange beasts, mortal diseases and hostile natives.
-->'''Dávila:''' Shitty jungle...
-->'''Mediamano:''' Soldier. ''No'' get angry with jungle. If you against her, she put hand in your chest and pull out heart. And then take sword. And you not soldier anymore. You crazy man.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Father Vargas chastises everybody for their lust, yet he himself tries to take Quetza as a concubine.
* IAmAHumanitarian: The Three Sin Savages are said to be cannibals. This is not seen onscreen and might be meant to be just colonial propaganda, but the corpses of Spanish soldiers found in their shacks are bloodied and hung like pork, which hints it might be true after all.
* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Done by almost all the soldiers, who employ captured native women as sex slaves. Gorriamendi also rapes Doña Ana as a sign of dominance after taking over the expedition, and even Captain Medrano first thinks on this when he comes upon her.
* NobleDemon: Ensign Gorriamendi is a brutal marauder who is willing to steal riches from the king and kill anyone in his way, but he also has a sense of honor and respects those who serve him, especially fellow soldiers.
* NotSoDifferent: Subtlely implied with Mediamano, the indigenous guide. While he is one of the most moral members of the group and has a less colonialist background than the rest, which gives him an edge to modern viewers' sensibilities, there's the interesting fact that he is a Chocó tribesman who in turn carries a very Mayan ''macuahuitl'' and ''chimalli'' panoply as his main weapons. The implication here is that he acquired those foreign weapons as war booty while fighting for the Spaniards in Mexico, making him ultimately just like the conquistadores he serves: a hired gun who thrives by plundering foreign lands.
* PetTheDog: Gorriamendi can be often seen petting his hound, Rabioso, and is also positively ''heartbroken'' when the dog is sniped down. He also gets indignant when Don Gonzalo orders some soldiers to be killed with a lowly civilian method of execution, which was SeriousBusiness at the time and place.
* PrimalStance: Mediamano is often seen with a semi-crouched stance, especially before fighting, which is probably part of his tribe's customs.
* RaceLift: A strange case with Ana's maiden. She is nicknamed La Parda, a period term for mulatto or African black, but she's played by the very pale white Anna Castillo. (Her nickname even seems to evoke the historical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatriz_de_Palacios La Parda]], a notorious African-Spanish conquistadora who was one of the first black people to set foot noAmerica.) However, this oddity is never even mentioned, and it just seems weird due to all the work put in the rest of the film's setting.
* SinisterMinister: Father Vargas.
* StalkerWithATestTube: Played for laughs with Quetza, who wants to beget a child by Ulzama because she believes his ability to write makes him a supernatural being. He complies, although it is unknown whether it was enough to impregnate her (or whether [[spoiler:she survived to Medrano's attack]]).
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: It's implied [[spoiler:everybody in Requena's village was butchered by Medrano]], but as we don't get to see it onscreen, it's possible some of them escaped or were left alive.
* YouNoTakeCandle: Mediamano and other Indians speak a Spanish version of this. Justified to a point, as UsefulNotes/SpanishLanguage has a pretty tricky variety of conjugations, especially compared to English and other, less gramatically complex languages, and it actually takes a ''long'' time for a non-native speaker to fully stop sounding like this in real life.

* IAmHumanitarian: The Three Sin Savages are said to be cannibals. This is not seen onscreen and might be meant to be just colonial propaganda, but the corpses of Spanish soldiers found in their shacks are bloodied and hung like pork, which hints it might be true after all.

* NotSoDifferent: Subtlely implied with Mediamano, the indigenous guide. While he is one of the most moral members of the group and has a less colonialist background than the rest, which gives him an edge to modern viewers' sensibilities, there's the interesting fact that he is a Chocó tribesman who in turn carries a very Mayan ''macuahuitl'' and ''chimalli'' panoply as his main weapons. The implication here is that he acquired those foreign weapons as war booty while fighting for the Spaniards in Mexico, making him ultimately just like the conquistadores he serves: a hired gun who thrives by plundering other lands.

