10 More Movie Mistakes That Became Canon
5. The Insane Final Shot - The Last Temptation of Christ
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ near-literally canonised a technical mistake which occurred when shooting the biblical drama's final scene, where Jesus (Willem Dafoe) dies on the cross.
The final shot has some peculiar visual artefacts, with the last glimpse of a dead Jesus being accompanied by a variety of bright colours which "pollute" the image.
It'd be reasonable to assume that this was 100% intentional coming from a director as exacting as Scorsese, but that wasn't nearly the case.
As Scorsese himself confirmed in a 2019 interview, in reality the footage was accidentally compromised by an assistant cameraman, who inadvertently opened the film magazine, in turn exposing the negative to daylight and damaging it.
With no time to reshoot, Scorsese simply moved on, but when it came to editing, he decided to keep the "edge fog," feeling that it added to the ethereal quality of the scene. As the master filmmaker put it himself, "The edge fog became the resurrection."