¶1Why tell this resurrection story? What does the culture, what have people lost of that story today? Well, I think believability for a start. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't know if I'll be successful, but I'm having a crack at it.
¶2>> We finally have our first official preview images from Mel Gibson's upcoming resurrection movies. And you better believe this one's going to be highly controversial, sparking a whole new round of debates among Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and atheists alike. Welcome to Apologia and these are all the Easter eggs, references, and little things you might have missed in the leadup to Mel Gibson's resurrection of the Christ. While I now spend my days creating videos on a writing project about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus back in the '90s, I was a pioneer of overly obsessive movie coverage on the internet. Then I spent the 2000s actually in the movie industry with some still lingering involvement now.
¶3Also, my very first YouTube channel, which led directly to this one, was about obsessive movie nerd details. So, with these two worlds colliding, I can't help but get my geek on. But before we dig into the theater exclusive resurrection feature at Shot by Shot, let's first recap what we know about this expansion of the Passion of the Christ cinematic universe. In 2004, when the Passion of the Christ was [music] released, it really wasn't a cultural event. In 2004, Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, a graphic and intensely violent depiction of the final hours of the crucifixion of Jesus.
¶4Filmed in Aramaic and Latin, the [clears throat] film drew fierce criticism for its brutality, its historical choices, and accusations of anti-semitism. Yet, the controversies only fed its success. Churches organized group outings, religious leaders debated it, and news programs covered it relentlessly. Made for only $30 million and distributed outside the traditional studio system. It went on to earn more than $600 million worldwide, placing it among the most successful independent and religious films ever made.
¶5In fact, at the time, The Passion of the Christ became the highest grossing R-rated film ever. And remarkably, it held that record for 20 years. The first Deadpool movie came agonizingly close, just a few million short of Passion's total. This led to some jokes and jabs at Jesus in Deadpool 2. Now, I'm talked about in the same sentence as Jesus.
¶6Passion of the Christ then me, at least domestically. We beat them overseas where there's no such thing as religion. >> But a Deadpool film eventually did claim the Passion's title, 2024's Deadpool and Wolverine. Of course, that record is broken just a few weeks ago by Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. But that's a tangent.
¶7For a few months in 2004, a Christian movie became one of the biggest cultural events on the planet. And for millions of the faithful, this has become a film to revisit annually to draw them close to the suffering of Christ. >> In the original Passion of the Christ, uh the original cut, he didn't have the resurrection scenery. >> Correct. Yeah.
¶8Uh and that so so he was getting feedback I think from people like we really want to see that. So so he shot a little kind of kod >> in that. Um we were having dinner while we were promoting Hack Ridge >> and I said look you know the story that you really need to tell is the resurrection. I remember that there was a comment on the at the time it's like hang on he gets up he he walk what happens next and it was a real kind of a cliffhanger and they wanted to see you know the fruits of all that that you know the dark the suffering part of it they wanted to see how that manifested itself in the future and so I felt it was incumbent on me to sort of try and at least focus on portraying that >> I mean it's a pretty [music] hard thing to comprehend if you think about somebody dies in public and then uh under his own strength and power comes back to life again. How do you even understand that?
¶9And why are the big realms of good and evil slugging it out for the hearts, minds, and souls of mankind to me? Why are we important? Little old us, flawed, broken us. I feel like I'm, you know, I'm being stripped down and prepared for something else. Now, that's maybe very personal, but I feel like I feel like the Almighty is preparing me to do something big.
¶10Uh, so yeah, I thought it was like 20 20 years. Um, maybe been a bit too late, but uh I think uh now it's perfect because [clears throat] um and you know and I've had all these things taken and it sort of frees me up to uh to not worry about that stuff and just move ahead and uh >> do what I'm being called to do. And I'm being called to do it. >> You know, it's not the passion too. I mean, it's called the resurrection.
¶11That's right. And um that's a very big subject. Yes. Um and um it needs to be looked at because we don't want to just do a simple rendering of it. I mean we can all read what happened, but in order to really experience and and explore probably deeper meanings of what it's about, it's going to take some doing.
¶12And I I wrote it with uh first with Randall Wallace and then my brother and I sat down and had a crack at it and then back to Randy and you know back and forth. So like there's a lot of good minds on it. Randall went to Divinity School in you know in Duke or someplace and Eastford Tennessee. He's down home and um and my brother and I of course uh were raised by the same guy who taught us our faith. And it took my brother and I about and and a guy called Randall Wallace plus my brother and I took us six, seven years to write it.
¶13Took about my brother and I and Randall Wallace and and another guy called Allan. Took us about 10 years to write it. So it's complicated, but uh hopefully we'll be clear. I hope we'll see. He said, "If we do this, it can't be for the money and it can't be for to get back at people that, you know, that have have hated us or wronged us or or or been unhappy with us." >> And then he said, "You know, Satan's going to come after you." >> And I have two scripts, >> right?
¶14>> And and one of them is very structured and a very strong script and kind of more what you'd expect. And the other is like an acid trip and because you're going into other realms and stuff. >> Okay. >> I mean, you're in hell. You're in, you know, you're it's it's like, you know, >> you're watching the angels fall.
¶15Wow. >> It's like crazy. I'll just tell you this. It's an acid trip. >> When we wrote it, it is like >> I've never read anything like it.
¶16There's some crazy stuff. Um, and I think [clears throat] in order to really tell the story properly, you have to start with the fall of the angels, right? >> Yeah. >> Which is you're in another place. You're in another realm, you know, you need to go to hell.
¶17You need to go to shiel. It's very ambitious. That's all I'll say. It just it took a long time to write. It's really ambitious and it goes from like the fall of the angels to the death of the last apostle.
¶18So necessarily it took a long time to ripe and uh it's not a linear telling. Uh it uh it it's juxtaposed against other events in the old and the new testament that give it context and I think deeper more profound meaning because [music] it's like a puzzle that you have to create the pieces and still have it connect because it has to make sense. It has to flow. Was that a creative decision to make it twofold? >> Yes, because it's an enormous download of historical and theological and human information and I think you have to take it a piece at a time and there's a natural break point.
¶19The first film and the second film are kind of different in character and I think they stand alone but they do complete one another as well. Speaking of an enormous download, this is also the reason given why the resurrection films will be in English instead of Aramaic and Latin like the Passion was. >> This is in the English. >> It's in English. Yeah.
¶20>> Why did you make that decision? Because there was something transportative about ancient languages in the passion. >> That was a rather simpler message to get across and I think uh the complexity of an event like the resurrection which is impossible to comprehend really. Yeah. >> [snorts] >> um [clears throat] one has to delve into more sources and I thought it was just silly to make people read subtitles in a foreign language when they were dealing with such heady concepts and >> so it's uh um it asks more of you but we help them along with their own language you know >> the apostle Paul is the first source we have that wrote about the resurrection which was just a few verses with a list of names no tomb no stone no women no guards it's about 80 words.
¶21How do you get 4 hours of screen time out of the mere handful of words about the 40 days Jesus hung around? According to Acts chapter 1, Mike Meyer's Cat in a Hat is the kind of movie you get when you try to make 90 minutes out of two little story. The Hobbit trilogy is the kind of mess you get when you take that two short story and inexplicably split it into multiple films. Peter Jackson had the same instinct as Mel, pulling in ancillary stories from other sources. Didn't go well.
¶22>> Sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread. >> Initially, these films were to come out just 40 days apart. So, at the end of last month, Deadlines Andreas Weisman reported that Gibson's upcoming epic will cost a total of $200 million with the budget being split between uh evenly between the two parts of the film, which are expected to arrive on Good Friday, March 26, 2027. And then about 40 days later on ascension day, May 6, 2027. Obviously, uh we know that that was happening.
