YMMV / The Passion of the Christ

• Applicability: While Mel Gibson rooted the film in a very traditionalist Western/Latin/Roman Catholic^note  as opposed to Eastern Catholic, i.e. the 23 other churches within the Catholic Church, besides the Latin/Roman church viewpoint on the Gospels, it wound up resonating most strongly with evangelical Christians. In its depiction of Jesus' crucifixion before a braying mob, they saw a metaphor for their own perceived marginalization within wider society, with the promise that they would one day inherit the Earth.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The controversial film has been called out by detractors for glorifying the violence Jesus suffered, and not his teachings, of which we get only a few passing references. David Edelstein called it "a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie". Robert Wilonsky critically stated, he found the movie "too turgid to awe the nonbelievers, too zealous to inspire, and often too silly to take seriously, with its demonic hallucinations that look like escapees from a David Lynch film".
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Satan and his evil old man baby, never again referenced. Just Jesus looking out, seeing Satan, and Satan has a very horrible-looking creature in his arms... Some claim it might be a Satanic mockery of Mary and Baby Jesus, while others theorize the baby is the Anti-Christ, but the film itself has no answer.
• Critical Dissonance: Reception to the film was understandably split down the middle by critics due to its subject matter. However, a good portion of Christian filmgoers view the film as an excellent adaptation of this part of the New Testament.
• Crosses the Line Twice: While watching this movie, it's too disturbing and depressing to notice this trope. It's darkly comical in hindsight though, just the sheer amount of violence Mel Gibson puts Jesus through.
  • He's beaten up by Jewish guards, slapped around by the Sanhedrin priests, beaten up by the people in the Temple, scourged so bad by Roman soldiers that his ribs are bared (with an officer explicitly saying they went too far and weren't supposed to beat him to death), has a crown of thorns put on his head (and pushed into his eyes), whipped through the streets while carrying a cross, beaten up and pelted with stones by Jewish mobs, and — after they dislocate his arm to fit the cross — he is finally nailed to the cross. It Crosses the Line Twice when the Roman officer orders his men to put Jesus out of his misery by breaking his legs with a sledgehammer. Though of course, as per the Bible, when the soldiers saw that Jesus was already dead, they didn't break his legs. ^note When someone is crucified, breaking their legs would leave them unable to support themselves enough to breathe, thus hastening their death. The other two crucified men get this treatment too.
  • Things are taken even further as the Centurion overseeing the execution tosses a spear to one of the guards for him to pierce Jesus's side just to make sure that he is really dead, and water (from the pericardium) and blood sprays all over the guard's face as the spear pierces Jesus's ribcage. No one can say this film doesn't meet Gorn requirements.
  • Pay attention to the amount of blood Jesus loses, too. The human body has about eight liters of blood in it, total. He loses at least twice this amount before he's even hauled off for crucifixion.
  • Take a count of how often Jesus collapses and gets back up again. If you make a drinking game out of it, you might find yourself talking to Him directly about it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Mary. While this is especially true for Catholics, Maia Morgenstern's performance has been credited with increasing Evangelical devotion to Mary.
  • Pontius Pilate and his wife have been appreciated for their humanizing portrayal as conflicted authority figures.
• Franchise Original Sin: The discussions and debates about anti-Semitism in the movie often brought up whether how much of that could be attributed to the Gospels themselves which were written by Jews about Jews, after all (except Luke, traditionally by the Gentile Luke) and how much can be attributed to the later cultural developments which Gibson drew upon. Most notably, the movie is not just a direct adaptation of the Gospels but draws heavily from The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, attributed to Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th-century Catholic nun.
