- With record box-office receipts for The Passion of the
Christ rolling in, it might be time to ask: What will Mel Gibson do for
an encore?
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- He is scheduled to do Mad Max 4. But in light of the
controversy surrounding his first religious film, which has grossed more
than $214 million, many in Hollywood doubt Gibson will return to his action
franchise. The filmmaker has been hinting that he may go back to the biblical
period, if not the Bible itself.
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- Speculation centers on two heroic Jewish struggles that
bracket the historical time frame of the filmmaker's current biblical blockbuster.
If the rumors are true, Gibson's next move could be a stroke of genius,
at once disarming Jewish critics of The Passion and providing an ideal
dramatic vehicle. Both stories are the stuff of screenplays. One parallels
Gibson's earlier hit, The Patriot, set during the American Revolution,
and the second echoes Braveheart, the story of a medieval Scottish insurrection.
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- The first rumor is that the filmmaker intends to make
a movie about the central characters of the holiday of Hanukkah, fighters
called the Maccabees. Nearly 200 years before Jesus' birth, they rose against
Israel's pagan occupiers and their Jewish allies. The rebels triumphed
in a guerilla war, and the temple in Jerusalem was cleansed.
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- Recently, Israeli educator Yossi Katz suggested that
Gibson's next film should be a dramatization of the Bar Kochba Revolt of
132-135. At first, the rebellion was a success, but after 3Ý1/2
years, its forces were crushed. Ten leading rabbis were executed, and one
was tortured and flayed to death, much like the scourging of Jesus in The
Passion and the execution of William Wallace in Braveheart.
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- But even a sympathetic portrayal of Jewish heroes might
not assuage all of Gibson's critics.
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- Abraham Foxman, executive director of the B'nai B'rith
Anti-Defamation League, says, "The way he treats history, with a cherry
picker of that which fits his ideology or view, is not the way I would
like the world to learn about the heroism of the Maccabees or Bar Kochba.
So, thanks but no thanks."
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- http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/0314afterpassion14.html
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