¶23This is the announcement, >> but those plans have since changed. >> March of 2027. I don't >> It's in May. In May it comes. Yeah.
¶24Yeah. March we have to deliver it in March and then it gets put out there in May. May 6th I think. >> But these films were originally slated to come out backto back just 40 days apart. They are now going to come out one in 2027 and one in 2028 which I think is actually a very smart move on the filmmakers part here.
¶25>> You can participate in the journey of the resurrection of the Christ part one when it arrives in theaters on May 6th 2027. Now, Randall Wallace also wrote the script for Braveheart. He was personally nominated for an Oscar for that screenplay, and the movie itself won best picture. So, what could possibly be the problem with Randall Wallace writing the resurrection movies? Well, despite spinning an entertaining yarn, Braveheart is famously one of the least accurate historical dramas of all time.
¶26However, William Wallace was actually a well-educated minor nobleman. He would have been very fluent in Latin and French. He was not a poor farmer. The iconic blue face paint and kilt the Scots wore wouldn't appear in Scotland until centuries after Wallace's time. The crucial battle of Sterling Bridge oddly emits the namesake bridge that the battles named after and was absolutely key to the Scottish forces victory.
¶27They use it as a bottleneck to negate the numerical advantage of the English forces. Edward Long Shanks, who was not a pagan by the way, lived and fought for two years after Wallace's execution. didn't die immediately after is shown. Princess Isabella would have been 9 or 10 years old at the time of Wallace's death, happily living in Paris, did not marry Edward II until more than 20 years later. The film's central motivating plot point, the thing that kicks everything off, this primis, the supposed right of lords to bed the wives of commoners on their land on their wedding night.
¶28There's absolutely no historical evidence to show that this actually happened anywhere in the world at any point in the history. If you looked at Braveheart and thought it was history based on these few facts that are correct, there is so so much more that you would believe is true, but that is actually completely wrong. >> I have very little faith that Randall or Mel have any kind of commitment to keeping this thing accurate even to early Christian literature, let alone accurate to actual history. You wanted to make sure you got the historicity right and [music] that it conformed to the story to the scripture >> trying to make it Yeah. Yeah.
¶29Yeah. historical stuff. Well, I regard I regard the Gospels as history. It's verifiable history. Some people say, "Oh, it's a fairy tale.
¶30He never exists, but he did." And there are other accounts, verifiable historical accounts outside the biblical ones that also bear this up that yes, he did exist. And um and and the other aspect of that is that the all the evangelists, the apostles who went out there um every single one of those guys died rather than deny their belief. And nobody dies for a lie. Nobody. >> The more careful and thoughtful version of that sentiment is that no one dies for something they know is a lie.
¶31Many people have died for things they thought were true but were not. Where scholarship would bump up against Melir is the historical basis upon which he thinks that people who knew Jesus were killed for their belief that he rose from the dead. For example, Dr. Shawn McDow wrote what is probably the world's foremost book on the fate of the apostles based on his PhD dissertation. Here is Shawn talking to me about this topic.
¶32>> I think as you point out, you and I have this in common. I think there's also been a hyper trust by many Christians who read s and says, "Hey, they all died as martyrs." And they proclaim it. Well, I've met that claim in the past, so I repent on this show from making them before I did my research. That should be correct as well. >> Shawn puts only one of the 12 disciples, Peter, in the top tier of martyr evidence with much less evidence for the rest.
¶33In fact, Shawn thinks it's likely that at least three of the disciples died of natural causes. But Mel is not about to be constrained by scholars >> because I had my own bank of experts as well, archaeologists and um historians and stuff. So I didn't come in there uh ignorant of the fact I know what history is and I know what um all that stuff is. And sometimes you'll bend history cuz it's more cinematically compelling >> but not too far. >> It is absolutely the top priority of a filmmaker to make a good film.
¶34It's just disingenuous when they pretend to have done more and also unfortunate that audiences don't care to know the difference. There's writings from mystics and doctors of the church and and uh uh of course the four gospels and as you say uh and the old testament the old septtogen the cannon of the old testament you know so it uh it all comes into play because it's a continuum and uh you want to see the progression of all of salvation history if you can >> based on these interviews I'm not convinced that Mel knows that the septuagent is just a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, what he calls the Old Testament. So here he's listing one source as three sources, >> even naysayers, you know, I mean, there were many there's so many sources uh from that era itself and people who weren't necessarily friendly to the idea who, you know, they they say that it happened and they report it. you know, guys like Josephus and I don't know how many sources there are, but there's several maybe a dozen other sources historical because I think that the Bible is an historical document. Yes.
¶35But it's not usually given credence as such. Um the um but the other sources uh that are uh considered to be historically accurate uh confirm the event. So it's uh yeah, so there's there's the gospels, there's there's other mystics, you know, there's guys like St. Francis and stuff like that who uh you know, he had he weighed in on on certain things and he was prophetic and u of course St. Paul was prophetic in the Acts and so is is Christ in the Gospels, you know, totally prophetic at some points letting it letting in on what's coming down.
¶36That's considerably stronger than the evidence. There are several ancient non-Christian writers who mention Jesus or Christians, but they don't report that Jesus rose from the dead. Tacitus reports his execution. Lenny reports Christians worshiping him. Lucian mocks his followers.
¶37Josephus is the one apparent exception. Our surviving text says Jesus appeared alive on the third day, but that's the most disputed part of this passage and may either be a Christian alteration or Joseph is reporting what Jesus's followers claimed. Either way, not a personal endorsement. There are not a dozen hostile historians independently reporting the resurrection. >> The book of Enoch play any role particularly in the battle with angels?
¶38>> Uh, loosely. I mean, I did look at it and but I just decided to stick with more traditional um accounts of and of course my imagination. I mean, what is that place? What do they look like? How do they combat one another when death is not that they're not dying, at least not physically, but spiritually maybe some of them die?
¶39>> The book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish collection of apocalyptic writings composed roughly between the 3rd century B.C.E. and the 1st century CE. It dramatically expands the brief Genesis story about the mysterious sons of God, describing rebellious angels called Watchers, their giant offspring, journeys through heaven and the underworld, divine judgment, and cosmic warfare. It isn't in most Christian Bibles, though it is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the New Testament letter of Jude actually quotes it. >> I don't think it's what anyone expects.
¶40Um, but it doesn't deviate from the truth and the essence of the story. It's just uh an imagining of it. It's something that you have to really look at and make correlations that because it's not all written. >> If if you look at the the synoptic gospels and they are synoptic which means they don't tell you everything. >> Small thing but synoptic doesn't mean incomplete.
¶41It means they can be viewed together because Matthew, Mark and Luke substantively overlap. John, the gospel he quotes next isn't one of these synoptic gospels. And even John says, you know, hey, there were many other things he said and did which if they were be written down couldn't fill all the libraries of all the world, right? So there's a lot of stuff that wasn't written. >> So if the Bible doesn't specifically say that Jesus didn't do something, Mel put it in the movie.
¶42And the gospels are synoptic. And one can look at these things and go, I wonder what was around that and try and analyze those things and make suppositions about what might have been. Not to go against anything in orthodox teaching, but to enhance, I think, uh, what's there for everyone to see. >> I'm glad he's upfront that he's making suppositions. So hopefully the audience isn't confused about them like they got confused about bluepainted Scottish warriors in one of his prior works.
