The Replacements or Coming Soon: Mel Gibson’s ‘The Resurrection of the Christ’

About this time next year, Mel Gibson will release the 2-part sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Better late than never, some will say, although not, perhaps, Jim Caviezel, who so memorably played Jesus, and who has, over the two decades since, spoken with excitement of the ever-imminent production of The Resurrection of the Christ.

But Mr. Caviezel is out, having been replaced by Finnish actor Jaakko Ohtonen.

Ever since certain new technologies began appearing, speculation had been that Mr. Gibson would employ AI “de-aging” (as was used in the final Indiana Jones film to make the 80-year-old Harrison Ford appear 40). This in order to make the original actors of Passion, who at next year’s premieres (March 26 and May 7) will be a quarter-century older, appear as they did in 2002 while filming the Passion. But the de-aging was recently deemed both too expensive and, likely, too distracting to be effective. It’s the “uncanny valley” effect.

Thus, in addition to Mr. Ohtonen: Maia Morgenstern (Mary, the mother of Jesus in the original) will be replaced by Polish actress Kasia Smutniak; Monica Bellucci (Mary Magdalene) is out in favor of Cuban actress Mariela Garriga; and Italian actor Pier Luigi Pasino will replace Francesco De Vito as Simon Peter. Indeed, it seems the entire cast will be new.

And let’s be honest: With a sequel in which the time between the real-world events portrayed is three days, an entirely new cast was inevitable.

But 23 years between premieres? Well, without knowing all the specifics, I suspect Mr. Gibson was fairly worn out, physically, emotionally, and spiritually by the Passion. That, and subsequent events, intervened to make a quick turnaround impossible.

He and his wife, Robyn, separated and then divorced in 2006 after 26 years of marriage. (She received a $400 million settlement.) Mel was awarded an annulment – of a sort. Denied by the Roman Catholic Church, which is the only authority that could canonically approve an annulment, his father, Hutton Gibson, and a tribunal of members of the traditionalist-sedevacantist Church of the Holy Family in California, approved the annulment on grounds that Mel had felt pressured into the 1980 marriage because Robyn was pregnant, which is surely the lamest of excuses.

It is certainly odd when a man turns such important ecclesiastical matters over to his biological father rather than to the Holy Father. I suspect Mr. Gibson is more an American than a Catholic, and a very self-directed American at that.

I recently re-watched Passion, and it certainly evoked for me what I deem an unalterably sad flaw in Gibson’s worldview: antisemitism. In 2004, the Anti-Defamation League and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a joint statement calling the script “one of the most troublesome texts, relative to antisemitic potential, that any of us had seen in 25 years,” adding that the film would “falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews.”

This led 20th Century Fox, which had a first-refusal deal with Gibson’s Icon Productions, to decide against distributing the film. (Equivocation, not necessarily hypocrisy, not being unknown in Hollywood, Fox later handled VHS and DVD distribution of the film.)

In any case, on a reported budget of $30 million, Passion grossed more than half-a-billion dollars, and, despite some savage reviews over the violence and antisemitism, received controversial approbation from St. John Paul II, who after watching the film said, “It is as it was,” i.e., the film’s depiction of violence and hatred accurately portrayed conditions in 1st century Israel. And John Paul was no antisemite.

Between Passion and Resurrection, Mr. Gibson has acted in 25 films. He directed just 3: Apocalypto (2006, a remarkable Mayan fantasy); Hacksaw Ridge (2016, which I reviewed here); and a film called Flight Risk (2025), a thriller to which CinemaScore awarded a C on the A-to-F scale.

The forthcoming Resurrection films, let’s hope, will be wonderful – and also free of antisemitic tropes. Mel Gibson needs no more of that.

Having studied karate and boxing, I only know Joe Rogan from his work as a commentator on mixed-martial-arts broadcasts. But his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, seems to be the place to which all right-of-center personalities go to talk and promote.

Last year, in a discussion with Mr. Rogan,  Gibson described Resurrection thusly:

There’s a lot required because it’s an acid trip. I’ve never read anything like it [ presumably referring to Randall Wallace’s screenplay.]. . . .And I think in order to really tell the story properly, you have to really start with the fall of the angels, which means you’re in another place, you’re in another realm. You need to go to hell. You need to go to Sheol.

I, for one, look forward to a cinematic depiction of the Harrowing of Hell. It’s not like there isn’t a wide latitude for depicting this mysterious aspect of the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into Hell; / on the third day He rose again from the dead.”

“Acid trip” is a bit worrying, of course, but we’ll see.

And then there are the comments Mr. Gibson has made about what I’ll call the film’s structural integrity. Passion was mostly a straight line from Gethsemane to Calvary (with flashbacks to Holy Thursday and some earlier events in Christ’s life), ending with an ever-so-brief glimpse of the Resurrection – the historical event, not the forthcoming film.

But as reported by Variety, the film biz bible, the director has said that the forthcoming film is:

not a linear narrative [that] you have to juxtapose the central event that I’m trying to tell with everything else around it in the future, in the past, and in other realms, and that’s kind of getting a little sci-fi out there.

Make of that what you will.

Whether you like Mel Gibson or dislike him, I suspect you look forward to seeing what he does next. I do. The Resurrection of the Christ may be a triumph or a disaster, but it will almost surely be worth watching.