Thursday, February 26, 2004

New Movies for Mel (1 of 2)

Mel's thinking about future Biblical film projects, it appears:

As for what he'll do after resting a while in his hammock, Gibson hinted there were myriad other stories in the Bible that deserve celluloid treatment.

"There are good stories in that book --- it's worth looking into them."

Oh, the possibilities. What could he do for his next story? Keeping with the blood-and-gore spattering, he could go for the story of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, in the days of King Hezekiah around the end of the 8th century BCE. The Assyrian army is turned back from the walls of Jerusalem when "the angel of the Lord went forth" and killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night (2 Kings 19:35)

Now, some scholars think it may have been a plague that hit the Assyrian army. (There was an Egyptian source that supports the story of the Assyrians having a diasaster.) But the Biblical text doesn't exactly say that, so Gibson could claim that he was being "accurate" to the Biblical account if he had the angel hack up all 185,000 Assyrians with a sword. He could make it especially authentic by showing the angel slicing and dicing each one individually. And, of course, he would have to dress up the killer angel with Star of David armor or something to make sure everyone knew it was a Jewish angel.

Mel's into those graphic death scenes. Remember Braveheart? Actually, he could do a whole series of movies on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests in Canaan, with graphic battle scenes, leveling of villages, ethnic cleansing, and so on. But that would be a problem for Mel. Those movies would have "the Jews" as victims.

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