Mel Gibson entering his director-for-hire era marks the true point of no return
He hasn’t been a mainstream concern for a long time, but if there was ever any chance of Mel Gibson working his way back into mainstream Hollywood, it was from behind the camera.
After all, he’d been exiled from the A-list for a decade following his infamous racist and antisemitic tirades for almost a decade when he returned to directing with Hacksaw Ridge, a biographical drama that benefitted immensely from the fact he never even considered casting himself in an on-screen role.
Separating the artist entirely from the art showed that he was still a force to be reckoned with. For someone with such an impressive directorial track record, Gibson hasn’t wielded the megaphone at even a semi-prolific pace, but he, more often than not, delivers the goods.
Debuting with 1993’s well-received literary adaptation The Man Without a Face, Gibson struck gold second time out when Braveheart cleared $200 million at the box office and won five Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for its leading man and creative figurehead.
The Passion of the Christ became one of the highest-grossing R-rated movies ever released that appealed to its target demographic to a surprisingly lucrative level before he mixed it up significantly with the experimental survival thriller Apocalypto. His most recent effort – the aforementioned Hacksaw Ridge – recouped its budget more than four times over from cinemas and scooped seven Oscar nods, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, winning two prizes in the technical categories.
As a director, Gibson has arguably yet to make a truly diabolical film. As a person, he’s made some terrible decisions and said some truly reprehensible things, so any chance of an on-camera comeback has been over for a while. His presence alone is enough to dissuade audiences from investing in whatever he does, the majority of which has been consigned to the VOD doldrums.
He hasn’t directed since 2016, but he did appear in eight movies in 2022 alone, so there’s that. His last major theatrical release was 2017’s Daddy’s Home 2, so it would be accurate to suggest that he’s pressed the self-destruct button on his career to such an extent there’s no coming back for Gibson, the disgraced actor and fallen A-lister.
Woody Allen is still making movies, though, and a lot of folks don’t have very nice things to say about him. So is Roman Polanski, for much the same reason. Hypothetically – and based on the acclaim Hacksaw Ridge received – directing would appear to be Gibson’s final shot at career salvation. However, his next film has indicated that the point of no return has already been reached.
The first trailer for the glorified B-movie Flight Risk was recently released, which features Mark Wahlberg wearing an unconvincing bald cap as an assassin masquerading as a pilot on a prisoner transport flight. It looks like the sort of mid-budget genre fare Gerard Butler would turn his nose up at, but beneath Gibson’s station, considering his directorial filmography so far. And yet, his director-for-hire era has begun.
Not only that, but his name isn’t even mentioned in the marketing. Sure, viewers with even a basic knowledge of modern cinema history will be completely aware of who “the Academy Award-winning director of Braveheart, Apocalypto, and Hacksaw Ridge” is, but when Gibson can’t even get his name listed in the promo for a Wahlberg-fronted action thriller, it’s probably game over for his long-term prospects.
He was announced to be directing the fifth and final Lethal Weapon in 2021, but that hasn’t gotten any closer to the starting line. The franchise is popular among a certain generation, but if Gibson can’t even get his name in the trailer for something as formulaic-looking as Flight Risk when he’s the guy who directed it, there are no guarantees the legacy sequel will even happen when the axe-happy Warner Bros. are set to foot the bill.