• Genre Turning Point: This was the movie that invented the modern "faith-based film". Before, films based on The Bible were either epics that focused on the most violent and salacious elements of Scripture, or independent films made with No Budget that sacrificed production values for Sunday school sermonizing. Mel Gibson, however, spent $45 million of his own money to make and promote The Passion of the Christ to a Hollywood standard while remaining faithful to his interpretation of the Gospels, raising the bar for what would be expected of Christian cinema. Independent Christian studios like Pure Flix Entertainment largely have Gibson's success to thank.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Amongst the global Christian audience, the film was received especially well in countries where Catholic and particularly Spanish influences remain predominant, such as Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia, as its particular style of religious imagery resonates more strongly there because of two reasons. First, while many modern Protestants (and even modern Catholics in other countries) may be unnerved and turned off by all the blood and violence, it was in fact this flavor of Catholicism, focusing greatly on Jesus's suffering, torture and death, which Spain favored and introduced in their conquered territories, and thus it's a deeply influential part of Hispanic cultures today (entering one of their chapels as an outsider can feel like entering a horror film, not to mention the Spanish Holy Week, which often features real penitents self-harming and bleeding all over despite such activity being formally discouraged by the Church). Second, as Spain had forcefully Christianized its Jewish population even before their conquests of America and the Philippines started, this means these regions have historically negligible Jewish populations, and Spain conquering lands in different continents altogether further distanced the people there from that kind of stuff happening in Europe.^note For instance, the Philippines has a tiny, tiny Jewish minority with very recent roots, refugees fleeing the Holocaust who got in before the Japanese invaded the country, and most Filipinos aren't even aware about this bit of their history (in contrast to their much larger Muslim minority, as Islam predated Spanish Roman Catholicism in some areas by about two centuries). So the question of anti-Semitism simply wasn't much of a local issue in these places, with many of these people not being even aware that anti-Semitism in the movie exists or can be identified to begin with.
  • On the other hand, the movie was also popular with Muslims in the Middle East in countries where it wasn't banned, mostly in areas with large Christian populations like Lebanon and Egypt. While Muslims consider images of their prophets to be taboo and consider the crucifixion of Jesus to be a false blasphemy against the Messiah (though like Christians, Muslims believe Jesus resides in heaven till judgement day), a number of Muslims and even Arab Christians saw the cruel treatment of Jesus by his fellow Jews to be an allegory for Palestine's treatment by Israel. That is all that needs to be said on the matter without creating further controversy.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After Jesus is nailed to the cross, the soldiers flip the cross over to make sure the nails are secured from the reverse. At this point, Jesus should be flat on his face — as if everything else he's been through wasn't enough — but, as Magdalene sees (and us from the angle) Jesus is about an inch or so above ground, high enough for him to turn and gaze at her. Something like that is normally impossible without something like, say, divine intervention? Heartwarming to know that, while all the suffering is part of the plan, it could be interpreted as God's sign that He hadn't abandoned Jesus.
  • Jesus' flashback to his time as a simple carpenter showing Mary his long-legged table. Considering all the responsibilities and hardships he goes through, it's kind of cute to see the Messiah just laughing and having a nice mother-son bonding moment.
• Memetic Mutation: A photo from the set◊ of Mel Gibson talking to a blood-covered Jim Caviezel is used as a way to describe First-World Problems.
• Moment of Awesome: All the suffering that Christ goes through in the film makes the resurrection scene that much more effective.
  • Jesus dying on the cross for all of humanity; and the immediate aftermath of Satan screaming in impotent rage at its defeat.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Part of why the film was a hit in the first place. Gibson was even accused of doing this on purpose.
• Older Than They Think: This wasn’t the first adaptation of The Four Gospels to have Satan appearing to Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane. That honour belongs to The Miracle Maker, Jesus (1999) and Godspell.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Most of the discourse surrounding the film is based less on its artistic and theological merits and more on its graphic content and the accusations of antisemitism lobbied against it.
• Sacred Cow: Among devout Christians, in particular conservatives across the world. Practically seen almost as sacred as the Bible itself. This is particularly true with Evangelicals in the United States and the predominantly Catholic and conservative Latin America.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Pasolini, an atheist and a Marxist, wanted to present the Gospel with its miraculous elements downplayed, so the political and revolutionary aspects of Christ's life could be empathized. Gibson's movie, made by a devout Traditionalist Catholic, puts the life of Christ in flashbacks, and puts all his attention on the atoning death of the cross.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Besides Mary and Mary Magdalene's horrified tears of pain, we have a divine tear shed as we see a single drop of rain fall (from a god's eye view camera no less) just after Jesus dies.
  • Mary rushing to comfort Jesus as best she can, cut with flashbacks to her doing the same thing when he was just a tiny little boy with a skinned knee.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While Jim Caviezel did injure himself at times, the flagellation is done by combining realistic make-up and visual effects to make it seem as if flesh is being torn. Also, once Jesus is nailed, when it's full-bodied it's a life-like animatronic, enough to make bystanders in the Italian set worried for the "actor's" health.

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