By Amelia Nielson-Stowell
Although Scott Swofford, John Uibel and Steve Salles have different religious, artistic and political views, they can agree on one thing - 'The Passion' contained too much violence.
Swofford, co-producer for 'The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd' and producer for 'The Lamb of God;' Uibel, assistant art director for 'The Testaments' and 'The Lamb of God;' and Salles, movie critic for Standard-Examiner and KSL radio, visited NewsNet Thursday, Mar. 18, for a roundtable discussion on the controversial movie, 'The Passion of the Christ.'
'He uses violence to sell his message,' Salles said. 'It is extremely disturbing and rightfully so ... Christ died a brutal death. I would never take 15 or younger to ''The Passion of the Christ''... there''s no way kids that age should be seeing that movie, it''s just wrong. You don''t want to be traumatized when you''re talking about Jesus.'
Salles said he gave the movie three and a half stars out of four because he thought, 'there were a couple little scenes I could have done without.'
'The Passion,' which was released on Ash Wednesday, was directed by Gibson, a proclaimed Catholic. The movie cost around $30 million to make, but estimates predict the movie will pass $300 million in profits from the theater alone.
When asked to describe the movie, Swofford said it was 'intense.'
'It was emotionally intense, visually intense ... there is some great movie making there,' he said. 'I judge how good a movie is if I noticed the film making or not to see if I was engaged. I was engaged during ''The Passion.'''
During the roundtable, the three viewed clips from 'The Passion,' and the church produced films, 'The Testaments' and 'The Lamb of God.'
Both Uibel and Swofford agreed that there were similarities between the three movies.
'I think there are similarities obviously because the story line is the same,' Uibel said. ' the similarities between the two were pretty amazing.'
Uibel commented that even in the trailer, 'you can see the hammer being raised, which we did ten years ago.'
Swofford said one of the apparent differences between 'The Passion' and the two church produced movies was the amount of money used to produce the three.
'They had more money for blood,' Swofford said.
Swofford also said 'The Testaments' was designed for a specific theater and a specific audience.
'There really is no way to control the theater ages, the maturity level ... the audience,' Swofford said.
Because of the specific audience 'The Testaments' was directed too, Swofford said it was hard to portray Christ''s death because it is so violent.
'In an early screening, a General Authority commented ''Well, this will be the church''s first PG-13 movie,' he said. 'The things that were shot on the set were considerably more violent than what we got on the film.'
As for how the Latter-day Saint community has reacted to the movie, Salles commented that it has been 'phenomenal' in the local theaters.
Uibel said the reaction he has heard from the LDS community is that Mormons think Gibson has 'rented the rights to Jesus.'
As for the reaction among other religions, Swofford said Christians have also responded positively to the movie.
'We have a lot of media iconography and the rest of the Christian world don''t have anything like that,' Swofford said. 'I think they believe this movie is there''s.'
Swofford said Mormons and Catholics view the crucifixion differently. Catholics view it as Christ''s suffering, but Mormons view it as Christ''s resurrection.
In 'The Passion,' Salles said, 'there''s only a brief, 30 second thought of the resurrection.'
While violent, Salles said the movie games him 'a whole new appreciation for the suffering of Christ.' Salles said he thinks, 'The Passion will go down as one of those phenomenal, epic films. Hollywood will try to duplicate this in numerous ways which I am kind of sad about.'