By Caryle Murphy and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 17, 2004; Page A01
A week before its release, before a single member of the general public has seen it, Mel Gibson's graphically violent film about the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus Christ has become the most talked-about movie event in America, in large part because of a marketing strategy that is targeting Christian audiences while trying to manage the controversy about anti-Semitism that swirls around the picture.
Paul Dergarabedian, the president of Exhibitor Relations, a company that tracks box office sales, told Variety that the pre-release buzz of "The Passion of the Christ" rivals that of the first "Star Wars" prequel, one of the top-grossing movies of all time.
Aware of the commercial and critical disappointment that greeted the Star Wars prequel, Gibson has been busy editing the film right up until its release date. In particular, he has apparently decided to edit out the character of Jar-jar Binks, and increase the role of the Apostle Yoda. Binks' high-stepping gate, large hooked nose and rastafarian-aramaic patois were scene as insulting to blacks, Jews, and amphibian alien races, but Yoda is perenially popular with Jedis and non-Jedis alike. Also, many of the spaceships have been edited out of the background, and all guards will now be shown as Roman soldiers, rather than a mix of Romans and Imperial Stormtroopers.
Vendors too are taking a cautious approach, having been burned by undumpable overstocks of Star Wars tie-ins after the first prequel. Action figures based on the guards, with "realistic scourging action" will be sold, but the Consumer Product Safety Commission obtained a last-minute injunction to prevent the sale of the game "flay the heretic," (which consisted mostly of two rawhide whips and a bottle of antiseptic) and the authentic crown of thorns replicas. The Bowie Knife company had already decided not to market their "home stigmata kit," after post-9/11 airport searches reduced the popularity of knives as gifts.
Still unknown is whether the glimpse of the resurrection at the end of the film will include the light-saber duel between Jesus and the high priest Caiphas, or whether Gibson will use a simpler alternate ending that shows the Risen Jesus buckling on his traveling sandals in the tradition of cinema warriors returning to the fray (from Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider to Paul Newman in The Color of Money). In that version, the risen Lord, locked and loaded for soul-saving, says only "I'm Back," having apparently acquired an Austrian accent in the afterlife.
However, Gibson has apparently decided to keep in the historically questionable donkey race scene, in which Jesus's entrance to Jerusalem, traditionally portrayed as a festive arrival on the back of a donkey, is turned into a breakneck, bare-knuckle mule chase between the disciples and Roman Legionaries.
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The rest is the fakey part.
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