¶43>> You try and [music] remain true to what has been written and at the same time find [music] new aspects on it, introduce other things to it and and find the oddities of it. There's there's a great deal of exploration that goes on and it [music] is the details. It's the little things that matter. >> Do you consult with someone like a biblical scholar? >> Oh yeah.
¶44>> Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
¶45And of course, you know, there's your own thing that comes into it from [clears throat] having read the the book a few times. You read the book a few times and um >> I'm glad Mel has read the Bible a few times, but maybe the experts have read it even more than that. >> You look at the old septtogen, all the old books and stuff. >> Yeah. >> It's all like uh it's all acic prophecy and uh and it it's fulfilled in one person.
¶46What's the chances of that? >> You'd have a better chance of winning the lottery. >> Yeah. >> And uh nobody wins the lottery. >> Nobody wins the lottery.
¶47And [laughter] >> I'm pretty sure people have won the lottery, haven't they? There's one example that I think epitomizes Gibson's willingness to take creative license. >> It's conceivable that a guy like Saul of Tarsus uh was he was younger than Jesus, but he wasn't that much younger. Maybe like five, six years younger. And when Jesus is in the temple as a child, Saul of Tarsus is there, you know, and I placed him in that scene.
¶48Now, it doesn't specifically say in the text that he was there, but he could have been. >> Yeah. And it's easy to imagine uh that that he would be there. >> That's the bar for Mel. Not what's historically verified, not what's historically reliable, what is conceivable.
¶49If it's conceivable, it's on the table. Which finally leads us to that behind-the-scenes featurette that we're here to break down. >> Yeah. Well, the the Passion being released in September for a short time and it's been remastered and the sound has been remastered also. So, it's uh it's in 4K now.
¶50I think I shot it on film, but now it's like all the bells and whistles and technically it looks beautiful. >> The Passion of the Christ returns to theaters September 10th through the 17th in a Fathom event from Lionsgate and Icon. Also remember there is a special extended sneak peek at the resurrection. Mel, allow me to join him for that which you'll see at the beginning of the re-release in theaters exclusively. >> While that sneak peek has not been officially released from Lionsgate, true to their word that it played only in theaters, it's 2006 and fans with phones will do what they do.
¶51So let's dive in. Keeping in mind we're looking at dark handheld lowresolution representations for now. The first minute is a montage of clips from the Passion of the Christ, so nothing new there. It is possibly noteworthy that they opted to show the snake and Roselina Salantano's Satan figure from the first film given how Mel has promised the devil in this series. >> So you're going to have hell, you're going to have Satan, all that.
¶52Yeah. >> Whoa. >> Sure. You got to Yeah. >> Right.
¶53>> You got to have his origin. >> How do you repres How do you depict that? [snorts] >> This is a good question. I think in order to understand that you have to um you have to start with the fall of the angels you in the firmament before >> right at the beginning. It's pretty crazy idea.
¶54>> What does that look like? >> I'm excited to see this. I know what it looks like. >> Well, it's uh >> it's it's a pretty big thing. It's >> But no actor playing Satan has yet been listed on any cast list.
¶55>> And only one actor carried over from the passion to the resurrection. But we won't we won't say who it is. We'll leave that as a cliffhanger. >> Yeah, cliffhanger. [laughter] >> Maybe Roselene is coming back as the mother of lies.
¶56Mel walks onto a studio lot. Given the umbrella pines in the background and the green emergency exit sign, this is probably at Cineacita Studios in Rome where part of the filming took place. >> You're going to Rome tonight? >> Are you really? >> Yeah.
¶57To start. >> Wow. To start. >> Okay. Very good.
¶58>> And and I am scared. [ __ ] That's a tail. >> I'm scared to death. >> Are you kind of >> next? A paper on the table is titled TOTC, standing for the resurrection of Christ read through.
¶59September 18, 2025. A Hollywood read through or table read gathers the cast around a single table who read an entire script aloud for the first time. Actors deliver their own lines while someone else usually reads the stage directions. It gives the director, writers, and producers their first chance to hear whether the story holds together, whether the jokes land, and how the pacing feels once the words leave the page. More importantly, the place card reads cast Jesus Yako Otin.
¶60But famously, Jesus was played by Jim Cavisel in the first film. This may be the first people are hearing about the recast because for years, Jim was talking about coming back. Is >> Jim going to come back as Jesus? >> Yeah, of course. Nobody He's 17 years older.
¶61Does he How does that work? >> I don't know. It's going to be a Rip Van Winkle kind of thing, you know? Three days later, look, he's got wrinkles. >> I You can fix that stuff now.
¶62>> Jim's got wrinkles. What am I going to do? You [laughter] know, and uh >> and along came CGI. Thank goodness. >> Yeah, you can do something, you know, put a little Vaseline on the lens, say, "Jim, turn around." Yeah, [laughter] he actually actually I got to say um 20 years is not dent.
¶63Jim looks great still. So it's it's fantastic. >> How do you choose who's going to be the next Jesus? >> You use him again. >> Cavisel.
¶64>> Yeah, I know. It's 20 years later. It's 20 years later, but it's >> Yeah, but it's the right guy. >> Yeah, but it's it's supposed to be three days later, but he got 20 years older. And I think um I have to use a few techniques that they've started to get really good with >> the CGI and Yeah.
¶65Oh, they can do amazing things now. >> You can actually >> Yeah. >> get some of the same people. >> And by the time you film it, it'll be even better. >> Yeah.
¶66>> By this, Mel is referring to the deaging technologies that have been evolving since 2008 or so. Used on Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy, Michael Douglas in Ant-Man, Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War, Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy, and culminating in its most prominent use on Robert Dairo, Alpaccino, and Joe Peshy in The Irishman. Cavisel himself seemed to be up for it. >> I know you've talked about doing the resurrection.
¶67>> What are you talking about? >> Yeah. Well, I I I I see you talking about doing the sequel with Mel again. >> Uh there's been a lot of reportage about it. >> Any hesitation?
¶68>> No. Not at all. It's what I was born to do. >> The resurrection? >> Yeah.
¶69>> When does that start? Has it started? >> Yeah. Oh, the writing. Yes.
¶70Um I know. I I asked him, "Would you be willing ready to go in January?" He said, "Yeah, maybe." So, how about the end of the fall? He goes, "Yeah, maybe." September. I said, "Yeah, maybe." >> Resurrection. I mean, a return 20 years later to this world that really branded and marked your career.
¶71So, I'm 57 or 56, I don't know, >> 56, >> 65, I don't know, 74. >> But what's crazy about it is just be the best you can at the age you're at, you know, but it hurts a lot more. It's physically a lot harder. you know, the joints that all the years. >> The good news is you don't have the beating, the scourging, the cross.
¶72You don't have all of that in this movie. >> But now we've got Yako playing Jesus. >> All right. You you've recast for the film. You've got a a Finnish actor.
¶73If I pronounce his name wrong, forgive me. Uh Jac Oton. >> He's a um a different actor, a different but he's done an excellent job. I have to say I think he's uh he's at once human and kind of like and in an odd way a kind of peaceful detachment about what he does. Um so it's it's a a pretty good portrayal.
¶74And he he's a he's a good boy. He's >> Oh, he's a good boy. Oh, he's a good boy. Hey, good boy. According to Variety, because of the time frame in which the resurrection of Christ takes place 3 days after Jesus's crucifixion on Good Friday, it made sense to recast the whole film.
¶75A source close to the production told Variety, "They would have had to do all this CGI stuff, all this digital stuff, deaging and all that. That would have been very costly," the source noted. The only non-anmous explanation is this secondhand quote from actor Kevin Sorbel. I know, Mel. And I wanted a role in that movie so bad.
