Amid the huge #OscarsSoWhite controversy of The 88th Academy Awards, timing could not have been any worse for the release of Gods of Egypt – an Egyptian fantasy film heavily studded with a Caucasian cast. Such “Hollywood whitewashing”, which encourages critics and viewers to sharpen their knives, has been discussed at length elsewhere on the interwebs that instead, I’m going to step aside of the issue and just judge this film for what it is. But for sure, I’m not letting the movie off the hook, because as it turns out, the film has actually more things to apologize for.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Gods of Egypt. Photo via Summit Entertainment.
The movie was probably made because producers thought too many films were being produced about Greek and Roman gods, why shouldn’t they produce films about Egyptian gods as well. In the alternate world of Gods of Egypt, the earth is flat, Egypt is the only country, and gods walk amongst men. Gods are distinguished by their height, which could be up to twice that of a normal person. Gold runs through their veins, and they have the ability to transform into beasts during battle. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister of T.V.’s “Game of Thrones”) plays the god of sky, Horus, who is initially presented as the undeserving heir to his King father Osiris. On the day of Horus’ coronation, Set (Gerard Butler), Osiris’ resentful brother and god of the desert, shows up and says, “No, that kingship is mine!” (Not his actual line but the actual script itself is so riddled with clichés that there’s not much difference.) Set kills Osiris, instigating a battle between Horus and Set which begins as a manual combat between the actors but ultimately becomes a full-blown CGI battle as the gods transform into full-metal winged mecha-gods. Horus loses, and as a consequence, his eyes gets stolen by Set as part of his grand masterplan to become immortal. Enter our mortal hero Bek (Brenton Thwaites), who finds one of Horus’ eyes and teams up with him to kill Set and restore order to the once peaceful empire of Egypt. Bek, however, is in it because he wants to revive his dead girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton). They get occasional help from Horus’ grandfather, the sun god Ra (Geoffrey Rush), who’s dressed like a pope and lives in an ancient spaceship hovering above the earth.
Gerard Butler in Gods of Egypt. Photo via Summit Entertainment.
This CGI-driven film draws its strength from generating escapism, but that should not excuse the appalling dialogue. For example, during a battle scene, Set asks Bek where Horus’ eye is and Bek replies with, “Up in your ass, along with the goats!” Uhhmm… surely if they’ve gone through this thing called “script-editing process”, that line, which was probably thought by a kid, won’t make it to the final cut. To be fair, the movie is really trying to be funny. Some of the scenes worked, but most of them just backfired and sounded silly.
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Brenton Thwaites and Courtney Eaton in Gods of Egypt. Photo via Summit Entertainment.
Director Alex Proyas can’t seem to decide if he’s creating an animated picture or a live-action film, yet he fully embraces this confusion with the excesses of his larger-than-life visual spectacles and deafening sound design, most of which are a struggle to take in. The visuals look phony and I can’t shake the thought of picturing the actors surrounded by a green screen.
Setting aside all the hate, this bold and unapologetic fantasy film still manages to deliver two solid hours of a swashbuckling tale of adventure and romance. You can’t deny that this film does not delight you from start to finish.
I sat there actually enjoying some of the movie: its grand-scale CGI, production and costumes, corny one-liners, razzle-dazzle action sequences, “love that transcends death itself” concept, etc. This is your generic “Hollywood popcorn movie”, a movie that you can take your family to and that kids are bound to enjoy–pure escapism imprinted with pure gloss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJBnK2wNQSo
I agreed with all of your review until the last two paragraphs, which all but completely negates all the critique before them. What, did your boss tell you to you had to add something nice to appease the easily butt-hurt demographic?
I appreciate that your review wasn’t 90% about the lack of diversity, as so many other shock-and-yawn reviewers have done.
Although it temporarily [always only temporarily] sooth the self-indentified take-offence crowd, diversity and all that woke filtering don’t make movies well executed, just more palatable for the non-critically minded. It’s the writing, directing, character development, cast and acting that make movies well executed.
Reality check: even if all the actors were native Egyptians, even if all the machismo-male and decoration-female caricatures were erased — this movie would still be bad because the writing is less than amateurish.
This movie was written in such a shallow, disjointed manner, it makes me wonder who in Hollywood keeps paying for scripts that would even fail a 10 year-old writer in 5th-grade English class.
For those complaining about the perceived special-effects cheesieness, that’s just technology bub! In 2050 they’ll be saying the same thing about the special effects these prideful geeks currently slobber over. It might be pointless to remind them that the 1930s King Kong has what we now consider cheesy S.E., yet remains a good movie nonetheless. Why? Because writing and character development matter.
S.E. can’t save a movie poorly written or one with shallow characters, and it can’t sink one that is thoughtfully and creatively written with rational pacing and characters with whom we can relate. Even a good supporting cast can’t help when script writers and directors are no better than D-student 5th graders. Maybe their agents owed the producers a few favors.