A rather lengthy response to Andy's post on The Passion, posted here to avoid dumping on Andy's blog. :-)
[Andy's original post can be found here.]
Andy, my take on the relative success/failure of The Passion as an evangelical tool is probably closest to your phrase, "that the Christian community...saw an evangelism opportunity where none really existed". I think that there was something of an opportunity, but ultimately Americans are fat and rich, and don't care too much about a God they don't think they need.
Hooray for the 1/10th of 1%, to be sure! In terms of numbers it's disappointing, of course, but in terms of the 0.1% it's a major win. Think of it this way: there's an attack on your town. Only one person dies, due to the diligence of the hospital staff... but that one person is YOU. It's a good thing for the overall public that only one person died, but it's a bad thing for the one person who actually died. It's potential versus actual numbers, so I guess it's important to understand what the potential for The Passion really was.
Bill makes some good points about the true potential being lower than the perceived potential (my paraphrasing) might have been. Frankly, I think Christians perceive a greater potential for this sort of thing than there really is out of wishful thinking - anything that makes our evangelical "job" easier is generally welcomed. In fact, if we could just show non-Christians a movie whereby they would come to a conclusion of their need for Christ, all without us having to actually work it out with them, all the better!
Perhaps that's cynical. But ultimately, the success of any evangelistic effort is directly proportional to the receptiveness of its audience. Our job as Christians includes finding the most receptive souls out there, not just scattershooting and hoping for the best. That's my personal concern with these types of evangelistic tools.
Ultimately, who knows. People are fickle, especially so with something they find difficult to really believe. The next paycheck comes in, the next Survivor episode comes on, and they've forgotten all about that Jesus cat, who might be nothing more than a mythical figure anyway. For a lot of people, Jesus is far less real than even their favorite TV stars... and reaching those people is going to include a lot of "failures".
But what is a failure? If our goal is to win souls, we fail when souls aren't won. I think that's a laudable goal... but I also think it's wrong. Our goal is to make God smile, to please him. We do that by obeying him... which says nothing about the results of our obedience! We obey, God worries about the results. If the results seem successful, the glory is God's since He is responsible for the results. If they seem UNsuccessful, the "blame" is God's since He is responsible for the results! (Not that we should judge God's intentions based on our interpretation of the results of our efforts...)
So you make a movie like The Passion because it pleases God, not because it will win souls. You work for a Christian organization because it pleases God, not because your work there will win souls. The soul-winning might be there, but that shouldn't be the goal.
In summary: I don't quite know why the numbers for The Passion were fairly low. I know that the numbers are not my responsibility if I were Mel Gibson, nor would I be concerned that it was a failure. I would simply be secure in the knowledge that I had done my best to please God in this facet of my life. And I would let God sort out the rest.
(Apologies for any apparently inconsistencies in the preceding. I was mostly making it up as I went along. ;-)