¶76And he said to me, you're too recognizable. I replied, what do you mean? He goes, I don't put myself in that movie. I didn't want to be Braveheart. And they talked me into it.
¶77If you look at Jim Cavisel in that first one, they put a nose on him. They put contacts on him. They changed him quite a bit. I'm not using him this time around because he's in his 50s now. So, I'm using an unknown to play Jesus.
¶78If you're wondering where you've seen Yakoin before, you probably haven't. He has a lot of bit parts on Finnish TV. His English-speaking roles are three episodes of Vikings Valhalla and 10 episodes of The Last Kingdom. >> No Dane should die for Saxons. Not after all that they have done to us.
¶79>> The next shot is director MG or Mel Gibson from the same table read. Using initials for the director isn't unusual. George Lucas went by GWL on the set for the Star Wars prequels. The cans here are Italian water brands San Benadetto and Tika Fonte Delasi. So definitely Rome.
¶80Here Mel is directing a crowd of extras in red, teal, purple, and ochre robes sitting on a stepped white stone set. We'll talk about this set in a second, but oddly Mel Gibson's hoodie is what caught my eye. It features a white emblem of a crowned or thorned ring over a shield with two dark eye shapes and a cross above three lines of small text. It reads like a skull under a crown with a cross which could be a Golgtha place of the skull emblem. A place about which Mel has some interesting ideas that Goltha the place where the crucifixion happened.
¶81It's called Golgatha the place of the skull because that's where Adam's head is buried really. and and the cross when in any artistic depiction at the foot of the cross underneath it is the skull uh representing the skull of Adam. >> Huh. >> This idea likely became the emblem for TOTC crew gear. Crew gear is very important on movie sets for prestige and morale of those behind the cameras.
¶82And often more thought goes into it than you may think. We have a cobbled street at night lined with arcaded ground floors, upper balconies, and tiled rooms filled with crowds, Roman soldiers, horses, a hay cart, torches, and haze. With a video village monitor sitting in the left foreground, the architecture reads more like Rome than Jerusalem. Given later fire and torch footage, this could easily be the night of the great fire of Rome, which tore through the city in 64 CE during the reign of Emperor Nero. It would be relevant here because according to historian Tacitus, Nero set this fire himself and pinned responsibility on the Christians which led to some brutal executions including Peter and Paul.
¶83A movie bird crane arm with a remote head swings over the same night scene while the crowd turns to face a horseman. Perhaps an official addressing the crowd or moving to disperse it. The moon overhead is actually a lighting balloon, a standard trick for shooting night exteriors. A sleeping newborn wrapped in coarse burlap and lit warmly against a black background reads as an infancy flashback. I think there are two candidates here.
¶84The first is obviously baby Jesus. >> Dear 8 lb 6 oz newborn infant Jesus. Don't even know a word yet. Just little infant. So cuddly but still omnipotent.
¶85>> With the rough cloth matching Luke's description of a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. The straw around the infant could certainly be from a manger. But what if instead of straw, those fibers are a papyrus basket among the reads described in Exodus when baby Moses was put into the water? Castless confirm Giovana Suriiera is playing Moses as an adult. So, it could be.
¶86I think I'm seeing some water there. Working against my theory, the next shot is adult Jesus. Though, I can tell you from firstirhand experience that editors of early production teasers generally have only a very limited number of finalized shots to work with. Our first shot of Yako's Jesus crouched low and smiling up at someone in the foreground while disciples surround him in some kind of market. He's brought himself to eye level with the person kneeling or seated, which I'm guessing is a healing.
¶87Maybe the paralytic at Bethesda, but I don't see a pool. I'm pretty sure the visible disciple is Lorenzo Dur who depicts Andrew. This is the warmest and most relaxed Jesus in the entire featurette. A deliberate contrast with the brutalized Jesus of the 2004 film. This next shot does look like Bethesda with people lying on straw mats in a colonated stone courtyard.
¶88It's tough to tell from this angle, but I think Jesus is talking to Pierre Luigi Pacino as Peter, whose biggest role up until now has been Enrico Poet in the Italian TV series, The Law according to Lydia Poet. A young woman in a dark hood stands with her eyes closed and her forehead and palm pressed against a rough trunk or pillar, a posture that reads as either prayer or grief. Visually, this shot looks like a call back to this shot in the original film with Mary pressing her ear to the floor. That makes this most likely Marielle Gera as Mary Magdalene. She's arguably the most famous of the cast, having been featured as Marie in Mission of Possible Dead Reckoning Part One.
¶89This might be the same character, which would make this Mary Magdalene in an Intimate Hug with Jesus. While it makes less sense in context, to me, this looks a little more like actress Sarah Saro, a regular in the stars sci-fi TV series Counterpoint alongside JK Simmons. >> You come from this world. >> I do, >> but the other you does not. >> Who is listed in the credits as Mary Hel?
¶90If you don't remember a character named Mary Hel in your New Testament, that's because she's not. She's a character in the visions of 19th century Catholic mystic and Katherine Emer who is the Virgin Mary's older sister, wife of Cleopus and mother of Mary of Cleopus. Now mystic Emer was a German Augustininian who claimed to have vivid visions of the crucifixion and the poet Clemens Bantano wrote them down. After she died in 1824, he published a book called the Dolores Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ with some mix of her visions and his words smithing. Gibson has said that book essentially fell off his shelf into his hands while he was researching the film.
¶91That quote, "She supplied me with stuff I never would have thought of." And elsewhere, he called the Dolores Passion quote the book the movie is based on. >> And there's a lot of Emmerick in here. >> There is. Yeah. >> How did that How did you come across?
¶92>> I thought Roland Emer. >> No, no, not Roland Emmerick. [laughter] >> Katherine Emerick. >> Yeah. Right.
¶93Yeah. Probably a relative of his. She was also German and she was a nun. you know, who >> was a um uh >> suffered a great deal. >> She did.
¶94She had the the marks of the stigma. She had five wounds and plus the head wounds, you know, everything. It was >> she used to um and she'd go into she'd have visions and things like that. There was a a poet was sent to take down what her visions were. She didn't desire that it'd be written down, but her superior ordered that she tell.
¶95>> And and he was an agnostic, but he wasn't by the time he'd finished. He was like totally like blown away by the whole experience of having to sit with her and her relating what she saw. >> One of the books that uh we took stuff from it was there were two there was an Kathern Emer book dollar's passion of our Lord Jesus Christ which is the passion of Jesus and the other one was Mary Vita's book. >> Was it Emerick? Was it An Katherine Emerick's writings that that particularly illuminated your approach to the character or the way you depicted?
¶96>> Yeah, I think so. how he had uh found this book and it was an Katherine Emer and he goes, "You don't do you know how this guy really died?" >> The Passion of the Christ directly borrows from Emer scenes including Satan tormenting Jesus in Gethsemane, Jesus being abused by his guards, and especially the scene after the scourging in which Pilate's wife gives cloths to Mary and Mary Magdalene who kneel and wipe Jesus's blood from the pavement. All that said, this is probably a Mary Magdalene hug. Tough to tell in dim light and low resolution. These are the same stairs Mel was standing in front of earlier.
¶97The crowd is now cheering as two men have axes at the ready. I wonder what they're cheering for. Presumably something wholesome like an axe throwing competition. This looks to be actor Eduardo Scarpetta, known for his role as Fbrezio in the not quite classic film Mafia Mama. >> How do you expect US TO MAKE MONEY?
¶98>> I DON'T KNOW. >> In Resurrection, he plays the Apostle Paul, shown here giving a little speech next to the same guards with axes. I'm sure everything will be fine. Oh no, things are not fine. That's a very ornate chopping block Paul's head is resting on.
