you're gonna end up with a hundred thousand different views on this.

the whoring of a religion
Anti-semitism running rampant
too gruesome to be effective
Life-altering and magnificent

there are too many to count. The only thing you can credit it with, and this only with the right mindset, is that it was the torment and brutal treatment of a man who deserved none of it.

Religious folk will take it as the ultimate sacrifice, atheists will take it to be a self-riteous example that need not have been made, undecided folk will vary, and it will serve on to polarize anyone who see's it really. I'm a christian myself, and i saw it with a great sense of respect. not crying, not weeping for my god, but respect that he would care so much to endure something like that for us. believer or not, you must respect the fact that for his own ideology and belief, he was willing to take that burden without cracking. and as far as money, i do not believe for one second that mel gibson made this film for money. Had he tried to make money on it, he could ahve called in the biggest star power in the country. He's mel gibson, think about it. Why would he create such a controversial picture, so involved with his own personal beliefs, filled with little known actors and actress's, in dead languages, with his own money? He felt it needed to be made, he felt it would further his religion. I heard about this film long before it was made, my latin teacher got a memo due to the inclusion of ancient languages when production was begun. none of us thought it would even make it to theaters. no one did at that time, that just goes to show that this idea was not on his mind.

anyway, continue on with the discussion, i've said my peace.