Coming into work this morning, I noticed that the big display for today’s release of The Passion of the Christ was empty of DVDs. I first thought was, Damn, they really didn’t plan well for this. Then I remembered that the store did a special midnight release of POTC, which probably explained why we were out. The only other movie I can recall Wal-Mart going to such lengths to sell was 2002′s release of Spider-Man. Mm-hmm, Jesus is in esteemed company.

I find it baffling that anyone would come into Wal-Mart at midnight to buy a movie about a guy who gets tortured for two hours and then dies. Actually, I’m baffled why anyone would even want to buy this movie. And spare me your “The point of the movie is you’re supposed to experience the suffering that Jesus went through for you.” That’s a crock of shit. If you want to experience what Jesus supposedly went through, go drop “the N-bomb” (a phrase I despise) in South Central, LA. Then you can experience Jesus’s misery.

I find it ridiculous that POTC didn’t garner an NC-17 rating. From what I understand, it’s supposed to be one of the most torturous movies to sit through, due to all the graphic violence inflicted upon JC. It says a lot about the MPAA that they will give an R rating to a Jesus movie, yet if Kevin Smith dares to show a pubic hair in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it gets slapped with an NC-17.

So if I could be Mel Gibson for a week, here’s what I’d do: Release The Passion of the Christ: The Director’s Cut. In it, somewhere near the beginning of the movie (before all the torture stuff), I’d insert a scene where Jesus and Mary Magdalene suddenly strip naked and get it on. And this wouldn’t be just a regular sex scene; I’m talking about raunchy, porno sex. And it would last for ten minutes or so.

Then this “new” version would come out, and no where on the DVD packaging would it say what kind of new footage was added. All the people who bought the theatrical version would just clamor for this new, unrated POTC, a version which they think just contains more graphic violence, but really contains the aforementioned sex scene.

My theory is that these people would have a huge problem with the sex scene, even though sex is one of the most natural things in the world. Now I realize this isn’t dogma, because Jesus was supposedly a virgin. But who’s to say that Jesus and Mary didn’t do it after the Last Supper? I know that if I knew I was going to die the next day, I’d wanna have sex one last time. So maybe the people who wrote the Bible just left that little detail out. It certainly wouldn’t be the first detail left out of the Bible.

Of course, never in a bajillion years this would happen. My “Director’s Cut” would be condemned as a sinful piece of filth, and the people who own the theatrical version would talk about how appalling it is that a — gasp — sex scene was included in the new version. Then they’d sit down on all the religious holidays, whip out their theatrical cut of The Passion of the Christ, and watch Jesus get sadistically mutilated for two hours, blissfully unaware that they are some of the world’s biggest, stupidest hypocrites.

JAB