How THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST Continues to Inspire
By Movieguide® Contributor
The 2004 movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST was a sleeper hit, earning over $612 million worldwide, making it the highest-earning independent movie ever made.
Perhaps no one was more surprised than its director Mel Gibson, whose movie started as a labor of love inspired by hours of prayer and meditation, or a “splinter,” as the actor called it, that had to make its way out into the world.
“Making films is kind of like having children, I guess. [T]hey’re conceived…and you’re editing…it’s got stages of development, and then you kick it out in the world,” Gibson told fellow filmmaker Andrew Erwin on his “Storytellers” podcast.
When Erwin asked him if there was a moment the “switch flipped” from PASSION becoming a meditative idea to a movie that he “had to make,” the BRAVEHEART director made a unique analogy.
“Yeah, it’s interesting how that evolved. I’m not quite sure, but it’s like a splinter, you know? It’s got to work its way out,” he told Erwin. “[F]ester is not the right word you’re like, ‘I got to figure out how to do this,’ and it’s coming out. And whether you like it or not…it’s coming.”
Erwin shared his experience watching the 2005 Teddy Bear Award® winner in the theaters for the first time, recalling the impact it had on him as well as the other moviegoers.
“There’s only a few movies that have been in an experience like this. But it got to the end of the movie and it was silent; nobody moved, they were just sitting there,” he recalled.
Gibson wasn’t that surprised by the effect the movie depicting the final hours leading up to Christ’s crucifixion had on audiences since he had that same experience every day on the set.
“A lot of people come up to me since and say, ‘It changed the way I live.’ And so it had some kind of transformative experience for people. That’s more than a film, I think, and so it actually kind of scared me,” the 69-year-old admitted.
“It kind of frightens you, and you realize that you have to exercise responsibility with what you put out there…so it’s very powerful,” he went on to explain.
Erwin who, along with brother Jon, has made faith-based films like JESUS REVOLUTION and I CAN ONLY IMAGINE shared with Gibson how PASSION had inspired him along with many other Christian filmmakers after decades of the “atrophying” of Christianity in the arts to create “stories of faith.”
“[F]or a lot of us that have gone on to do stories of faith, we trace our roots back to that moment sitting in a theater watching THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST,” Erwin said. “There’s probably about 10 of us that are doing it now. That was the first time that we were like,’ Oh, we can express what we believe.”
“We had to figure out this art form and figure it out along the way. It was a flag that was planted in the ground through that story,” the I STILL BELIEVE director continued.
“It’s good to see that it spawned a kind of a movement, which hopefully is more than just, you know, profit motive,” Gibson said. “Because I didn’t expect to make any money. I thought I’ll just be happy to break even, but a lot of people wanted that experience, and I think you can continue that experience.”
The New York native hasn’t given a lot of detail but recently revealed that he plans to start filming the sequel to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, called THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST, in 2026. It will depict the three days Christ spent in Hell ministering to souls before his resurrection.
“My brother and I and Randall all sort of congregated on this. So there’s some good heads put together, but there’s some crazy stuff,” he said. “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.”
READ MORE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST’S SEQUEL
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