Jesus Christ Superstar Vs. The Passion Of The Chri

2090 Words9 Pages
There are just a few films to date, that have portrayed the controversial topic of Jesus Christ in His last days. The most well-known would have to be, Jesus Christ Superstar and The Passion of the Christ. All though these controversial films are based on the same event, they are drastically dissimilar. They are both controversial, but for very different reasons. Just for the sake of fairness I would have to say that just about any film concerning the life of Jesus is going to be considered controversial to some. These two stories were written and told by authors with contrasting religious beliefs and presented in convincingly different ways. Jesus Christ Superstar was written almost forty years ago by Andrew Lloyd Webber is a church of England Christian and is patron of a charity called the "Open Churches Trust" to get churches open to the general public. Mel Gibson born and raised a Traditionalist Catholic. Traditionalist Catholics generally prefer to be referred to either simply as Catholics or Roman Catholic. In recent years, remarks by Gibson have generated accusations of homophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism; he has apologized repeatedly for the statements and denied that they represent his real opinions. Another big difference in the two movies is the fact that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, does not appear in “Superstar” at all yet she plays a major role in “The Passion”. This may be attributed to Mel Gibson’s Catholic background. It does follow the gospel more closely. In the film Jesus Christ Superstar there were no spoken lines. Everything was sung and it was glorious. Similar yet different; The Passion has dialog, but it is not legible. One of director Mel Gibson earliest decisions as director was to have the Jesus of his film speak the same language that the historical Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago. That language is Aramaic, an ancient tongue closely
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