-->''In early 16th century, for many Spaniards for whom poverty and hunger had driven into becoming soldiers, the just discovered Indias offered dreams of fame and fortune. So there they traveled in great numbers, with everything to win and nothing to lose except life.''
-->''They were tough, arrogant, cruel people, often divided by quarrels and birthplaces. They killed without any scruple and died without any protest in search of the dreamd gold. But while they walked into the unknown, these men and women gave birth, unwittingly, to a new world and an amazing epic.''

''Gold'' (''Oro'') is a 2017 Spanish HistoricalFiction film directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. Based on and expanded upon a short story by Creator/ArturoPerezReverte, it tells the journey of a 16th century Spanish expedition marching through the Mesoamerican jungle in an ill-fated attempt to find the legendary gold city of Teziutlan.

* AntiHero: The entire group qualify as a VillainProtagonist bunch, given that they are technically greedy conquerors who make a living of invading, sacking and raping in foreign lands. However, most of them are still pauper immigrants who moved to the New World as their only way to escape hunger and misery back in Spain, and their pillaging is actually not very different from what the native tribes do to each other themselves.
* BadassCrew: The protagonist expedition, which formed mainly by veteran soldiers from one of the strongest armies of the Old World. They continiously lay waste on hostile tribes and enemy forces despite being through an uncharted DeathWorld and getting outnumbered all the time by enemies who play at home.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Out of forty men and women, only Dávila and Barbate survive to reach Teziutlan. However, they find out there's not gold, only yellow-colored clay, so they will probably be hanged when they return to the colonies for having nothing to compensate all the trouble with. At least they are still alive and safe for now and have taken possession of the Pacific Ocean, which should give them a bit of clout... if they return alive.]]
* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Marchena is a bumbling coward most of the time, but he gets a moment of battle rage butchering natives with a dagger through the tricked wall.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Mediamano's village was burnt down, and hus wife was killed, possibly in the same attack.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: Even the most conventionally evil member of the expedition, Ensign Gorriamendi, is open to fight along with Indians and women if they wish to do so (in contrast to some crewmen who openly antagonize the Indian allies and see the women of any race as just booty). Also, even if he worked as a slave hunter in the past, he seems to actually care little for racial differences, given that he is just as nonchalant murdering Spaniards as he is killing natives. Though it might surprise some, this attitude was TruthInTelevision with some frequency as well, as Spanish conquistadores often accepted anybody who wanted to pick up a weapon for them regardless of their nationality and gender due to the constant shortage of land forces, and often saw slavery of Indians in a "just business" way rather than out of racial theories (which is the reason many of them ended up marrying native women after settling down).
* EveryoneHasStandards: The soldiers might be serial rapists by modern standards, but when they see Father Vargas attacking Quetza only for having (voluntarily) slept with Ulzama, they immediately stop it and give him a scary beatdown.
* EyeScream: Sgt. Bastaurrés ''bursts'' the eye of an enemy with his thumb during a close quarters scuffle. Later, a soldier gets a dart directly to the eyeball. It's not nice in either case.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: A very common trait among the expedition members, including not only soldiers like Romero and Gorriamendi, but also non-combatants like Father Vargas, who merely puts up a resigned ThisIsGonnaSuck face when he gets abandoned to his death in a swamp. Considering that solely joining the Conquest of Mexico required a crapton of guts for the average European at the time, it is not that surprising at the end.
* FashionableAsymmetry: Many of the soldiers wear asymmetric armor, presumably a result of the battle wear and lack of supply lines.
* GeneralFailure: Don Gonzalo, the expedition's captain. Aside from being petty and tyranical, he also has a spectacular disregard for his men's lives, depends on his lieutenants for true military action and has a clear favoritism towards his wife. As a result, the men rise a mutiny against him and execute him on the spot.

* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Done by almost all the soldiers, who employ captured native women as sex slaves. Gorriamendi also rapes Doña Ana as a sign of dominance after taking over, and even Captain Medrano first thinks on this when he comes upon her.

