Passion of the RoboChrist

Posted 19 Mar 2004 at 22:50 UTC by steve

The Online Sun and Ananova report that Mel Gibson used a robot Christ in his recent movie, Passion of the Christ. The £220,000 robot was used during the crucifixion scenes because the weather was too cold for actor Jim Caviezel. According to another site, the animatronic Christ was operated by Mel Gibson himself. The robot was created by Keith Vanderlaan's Captive Audience Productions. In addition to realistic head movements, the robot also bleeds and appears to breathe. This could give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "I'll be back".

A False Robo-Christ?, posted 25 Mar 2004 at 17:27 UTC by steve » (Master)

BoingBoing recently picked up this story and one of their readers reports that according to IMDB, the Robo-Christ story may be either completely untrue or somewhat untrue. IMDB says there was an "articulated, rubber stand in" used in some wide shots of the crucifixion but that it was not "animatronic". They do confirm that it was built by Keith Vanderlaan's Captive Audience Productions, however.