Please,Mel Gibson… don’t do this again. It’s already taken us a while to forgive you for the drunken, virulently anti-semitic commentsduring a traffic stop in Malibu in 2006, not to mention the threatening andhighlyracist and misogynist voicemails he left for his ex, Oksana Grigorieva in 2010 — also while very drunk. Should we mention his odd lineage of films that seem to always make him a victim of torture? Then there’s the original take on the life of Jesus Christ,The Passion of the Christ, which couldn’t help but implicate Jewish religious leaders in the death of the Christian Messiah. Listen, Mel… where there’s smoke, there’s fire — and chalking all this behavior up to alcohol simply doesn’t cut the mustard. We want to forgive you… but it’s really, really hard.
The fact is, we all used to love Mel Gibson — the uber-talented, devilishly handsome Aussie import who was splashed across the pages of teen magazines in the ’90s after his roles inMad Maxand theLethal Weaponfranchise. To measure the Mel-O-Meter in those days,let us rememberClueless, where Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) corrects a better-educated woman on a line from Shakespeare, thanks to her teeny-bopper love for Gibson (who had recently played Prince Hamlet on screen).
See, the Australian import made a huge splash with American audiences in the ’80s and maintained A-List status throughout the ’90s before some highly public, post-Y2K disasters became too hard for Hollywood to ignore. Now,Gibson is set to direct a sequel to that already-controversial look at the death of Jesus Christ. Yikes.
The Passion of the Christ
The Passion of the Christ: This film offers a dramatic retelling of the final hours of Jesus Christ, showcasing the moments leading to his crucifixion. Directed by Mel Gibson, the movie focuses on the intense emotional and physical suffering experienced by Jesus, presenting a poignant narrative that delves deeply into themes of sacrifice and redemption.
Why We Want to Forgive Mel Gibson
Retroactively forgiving Gibson’s hate speech and alcoholism isn’t entirely black and white. Gibson’s famous supporters, like Robert Downey Jr. and Jodie Foster, have asked us to move on from his prior transgressions. We all make mistakes, they say.Hollywood (or at least the financial end of the business) has given him a second chance, mostly in hard-boiled action films that are, let’s just say — not the highest budget nor most well-crafted films of his career. Still, even his most ardent critics have to admit…it’s been pretty entertaining seeing Gibsonin recent old-man versions of his prime action roles.
Why ‘Angry’ Mel Gibson Made Director of Controversial Historical Epic Nervous
Roland Emmerich didn’t find working with Mel Gibson an easy task at the start of filming his 2000 historical epic.
Gibson has undoubtedly provided nostalgia-inducing performances in films likeDragged Across Concrete,Force of Nature, andBandit. Now, Gibson is on the verge of a potential re-acceptance into Hollywood’s upper echelon — where one late-career, breakthrough performance could vault him back to the top, maybe even garner a forgiving Oscar nomination. But honestly —that’s why this may not be the best time to make another potentially offensive religious film with Q-Anon poster boy Jim Caviezal.
Gibson’s association with an obscure, conservative Christian sect, in his own right, has always been problematic for fans of the actor. Still, our collective love for a soon-to-be-bygone generation of action stars has already helped usre-discover our love for Tom Cruise, years after his reputation was the stuff of urinal cakes (thanks to the Oprah couch-jump-gate and all that off-putting Scientology stuff).
Jim Caviezal Makes This Film Even Harder to Enjoy
Add to that the recent public persona of Gibson’s friend, Jim Caviezel, who will again play Christ inPassion 2 —and we’re literallycringingat the thought of this film’s release. Caviezel’s most recent role was playing the ‘heroic’ Tim Ballard, who rescues helpless victims from a sex-trafficking ring. The problem is that investigative journalists have blown holes in this ‘true story’ and its imaginative illuminations of theultra-conservative QAnon conspiracytheories that are the internet’s version of toxic waste.
While Gibson absolutely deserves recognition for committing himself to sobriety for, by most reports, over 14 years now, a larger issue was the actor’s association with his father’s uber-conservative Catholic sect, known as sedevacantism. He has publicly spoken against taxpayer-funded stem cell research on the grounds that embryos are cloned and destroyed as part of the process.
It Would Be Difficult to Ever Completely Forgive Mel Gibson
He has also criticized what he believes to be the intervention of the state in the affairs of its citizens, as well as the role of governments worldwide in diplomatic involvement in international conflicts. That’s a pretty weird, seemingly-Nationalist view for an actor/filmmaker to take.
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Jim Caviezel’s Hollywood outcast status has only increased since the release of Sound of Freedom.
Still, years later, the hardest part of now negotiating our past love for Mel Gibson is thathighly-publicized 2006 traffic stop where Gibson unleashed his anti-semitic hate. They inspired Endeavor mogul Ari Emmanuel, essentially Gibson’s top agent at the time, to immediately drop Gibson as a client from WME and issue a public statement decrying his behavior. Furthermore, if you listen to those voicemails again — it’s honestly hard to believe Gibson was ever re-admitted to an acting career in Hollywood.
Assuming that was a fit of alcohol-induced rage from which the actor has reformed himself, he is again taking the curious step oftrying to make yet another religious filmwith the potential to offend — just when we were ready to move on. Adding the very controversial Jim Caviezal into the mix, only two years after one of the most conspiracy-theory-driven, ultra-conservative movies ever made, is another potentially offensive decision. The result may set back Gibson’s public image by decades.RentThe Passion of the ChristonAppleTV+.