* NotSoDifferent: Subtlely implied with Mediamano, the indigenous guide. While he is one of the most moral members of the group and has a less colonialist background than the rest, which gives him an edge to modern viewers' sensibilities, there's the interesting fact that he is a Chocó tribesman who in turn carries a very Mayan ''macuahuitl'' and ''chimalli'' panoply as his main weapons. The implication here is that he acquired those foreign weapons as war booty while fighting for the Spaniards in Mexico, making him ultimately just like the conquistadores he serves: a hired gun plunderer.
* PetTheDog: Gorriamendi can be often seen petting his hound, Rabioso, and is also positively ''heartbroken'' when the dog is sniped down. He also gets indignant when Don Gonzalo orders soldiers to be killed with a lowly civilian method of execution, which was SeriousBusiness at the time and place.

* RaceLift: A strange case with Ana's maiden. She is nicknamed La Parda, a period term for mulatto or African black, but she's played by the very pale white Anna Castillo. (Her nickname even seems to evoke the historical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatriz_de_Palacios La Parda]], a notorious African-Spanish conquistadora who was one of the first black people to set foot in America.) However, this oddity is never even mentioned, and it just seems weird due to all the work put in the rest of the film's setting.

* StalkerWithATestTube: Played for laughs with Quetza, who wants to beget a child by Ulzama because she believes his ability to write is supernatural. He complies, although it is unknown whether it was enough to impregnate her (or whether [[spoiler:she survived to Medrano's attack]]).

* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:Contrary to the legend, Teziutlan is just a coastal village with gold-colored roofings. All the effort, deaths and kills for the legendary treasure have been for nothing.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Out of forty men and women, only Dávila and Barbate survive to reach Teziutlan. However, they find out there's not gold, only yellow-colored clay, so they will probably be hanged when they return to the colonies for having nothing to compensate all the trouble with. At least they are still alive and safe for now and have taken possession of the Pacific Ocean, which should give them a bit of clout.]]

* EqualOpportunityEvil: All the group might qualify for VillainProtagonist given that they are greedy invaders after all, and they accept Indian auxiliaries and women among their fighters without trouble. Though it might surprise some, this is TruthInTelevision as well, as Spanish conquistadores often accepted anybody who wanted to pick up a weapon for them regardless of their nationality and gender due to the constant shortage of land forces.
* EyeScream: Sgt. Bastaurrés ''bursts'' the eye of an enemy with his thumb during a close quarters scuffle. Later, a soldier gets a dart directly to the eyeball. It's not nice in either.

* HungryJungle: Filled with strange beasts, uncurable diseases and hostile natives.

* PrimalStance: Mediamano is often seen with a semi-crouched stance, especially before fighting, which might be a martial thing of his tribe.

* ActionGirl: Ana gets forced to join the fight with guns and daggers, and despite being an untrained civilian and initially terrified of fighting, she quickly adapts and makes a few good contributions to the battle. TruthInTelevision during the Spanish conquest of America, by the way.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Out of forty men and women, only two have survived. Dávila and his partner finally reach Teziutlan, only to find out there's not gold, only yellow-colored clay. However, at least they are still alive and have discovered the Pacific Ocean.]]

* NotSoDifferent: Subtlely implied with Mediamano, the indigenous guide. While he is one of the most moral members of the group and has his moments of reluctance in his job, there's the fact that he is stated to be just a chocó tribesman, yet he carries a very Mayan ''macuahuitl'' and ''chimalli'' combination as his main weapons. The implication here is that he has been fighting for the Spaniards a long time and that acquired those weapons as war booty in Mexico, which makes him just like the the conquistadores he serves: a hired gun plunderer that thrives from the domination of others.
* RaceLift: A strange case with Ana's maiden. She is nicknamed La Parda, a period term for mulatto or African black, but she's played by the very pale white Anna Castillo. (Her nickname even seems to evoke the historical [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatriz_de_Palacios La Parda]], a notorious African-Spanish conquistadora who was one of the first black people to set foot in America.) However, this oddity is never even mentioned, and it just seems weird due to all the work put in the rest of the film's setting.

''Gold'' (''Oro'') is a 2017 Spanish HistoricalFiction film directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes. Based on and expanded upon a short story by Creator/ArturoPerezReverte, it tells the journey of a 16th century Spanish expedition marching through the Mexican jungle in an ill-fated attempt to find the legendary gold city of Teziutlan.

* HungryJungle: Filled with strange beasts, uncurable diseases and hostile natives.