¶99They do enough beheadings to be classy about it. I wonder how credulous Gibson will be with his sources. In the apocryphal acts of Paul from the second century, when describing this beheading says, "When he cut off Paul's head, milk spurted upon the cloak of a soldier. I kind of hope that happens." An Italian language interview with the actor who plays Paul mentioned this scene. Consider that on the first day of shooting, October 6th, I started with my decapitation, so to speak, I lost my mind right away.
¶100It also revealed more of Mel's creative liberties with his character. In the first part, like Saul of Tarsus, I didn't know this as I'm not a believer. There's a whole theme of Saul, a Jew who hates Christians, having his best friend Steven stoned because he's pro-Christian. There's this show trial. We're in the Sanhedrin, and he's chained trying to justify himself.
¶101There's a scene where we look each other in the eye. I raise my arm, then lower it, and the Jews stone him. Now, in Acts 6 to8, Steven is brought before the Sanhedrin, charged with blasphemy, and stoned after delivering a long speech. Saul enters only at the very end when the witnesses lay their cloaks at his feet, and Acts notes that he approved the killing. Nothing in the text makes Saul Steven's best friend, has him arranged the trial, or puts the order for the execution in his hands.
¶102Gibson appears to have taken that small but ominous cameo and built it into a deeply personal relationship and confrontation between two men. Again, Mel is comfortable with merely conceivable. The pencil scribble suggests this is production concept art of the dead Jesus across a woman's lap, presumably Mary, as the other mourers look on. It looks inspired by Giato's lamentation from around 1305, currently hanging in Scraveni Chapel in Italy. production art of camel hairwearing John the Baptist baptizing Jesus.
¶103A scene we didn't get in the first film. >> You start with the Jesus's death on the [music] cross, right? >> And Peter's absolutely wretched. >> Yes. >> Experience [music] and that is he is just eaten up with guilt.
¶104>> He goes back [music] in his memories to meeting Jesus for the first time with John the Baptist. >> Love that >> and how [music] Jesus called those disciples. Notice that John is pouring water on Jesus. Christians have argued for centuries over how wet you're supposed to get in a baptism. Catholics in the West commonly pour or sprinkle water over the head, as do many Protestants, while Baptists and other evangelicals along with many Eastern Orthodox insist that biblical baptism means full immersion.
¶105They point to Jesus coming up out of the water and to the Greek word baptiso, meaning to immerse, as evidence that Jesus himself went all the way under. This scene is definitely going to spark controversy. This isn't production art, but rather the two panel painting Adam and Eve by the German Renaissance master Lucas Cranwich the Elder dating back to 1528. This presumably means that we're going to see the Garden of Eden. While the Passion was rated R, I guess I'd assumed that the Resurrection films would be PG-13, but if not, I guess Mel could actually have them be naked.
¶106Maybe Mel will show Adam buried at Golgtha to connect all the apocryphal dots. A winged angel stands facing a long-haired woman who kneels with her head bowed and her hands folded. A tree trunk rising at the right of the frame. The crossed arms and bowed woman are classic enunciation iconography which would make this Gabriel and Mary. The outdoor setting in the tree suggests another possibility, namely the angel at the tomb meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden.
¶107Either way, the drawing style matches the baptism concept art. So, this is almost certainly a production storyboard. If it is the enunciation, we have more flashbacks. If it is the tomb, we're looking at how the resurrection announcement itself gets staged. We've got nude damn souls tumbling from a rock into fire.
¶108Horned green and brown demons carrying bodies. And at the left, a green meadow with souls rising and fire in the sky. Again, not a production painting, but a small portion of the bottom layer of the last judgment. A fresco painting from 1579 inside the dome of Florence Cathedral. It's basically a giant visualization of what happens at the end of the world when Christ returns as judge.
¶109>> Well, you try and you're inspired by certain images. I mean, there is there are the caravajio and the mantenas and uh and who is that German guy? He did all those biblical uh drawings. Those kinds of images of hell and the fall of Satan and all that sort of Lucifer and stuff like that was like uh very evocative and way ahead of their time, but they're the images that these guys could conceive of and uh create something in you when you saw it. So, lighting wise and the texture of the film visually will be kind of the same as the last one.
¶110Um, and will it and is definitely inspired by all all religious art that came before it, you know, and I've seen a lot. >> Bible history starts with naked people and ends with naked people. And it looks like Mel will have both. This is John Marin's 1841 painting called Pandemonium. It's almost 2 meters wide and is currently in the Lou.
¶111But this isn't a scene from the Bible. It's from John Milton's 1667 work Paradise Lost. In book one, after Satan and the rebel angels have been expelled from heaven, they construct Pandemonium, the capital city of hell, where the demons assemble. In fact, Milton didn't name the city after our word for chaos. When we say pandemonium, it comes from Paradise Lost.
¶112>> Pandemonium is from Paradise Lost. Milton called the center of hell pandemonium, meaning place of all demons. >> Pandemonium. Pandemonium. >> It's pandemonium, folks.
¶113>> Apparently for Gibson, everything is canon. This is from the right panel of Jan Vanek's Last Judgment painted around 1440. Christ judges humanity from above. The Archangel Michael separates the realms. A bat-winged skeleton of death spreads across the frame with the damned falling into a mass of beasts below.
¶114Death's wings are labeled in Latin great chasm and shadow of death. Phrases drawn from Luke and Psalms. >> See more butts. HEY EVERYBODY, I WANT TO SEE MORE BUTTS. >> MEL PERCHES on the rim of a large stone basin or well, surrounded by robed extras with presumably Jesus waiting behind him.
¶115He's sitting where another actor probably belongs, most likely walking the cast through their blocking. The crowd is gathered around whatever is meant to happen at the basin, which points to a well scene. The obvious candidates are Jacob's well, where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman in John 4 and the aforementioned pool of Bethesda. The set will be extended digitally where there is green screen in the background. Mel holds up a monitor for a black actress in a gold vulture style headdress with dangling gold pendants and gold eye makeup while a script supervisor in a headset stands to the left.
¶116This actress turns up three more times in the featurette. First at the Roman court, then carrying a torch at night, and finally in a costume test. From the known cast list so far, I assume this is Ethiopian Italian actress Liliana Mele, who had a recurring role in HBO series Rome as Cleopatra's assistant. But here's the thing. On IMDb, Mele is listed as playing Mary Salame.
¶117The Salame of Christian tradition is really several layers built one on top of another, and each layer has weaker pedigree than the one beneath it. The only firm ground is Mark, which named Solom among the women who followed Jesus from Galilee, watched the crucifixion, and brought spices to the tomb. Comparing Mark's list of women with Matthews led early Christians to identify her as the mother of James and John. a reasonable guess that neither gospel actually states. A shakier harmonization with John's crucifixion list made her the Virgin Mary's sister, which would turn Jesus into her nephew.
¶118Second century texts like the Gospel of the Egyptians went further and gave her conversations with Jesus himself. Only in the Middle Ages did she become Mary Solom, one of three daughters of St. Anne in a legendary family tree. It seems very plausible to me that Gibson would embrace all this as canonical for his movie. What seems less plausible is that this is the costume of a character you intend to be the aunt of Jesus.
¶119Perhaps the connection to the Gospel of Egyptians is enough to make her Egyptian. But I have a few other ideas, assuming that IMDb is wrong here, as it often is, or that this isn't actually Liliana. One candidate is Pharaoh's daughter who finds baby Moses whom I speculate they showed us as an infant earlier. Moses is already on the cast list and the vulture crown was the headdress of Egyptian royal women. So the pieces fit.
