He was cancelled, and was out of the industry for years.
He then kissed the ring, did the mea culpa, and got lucky making a pacifist WW2 movie. If that film tanked, or he didn't kiss all of the asses, he'd still be out of business.
The reality is that being "cancelled" isn't a huge deal when you're already one of the economic elite. He didn't even do a mea culpa, he just came back to the party and shrugged.
I thought my friend had tricked me into watching a romance movie up until they got on the ridge and a dude got cut in half with bullets. I was not expecting that
He lost half of this net worth before coming back, I think it did work until the industry let him back in and people forgot (or till the republicans picked anti-woke actors to support in Hollywood).
Hey, the production company who made that movie paid good money for those awards. The rich aren't going to let something like on of their fellow rich guys being exposed as a racist stop them from getting the independent, merit based awards they paid for.
So interesting that you mentioned this film because when it was new to the rental market I watched it, and it was around this time that Mel had weird bigoted events in the news. I was indifferent and mostly ignorant of exactly what he did, and even so, I was skeptical and doubtful as well.
However, we liked Apocalypto so much that we started rewatching it with the director’s commentary. Mel was such a fucking ass that he ruined our enjoyment of the movie. He was incredibly disrespectful of the actors in the commentary. He was not so much disparaging of them, but he effectively communicated how unimportant they were to him and how they were nothing more than disposable objects to him.
Then I recalled those vague bad things I had heard about him in the press, and I thought, “Hmmm. Maybe this guy is a vile piece of shit.”
On the other hand, disturbed fuckheads can make great art. There might be good reason that in the old days, artists were kept on a leash by wealthy families.
There’s no greater mismatch of internal and external beauty in my mind than Braveheart-era Mel Gibson. I’m straight up ashamed of how handsome I find him. The hatred did not age him well, however, which is a relief.
Hard to watch? Other than the obvious brutality of the crucifixion, I remember that movie as being a middle of the road flick. The Aramaic dialogue was pretty cool though.
Ah, haven't seen it. I was teenager when it came out, my fundamentalist parents were praising it but didn't allow me to watch it because of the 18+ rating in Finland. Never bothered to watch it later in life
I was Catholic at the time of its release. My church was literally giving away tickets so people could see it. I swear the Catholic Church is 1 giant circlejerk of virtue signaling trying to see who can suffer the most.
The church I was forced to go to as a child did a whole youth group and parents trip to the movies to see it. Thought it was pretty interesting the stuff I wasn’t allowed to watch, but that torture porn feature was a-OK for the kiddies.
My parents forced me to watch it I think right before I entered my teens, in theatre.
They had not even noticed that after the flogging scene, I started crying, vomiting and having a panic attack and walked out of the theatre, just sat outside the theatre, sobbing after being completely fucking traumatized after a Christian childhood up to that point not being allowed to curse, show any kind of disrespect to anyone, having been utterly kept from anything anywhere near that viscerally violent.
Again, they didn't even realize I was gone until the movie was over.
Can you guess that I don't talk to my parents any more, they probably think I am dead, and I hope they do actually believe I am dead?
He played Mad Max, but after it came out he was racist, the IP Holders put the movie franchise on hold for decades and when it came back it was largely about Furiosa instead of Max himself and the actor was changed. With director commentary basically saying "We kept Gibson the fuck away from this."
They Xians were doing it before Islam was even a thing. But Xians also love to kill Jewish people on their way to kill Muslims. Israel or not Xians just fucking love killing Jewish people.
Even crazier than that folks like Shakespeare are criticized for his antisemitic Jewish character in the Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare likely never met a Jewish person as they were expelled from England during his entire life.
I think it's more likely that antisemitism comes and goes in waves. Right now it's trending upwards as evidenced by you casually promoting antisemitic conspiracies and getting upvoted for it.
And you can spare me the rationalization over how if you mention Gaza it's not antisemitism. You're promoting conspiracies about American Jews not Israelis here, so it is antisemitic.
I'm saying people who are Jewish sometimes talk a lot about being Jewish and Jews in general and sometimes they don't.
When that movie came out I don't remember people talking about how they are Jewish. Before and after that period I remember more people in the news talking about being Jewish.
He wasn't laughing with Jews about the overbearing kindness of their mothers. If you say the quiet part out loud then you're of little use in sustaining and increasing profits. It's easier to burn witches than to acknowledge the quiet part said out loud.
This isn't rocket science. It's apathy, an incarnation of MLK's white moderate.