Machista violence, denialism and anti-Semitism: Mel Gibson resists despite his scandals

“From the Oscar-winning director of Braveheart , Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge .” Mel Gibson’s name is recognizable to several generations, but in the trailer for his latest film, The Menace in the Air , which hits Spanish cinemas this Friday, they decided to hide it. The poster presents him only as “acclaimed director.” While actor Mark Wahlberg’s appears in giant letters, his own is seen small and below. It doesn’t seem accidental, but a decision derived from the numerous controversies that have overshadowed Gibson’s image for some time. For example, 15 years ago some messages were leaked in which he shouted to his girlfriend that he “wishes” she was raped by “a pack of black men.” Even so, the filmmaker has taken advantage of the promotion of the film to add new controversies to his legacy of scandals .

In a January interview on the most listened to podcast in the US, the one hosted by Joe Rogan, the 69-year-old actor and director, who grew up in Australia, went from recommending pseudo-drugs to cure cancer to railing against climate change (“When ice melts in my glass, the water doesn’t come out”), or from claiming that AIDS was a false government experiment to characterising Pope Francis as an “apostate” who wants to destroy the Church from within. The high point came when he denied biological evolution: “I can’t defend it, but that’s what my feelings tell me: I was not an ape.” Two and 20 hours of conversation that were recorded while Trump appointed Gibson as one of the government’s knights-errant , along with Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, charged with “making Hollywood great again”. The president has entrusted his “special ambassadors” with the mission of recovering the mecca of cinema from “foreign countries”.

Nine years after his sixth film behind the camera, The Menace in the Air is just a commission to finance his most personal and difficult projects. “It’s fun and fast,” he describes. Far from being a long and monumental story like his previous films, artistic but also popular, it is an action script with Wahlberg as the real draw. It is a thriller with high-flying crashes and unexpected twists. Wahlberg plays a small plane pilot who transports a federal police officer (Michelle Dockery, the real protagonist) and a prisoner on their journey through the mountains of Alaska. The pilot’s intentions are not, however, as peaceful as they seem. In the US, with 26 million euros raised, it has fallen far short of the marks of Apocalypto (2006) or Hacksaw Ridge (2016) , not to mention The Passion of the Christ (2004), which was a hit despite the Latin and Aramaic. But this time Gibson was not looking for creativity. What's more, the film begins with a shot of a motel created by artificial intelligence.

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'Threat in the Air' trailer

This film is fundamentally about what interests him most, Gibson said on Joe Rogan’s podcast : the fight between good and evil. Something he wants to develop in the project he has been devising for seven years: The Resurrection of Christ, a sequel to The Passion of the Christ after 20 years, which will make Jesus played by Jim Caviezel (for whom he produced the successful Catholic film Sound of Freedom ) literally travel to hell to meet Satan. “It’s an acid trip, it’s not linear, it’s very ambitious and I don’t know if I can do it…” Gibson confessed while proposing the idea of ​​using AI to translate the dialogues.

That biblical struggle is, in fact, key to his films. “I was born an alcoholic. Nothing could stop me. I am flawed, and I appealed to something greater. Because I didn’t want to share a cell in hell with Hitler, Stalin and Mao,” said the actor, who said he had rejected an offer from Scorsese to star in The Last Passion of the Christ . “I spent a lot of time in my animal mind. You want to bite, and do things that are not socially acceptable. Killing someone is not accepted and I didn’t want to end up in prison. They looked at my brain and concluded that I had the worst case of post-traumatic stress, worse than war veterans,” he added. And he explains his miracle cure to Rogan: vitamin B pills, fish oil and locking himself in vaults.

This is how Gibson justifies his violent, sexist and anti-Semitic behaviour of the past. In 2006 , his reaction during a police arrest for drunk driving was leaked: “You fucking Jews are guilty of all the wars of humanity.” The actor, who went so far as to deny the Holocaust, excused his statements by saying that he had drunk eight double tequilas. What’s more, he ended up presenting himself as the victim of an “unscrupulous” police officer . When he was arrested months later by a female officer, he again left statements like “I’m going to fuck you up, I own Malibu” or “What are you looking at, sweet titties?”

The most notorious scandal came four years later. His partner at the time, Oksana Grigorieva, accused him of domestic violence after having broken several of her teeth in a struggle in which the actor was carrying a gun, while she was holding their baby (one of their nine children). The lawsuit was accompanied by audios like this: “ If you were raped by a pack of black men , you would deserve it. I'm going to go there and set the house on fire, but first you're going to suck me off.” Gibson's defense said it was a phrase “taken out of context” and the actor took it as a “betrayal,” but at the trial he preferred not to refute the charges or answer in order to avoid jail with an agreement. He was forced to pay $750,000 .

The film world forgave him with heartfelt interviews . His friend Jodie Foster, who helped him out of the hole, gave him the lead role in the black comedy The Beaver (2011), about a character who deals with his dark ghosts. It was a redemption story of the kind that Hollywood likes. That was the moment when Gibson wanted to break with his past by directing The Maccabees , about Judas, with which he sought to distance himself from his image as an anti-Semite. But the project ended up becoming a boomerang, after its scriptwriter claimed that the director hated Jews and published another recording of his fits of rage: “You make money, I don’t. I work to pay a dirty, cock-sucking whore,” he shouted. Today, Gibson finances the Survivor Mitzvah Project organization, which helps elderly survivors of the Holocaust.

But Gibson is a hard person to write off . In 2016, the war film Hacksaw Ridge won two Oscars (editing and sound) and put him back in the running for best director. Although he dropped projects like The Hangover Part II , Hollywood was embarrassed to work with Woody Allen, but not Gibson. Over the next nine years, he produced, starred in, and wrote an action film that saw him shoot a gun on the Mexican border ( The Holidays in Hell ), participated in the sequels to Machete or The Expendables , a series from the John Wick universe, joined the comic franchise Two fathers for unequal and captained the cult film The Other Side of the Law . And he dreams of Lethal Weapon 5 . Not to mention the dozen cheap action films that fill his coffers and those of other former heroes who have fallen on hard times .

Gibson knows he can say anything and nothing will make him go away. In Rogan’s interview, the host tries to bring him back to his literal beliefs of the Bible and explains that they have found a lot of scientific evidence of human evolution from apes to Homo sapiens . “They would be monkeys and they would have mixed up the bones,” Gibson replies without further argument. “When do you think humans were created?” he asks him then. “Probably 8,000 years ago.” “But they have found buildings dating back 11,000.” And the actor gives in: “I question it… I don’t know, I can’t explain it and I don’t care.” After this awkward moment, they go on to talk more calmly about their fascination with the Holy Shroud of Christ, and to drop the favorite phrase of the podcast guests: “It’s all censorship.” Although everything points to the fact that he can say and do whatever he wants.