¶120Jewish tradition gives that woman the name Bithia and some modern retellings portray her as a Kushite. Now Gibson is on record as having built Egypt sets for the resurrection films. He built parts of Damascus and little bits of Egypt and we had Rome in there and it was >> another strong candidate is the Queen of Sheba since King Solomon is also on the cast list. In first Kings 10, she is an unnamed foreign queen who travels to Jerusalem to test Solomon's wisdom and leaves overwhelmed. But later traditions give her far more.
¶121The Quran retells her story. Islamic tradition names her Bilkis and Ethiopia's medieval Kebran Agast calls her Mika, an African queen whose son by Solomon founded the Ethiopian royal line. The detail that matters most for Gibson though comes from Jesus himself who says in Matthew 12:42 that the quote queen of the south will rise up at the judgment to condemn his generation. If the resurrection film depicts the rising of the dead or the last judgment, that verse gives Gibson a canonical reason to put her on screen. A third possibility is an Egyptian or Nubian royal appearing at a Roman court.
¶122Perhaps one of the candates, the queens who rule the kingdom of Maroi on the upper Nile. Acts 8:27 mentions one of them as Candace, whose court official Philip baptizes on the road to Gaza. Nero also sent an expedition towards Maroi, which would give a cand paths with Rome during the period the film seems to cover and makes the most sense of this scene, which we'll talk about in a minute. It's tough to tell at low resolution, but this is most likely Peter as played by Pierre Luigi Pacino. Maybe a Pentecost or in Solomon's Portico from Acts 3.
¶123Here we definitely have Peter flanked by Gabriel Rolo's John and Lorenzo Deour's Andrew. One of several Lorenzo's on the cast. This one was recently in the romantic comedy You, Me, and Tuskanyany. Peter is cradling a terracotta cup and looking pensive. Perhaps he's remembering the last supper and thereby having the first communion.
¶124So that may well be the Holy Grail. >> Behold, Arthur. This is the Holy Grail. Look well, Arthur. >> Suitably humble rather than ornate, as Indiana Jones taught us all.
¶125>> It would not be made out of gold. >> That's the cup of a carpenter. >> Mel in his best George Lucas style plaid shirt directs Marielle Gerria as Mary Magdalene, resting one hand on the rock face at the tomb entrance. The moment matches John 20. Either her first arrival at the tomb in verse one or in the scene in verse 11 where Mary stood outside the tomb crying.
¶126As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb. The blue behind her may be sky or perhaps a garden setting will be added digitally later. The 2004 Passion film briefly depicted the stone rolling away from the tomb entrance from the inside the tomb point of view. Here we have it from the other side. Spoilers.
¶127While there are no guards in this shot, we know that there will be guards in the film. IMDb currently credits at least four tomb guards. Aptly named tombguard number four is actually played by the stunt coordinator, which means there may well be some action before they fall as dead men, as Matthew 284 describes. Most interesting though is that actor Andreas Gardusio who appeared in action blockbusters Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning and The Equalizer 3 is listed as playing a character named Petronius. Now only one ancient Christian text uses that name.
¶128It's the Gospel of Peter, a second century work that the church rejected, in which the guards watch Jesus walk out of the tomb, flanked by two angels so tall their heads reach the sky and followed by a cross that talks. If Petronis has lines, Mel has been reading the Gospel of Peter. And we may finally see on screen the most iconic walking talking tree since the ants. >> Talking trees. What do trees have to talk about?
¶129>> Again, we have Gabriel Rolos, John, Lorenzo's Andrew, and an actor I can't identify from among the announced cast. This could be the calling of the first disciples in John 1, where Andrew and an unnamed disciple leave John the Baptist to follow Jesus. Or maybe it's a post-resurrection scene, or almost anything. A clean shaven man woring a gold torque and an embroidered tunic faces two bearded elders in priestly headdresses in a room lit through a metal lattice window. The man on the right looks like Ricardo Scamarcio's pilot, which points to Matthew 27, where the chief priests come to him after the burial, asking that the tomb be secured.
¶130An old man with a huge white beard and a striped cloth headdress glances sideways out of the darkness. Several figures could fit, including Simeon at the presentation, Joseph Barrythea, or Nicodemus. But the headcloth looks more like a nomads than a temple priest's, which points back to the patriarchal era. That would make Abraham the leading candidate either in the bosom of Abraham or in the limbo Mel has promised when he talks about hell of the just. >> It's the hell of the just, you know, because the hell of the damned has no hope.
¶131But the hell of the just, I mean, the waiting room, as it were, for those waiting for the gates of uh of what they were made for to be open to them again is is is the point. So, he does go and talk to people down there. this this hell of the just that language that might be confusing to people. I will just mention here from what I understand that is in in certain theologies and it tends to be Catholic theology. There may be some Protestants who also believe in this.
¶132It's kind of compared to Abraham's bosom. It's where the righteous dead were believed to have sort of been while they awaited Christ before his death and resurrection. Right? So like that's the place that the righteous would have been before that. Um, you know, this is not a place of punishment, the hell of the just, even though it sounds like it might be.
¶133>> This will not make the evangelicals happy. With the face buried in beard and shadow, I can't tell if this is actually Rupert Everett, who plays Abraham, or perhaps Aleandro Cremona, who plays Noah. You'll forgive me because I never saw Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding. I know him only as Prince Charming in the Shrek franchise. >> Fear not, fair maiden.
¶134I shall slay the monster that guards you and then take my place as rightful king. Steel frame facads rise from a large graded plot in flat farmland with a modern city skyline and apartment blocks visible on the horizon. It looks like a green field backlot on the edges of a city which fits reports that the production built its sets near Rome. The sheer size of the pad backs up the claim that they built a city. Although the scaffolding behind the facades shows that these are just exterior shells, the standard approach for backlot construction.
¶135The shot cross dissolves from a raw construction site to the finished honeyccoled city in the same framing. A before and after reveal. The finished architecture with its pointed and horseshoe arches and carved window grills looks far more like a medieval Levventine town than anything from the first century. A low sun peaks between jagged ruined krenellations. Because this shot is the first of many among Damascus footage, I'm going to lean toward it being as the Damascus road where Paul is said to have been struck down from a blinding light from heaven.
¶136The ruins themselves may be Kroco, an abandoned ghost town in Basilica that appears on the reported list of filming locations. Mel and probably production designer Francesco Fgaryi inspect a huge studded double door set into a wall of square carved panels with narrow slit windows high above. This may be a city gate for Damascus. And those high windows are exactly what the story of Paul's escape requires. According to 2 Corinthians 11 and Acts 9, he fled the city through a window in a basket.
¶137Broken columns, scattered rubble, and a palm frrawn shelters sit beneath a darkening sky. The setting could be the outskirts of Damascus, a camp in the wilderness, or one of the quote little bits of Egypt. The production is hinted at. Two helmeted Roman officers on horseback move through a street lined with carved window grills surrounded by locals in hooded cloaks and headclaws. This scene could show Saul's arrival in Damascus or the authorities hunting him after his conversion.
¶138But either way, if this is Damascus, the Romans would be the film's invention. In Acts, Saul comes armed with letters from the high priest rather than a Roman escort. And 2 Corinthians 11:32 says the city was governed at the time by an official of the Nabotian king, Eritus. It'll be interesting to see if the film attempts to harmonize any of this. A drone looks straight down on the unfinished backlot pad, taking in the building shelves, shipping containers, and the tent.
