(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Academy Award-winning Hollywood director Martin Scorsese said that his new film about Jesus Christ will radically change public opinion on organized religion.
Last year, the movie, which is based on Japanese novelist Shūsaku Endō’s book “A Life of Jesus,” was announced and scheduled to start filming later in 2024, according to the Daily Wire. It was also reported that the screenplay for the movie is finished and that the movie itself will have an estimated run time of 80 minutes.
Scorsese discussed his goals for the project during a Los Angeles Times profile that was published on Jan. 8, 2024.
“I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion. Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that word and everyone is up in arms because it’s failed in so many ways. You may reject it. But it might make a difference in how you live your life — even in rejecting it. Don’t dismiss it offhand,” Scorsese said.
“I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus,” he said back then.
However, a Christian movie viewer should not be very hopeful about the upcoming movie, considering that the director previously made the movie about Jesus, The Last Temptation of Christ,” which was released in 1988 and became very controversial due to its blasphemous nature.
For example, Eternal World Television Network founder Mother Angelica called the movie “sacrilegious” for its storyline, which depicted Jesus – the perfect, sinless Son of God — as a mortal sinner just like any other human being. One of the infamous examples of that is one of the scenes, in which Jesus (played by Willem Dafoe) fantasizes about having sex with Mary Magdalene.
Even though Scorsese tried to defend himself by providing a disclaimer in his movie that said that the film is “not based on the Gospels, but upon the fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict,” it didn’t stop faithful Christians from expressing their righteous anger by boycotting the movie.
The book on which the upcoming movie is based also twisted the true nature of Jesus by presenting only his soft, “motherly side” since Japanese people would be more open to that due to fathers in their culture being stern and harsh.