¶139Like the earlier before and after reveal, the shot is meant to sell the sheer scale of the build. A sunlit plaza opens onto a grand arched gateway, a krenolated roof line, and a staircase with grip stands still visible in the shot. This is probably the Damascus set in daylight. The steep krenellations resemble Nabotian and Syrian styles, which if intentional would be a fitting nod to the Damascus that King Aritus controlled, backlit by a hazy sun, a Roman rider leads the way into the city, followed by two cloaked figures walking close together. The image fits Acts 98 almost perfectly, where the blinded Saul's companions led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.
¶140A white classical palace facade hung with garlands, blue drapery, and potted flowers fills the frame as a techno frame arm reaches in. This is the Rome set, which we'll see in use in the next few shots. A dense crowd pushes through an arcaded street at night amid torches and smoke with a figure in green caught among them. If this is a continuation of the great fire of Rome from earlier, maybe the figure is Paul with the green outfit looking similar to Paul's beheading scene. A white palace towers over the scene with a bronze sheolf above the central door.
¶141A gilded eagle, blue banners bearing a gold emblem, garland swags, and a gallery of spectators looking down. A crowd of plainly dressed people stands below while we still see a crew member reaching in at the right. This is clearly the imperial seat, and the crowd could be Jews or Christians being rounded up. Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome around 49 CE as Acts 18:2 notes and Tacitus records in annals 1544 that Nero turned on the Christians after the fire of 64. The shewolf itself follows a design of the famous capitol wolf which carries a small anacronism.
¶142Cicero does mention an ancient gilded wolf with the twins on the capital. So a wolf statue in first century Rome is perfectly reasonable. The bronze in the capitulene museums, however, has been radiocarbon dated to roughly 1100 and its twins were added around 1471. So, this particular design belongs to the Middle Ages rather than Nero's Rome. A dim room holds a long table covered in scrolls along with candles, a cushioned stool, and the same metal lattice window seen earlier in Pilot's office.
¶143So, this is probably the same room, and it's apparently a favorite of coowriter Wallace. And uh we went to the set of Resurrection and we watched the filming all day and and she sat right next to Mel as he was filming and directing and and when he finished a scene, it was the Pontious Pilot scene or that that I don't want to reveal anything about the movie, but Pontious Pilot is in the movie, right? No big surprise for this this audience. And um uh he said uh Randy uh come out on the set. I need you to look at something.
¶144And and he said to my then girlfriend, "Please, you come too." And uh she walked out and she'd never been on a movie set before. So her eyes were huge and and she was looking around and I put my hand on her shoulder and I said, "Um, I wanted to do this on the set of Resurrection because you brought my heart back from the dead. [applause] And I asked her to marry me and she was stuck. She couldn't say no. I got her in the crosshairs and she and she said yes.
¶145>> You trapped a woman. Congrats. A flock of long fleece sheep crowds a smoky Jerusalem street with a light stand and a grip cart still visible in the shot. They could be Passover lambs or animals at the market by the sheep gate mentioned in John 5. Either way, Gibson almost certainly intends the lamb of god symbolism.
¶146Everything here says decadent young emperor and the best fit is Nero with his wife Popia Sabina. Ancient writers describe her hair as amber and Josephus says she was sympathetic to Judaism. The radiate gown strengthens the case since it is imperial sun god imagery that Nero wore on his own coins and the leopard skin suggests the costume of a Dian party although Egyptian priests wore leopard skins too. Julio Pmpigioni is credited in part two as Eprius almost certainly Titus Claudius eprius Marcellus suffk council in ' 62 and the lead prosecutor for Nero in ' 66. Nero also suits Mel's promise to follow the story quote to the death of the last apostle because tradition credits him with the deaths of both Peter and Paul.
¶147All that said, Caligul and his sisters is also a possible alternative and his taste for things Egyptian would explain the courtier. The cast list raises a third option. King Solomon's court with the young Andrea Misaraka as Solomon and the Egyptian crowd woman as either Pharaoh's daughter whom First Kings 3:1 makes Solomon's wife or the queen of Sheba. But the Togas kind of argue against that interpretation since red and purple borders on the white wool are Roman senatorial dress. Now, none of these actors are an obvious match to anyone on the current cast lists, but Mel says these movies have over 200 speaking parts.
¶148The Christ character is pivotal. He's in the middle. He's like an axis of a wheel. And then there's all these other characters all around him. I think there's something like 200 and I don't know over 200 speaking parts in this.
¶149>> Wow. >> Including like Pilate and you get back to Caiaphas and Anas and Joseph of Arythea and Nicodemus and only, you know, you you bring them all into place. >> So, we have a lot of reveals to go. A man in a red cloak and a gold crown rides out through a massive gate past the line of Roman guards. A crowned ruler suggests one of the Herods.
¶150Herod the Great would fit if the infant footage belongs to a nativity flashback since he ordered the massacre of the innocents. Herod agria the would fit the execution of James in Acts 12 and Herod Antipass remains a possibility as well. That ravine looks like the Margia at Matara, the same rock face that stood in for Golgafa in the Passion, which makes the shot a deliberate visual call back to the first film. This shot of Jesus on a hill speaking, could be any number of teaching scenes, including just before the ascension, but I think it's likely that this is a snippet of the sermon on the mount. >> Man, he just he'd just come in and do the sermon on the mount.
¶151You wouldn't even need a prompt. >> Wow. >> He just spat it out and it was like amazing. So, you know, not that um we're gonna you're not going to hear the whole seven minutes during the film, but you know, there might be an Easter egg on the end. >> There's a fun problem in this shot.
¶152A modern radio or cell tower stands on the ridge at top right, and a small vehicle sits on the dirt track in the middle of the frame. These will presumably be painted out with visual effects work still to come, but it's worth watching to see if this becomes another Starbucks cup in the Game of Thrones. Mel directs the disciple Peter looking a little older and boulder than in earlier scenes gripping a carved staff with an ornate handle. The wicker cages point to a bird market which could place him in the temple courts in Jerusalem or in a marketplace in Rome, the city where tradition says Peter's life ended. >> And you know, Peter had a wife and kids apparently.
¶153>> There's a wife with Peter. I mean, there's a there's a scene with Peter and his wife where she's worried about him. I mean, look what happened to Stephen. Come on, you're next. and he has to reassure her, you know, hey, Jesus told me I wouldn't die till I was old.
¶154She said, 'Well, you're not that young, you know, and it's a it's it's you you sort of fill in in the spaces. It's conceivable. A wide behindthe-scenes shot of the Sheolf Palace shows dozens of extras running and falling in the sand with a dolly track, a techno crane, and blue screen visible at left. The people look as though they're being driven out, beaten, or fleeing for their lives. Closer in on the palis door, we get a better look at the affforementioned anacronistic capitolene wolf nursing Romulus and Reheis.
¶155I think the blue banner is also out of place as Roman standards were red rather than blue and gold. A public humiliation staged as entertainment for the watching city fits Nero's persecution well. This is Casia Smutnak as Mary. She was previously in Paris with love alongside John Travolta. >> Isn't it part of French tradition that the woman cooks while a guy watches TV?
¶156Well, things have changed since the Middle Ages, you know, [laughter] >> with everyone looking up. This could be watching the ascension. Mary is not explicitly placed there, but after Jesus is taken up in Acts 1:9, verse 14 lists her among those gathered with the 11. >> She's not referred to much, and she didn't want to be referred to much. She was a creature of humility, >> and she didn't want to take the front, you know, she was always in the back.
¶157She didn't say much. I mean, she said she spoke when she had to. Yeah. >> And um uh there are accounts that she really was like a mother to all the apostles. >> Why is Jesus wearing a gold dress or is it a blue dress?
¶158Let me know in the comments. The traditional Eastern Christian image of the resurrection known as the anastasis never shows Jesus stepping out of his tomb since the gospels never describe that moment. Instead, it shows him descending into Hades, smashing its gates, and hauling Adam and Eve out of their graves, while David, Solomon, John the Baptist, and other righteous dead look on. In these icons, Christ is usually dressed in white or gold, colors that Eastern tradition uses to signal his divine nature and his glorified body. A late 17th century Russian anastasis in the Manil collection, for example, shows him in golden robes, wreathed in light, as he frees Adam and Eve.
¶159So, this may well be Jesus the Gold, like Gandalf the White, transformed to fight evil in a new outfit. Of course, none of this spectacle appears in the canonical gospels. The New Testament offers only fragments, such as Christ preaching to spirits in prison in 1 Peter 3:19 and descending to the lower regions in Ephesians 4:9, and the Apostles Creed later affirmed that he descended into hell. The dramatic version with Christ smashing Hades gates and freeing the righteous dead comes from the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus and from centuries of hymns, liturgy, and art. A point the Vatican Museum itself makes about Anastasis icons.
¶160Adam and Eve sit at the center of those images for a reason. They represent humanity as a whole, rescued from death by Christ as the new Adam. So if Gibson stages this scene, he will be dramatizing ancient doctrine through a story the gospels never tell. A night street holds a dolly track and camera, a Roman soldier, someone carrying a torch, and a fire burning in a pit. It seems to belong to the same fire and torch night world as the earlier street scenes most likely in Rome.
¶161A production costume illustration shows four men against a rocky landscape and a crowd dressed in white. Those travel bags suggest apostles setting out on a mission after the ascension. The traditional dispersal of the apostles to the nations. The faces look like painted overcast photos with Mazar Ferrow's Thomas most recognizable second from the left. Probably Pacino's Peter on the far right and Matteo Franco's Barnabas on the left in red.
¶162Not sure about the yellow gold one. Mel in his crew hoodie and a young crew member in a black jacket gesture with open hands as they stand among soldiers in segmented armor and bronze helmets. Most likely blocking out a crowd or arrest scene. This is almost exactly, but not quite an 1872 painting called Christ in the Desert by Russian artist Ivan Kcoy. Mel's reproduction has the robe colors reversed and gave Jesus a hood.
¶163A movie bird MB45 crane hangs over a crowded market filled with awnings and anchored by a Corinthian column which suggests Rome or perhaps Cesaria. Behind the set, however, modern white soundstage buildings and a steel walkway stand in plain view presumably to be erased in post. A young figure with short dark chin-length hair and dark clothing turns back toward the camera in front of burning debris at night. If the figure is a girl, the short hair would be unusual for a first century woman and might mark her as a slave, a mourner, or a penitant. If it's a boy, this might be Phoenix Larash, who is on the cast list, but with no part listed.
¶164Phoenix was in the TV series Malice and was William in 2023's Velvetine Rabbit. >> Now that we're best friends, we'll have to go looking for [music] that treasure. Whoever it is, if the setting is Rome, the flames behind them point to the great fire of 64 that Nero blamed on the Christians. Here we go. This scene almost certainly shows the death of Andrew, whom tradition says was crucified at Patric in Greece.
¶165These second century acts of Andrew has him tied rather than nailed so that he would suffer longer, which matches the ropes here, and the blueclad executioners suit a Greek provincial setting better than a Roman redwood. The X-shaped cross became Andrew's standard emblem only in the Middle Ages, long after the Acts of Andrew was written. But it's too iconic for Mel to resist, no matter how late the source is. For my own project, and indeed for Shawn McDow's research study on the fate of the apostles, we limit sources to those within the living memory of the disciples. The church fathers of the first and second centuries are fully silent on Andrew.
¶166And fun fact, the backwards writing on the clapboard shows that this shot has been flipped. Story by Mel Gibson and Randall Wallace. Screenplay by Mel Gibson and Randall Wallace. And Christopher Gibson and Alan Monroe. I guess we finally know who the guy named Allen is.
¶167>> My brother and I and Randall Wallace and and another guy called Allen. Took us about 10 years to write it. >> But there are too many Alan Monroes on IMDb for me to narrow it down. The featureette closes on the final logo treatment, an elongated leading R and trailing N bracket the smaller of the Christ between them and the whole design copies the font and layout of the Passion of the Christ logo precisely announcing the new film as a direct continuation of the old one. It's one big shared of the Christ cinematic universe, maybe OTCCU for short.
¶168And this leads me to why I care about these movies in the first place and why I would make a video like this when I'm notoriously hard on the historicity of the Bible and early Christian writings. Here's the secret. If you take the historicity, personal application, and prescription for afterlife, eternity out of the mix, if you're willing to take it all purely as literature, then the Hebrew Bible, Jewish tradition, and the innovations that sprung up around Jesus are no less cool than the Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies. The Odyssey is one of the biggest films of the year and is still bringing in IMAX audiences months after opening. Thor is at the center of some great and some terrible films and will be a lead in Avengers Doomsday in December which will likely then become the biggest film of the year.
¶169Okay. And there's also the Northman and a few movies called Balhalla. I study the sources around the resurrection of Jesus nearly every day. There is some cool stuff in there. If Mel Gibson wants to Yes.
¶170And all the ancillary fanfiction that arose in the first thousand years of Christianity, then I'm excited. Go for it. Let's have the talking cross. Let's have Peter in a wizard battle with Simon Magus. Let Andrew flood a cannibal city.
¶171Let Thomas fight the demonic serpent with a talking donkey sidekick. >> Maybe there's a good reason donkeys shouldn't talk. >> Let Paul baptize a lion who then saves him in the arena. Let toddler Jesus make clay sparrows come to life and kill a local bully. Let the dragons of Egypt worship baby Jesus.
¶172All of it. Because if you think the resurrection of Christ is going to be in any way even modestly historical, then you need to think back to what Mill Gibson did to the story of William Wallace. He made a piece of entertainment with very little connection to reality. The truth is the gospels were written decades after the events they purport to describe by Greekeaking individuals who had never met Jesus or Peter. Writing gospel narratives about Jesus not for the purpose of faithfully recording history but instead for the theological and evangelical purposes of convincing you to believe.
¶173And if the gospels are not reliable history, how much less the tradition upon tradition of later centuries? I'm treating the Resurrection of the Christ films as if they are comic book movies because in the end they are comic book movies. I made the ultimate superhero film in The Passion of the Christ. >> That's right. >> And real superheroes don't wear spandex.
¶174>> That's right. And they don't have a lot of 3D special effects, but um but they do operate on a higher level, on a supernatural level, and they u they actually look and appeal to something greater than themselves and then they do something superhuman. >> Yeah. >> What do you say to non-religious people who may not believe this story? Is there universal power in the story that you see?
¶175>> Oh, absolutely. Every hero story is based on this. And anytime people do something extraordinary like this, it's it's based on something higher. And we're all reaching for something higher. >> Fans can and will argue about which lore was chosen, and that's fun.
¶176But if you start to think it's real, then you're going to make some terrible decisions based on that false assumption. Good luck to Mel and his crew on making great art. We already know he's incapable of making great history. Thank you so much for watching. If it's your first time here, I'm Paul Gia, a former Christian who takes a look at the claims of Christians.
¶177And if you like biblical analysis, tap on that subscribe button and join me for more videos where we talk about the resurrection all the time. In fact, tap on the thumbnail on screen now and I'll see you over there. Until next time.