Gods of Egypt, 2016
Directed by Alex Proyas.
Starring Brenton Thwaites, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler, Courtney Eaton, Chadwick Boseman, Elodie Yung, Rachel Blake, Bryan Brown, Emma Booth, Alexander England, Rufus Sewell, and Geoffrey Rush.
SYNOPSIS:
Mortal hero Bek teams with the god Horus in an alliance against Set, the merciless god of darkness who has usurped Egypt’s throne, plunging the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict.
There will be lots of comparisons to the mechanics of video games in this review for Gods of Egypt, because that’s really what the movie is; a game that doesn’t exist, adapted into a movie, containing nothing but the cinematic scenes and key boss battles.
Everything from the mildly amusing sequences of Horus (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game of Thrones fame) using his double-ended spear to cut through generic looking metallic pharaoh henchmen, or the highly unintentionally hilarious brief moments where his father must fend off a great evil from causing a great disturbance in the afterlife by attacking it with ease once or twice every night, to the ghastly looking and incomprehensible CGI battles between transformed gods (it’s like something out of a Japanese Anime, only nowhere near as awesome) plowing each other into any and every nearby structure, is all done with the grandiose of the latest AAA blockbuster video game.
There’s just one problem; none of it is actually cool.
Much has been said about the whitewashing of Gods of Egypt that sees predominantly white actors (with the exception of Chadwick Boseman as the god of intelligence), which to be honest doesn’t really concern me. Hollywood is going to do whatever it feels necessary to ensure a profit, and that usually means casting Western actors for a Western audience. But here’s the problem: all of the additional money that went to securing recognizable faces could have went to paying less money for actual Egyptian actors, not just to heighten the authenticity of the proceedings, but so there could be some remaining budget left over to improve the special effects that as of right now, are absolutely fucking hideous and a blurry mass.
Seriously, go pick up God of War (I don’t even care if it’s the original, non–remastered version for the PlayStation 2) and you will get an experience with talented artists using their money wisely to create something that doesn’t look butt ugly. If a concept for random creature was not up to standard, it was nixed from the final version, whereas Gods of Egypt is just flinging shit at the wall and hoping something sticks.
The gooey orange substance that seeps from anyone attacked, onslaught of contrasting colors, muddled takes on creatures from the mythology; it all looks bad. The only area of production design coming out unscathed from this whole dumpster fire are the costumes (which do seemingly accurately represent the time, along with being aesthetically pleasing) and the various environmental backgrounds that are obviously green screen, but still look nice and successfully transport you into that place and time.
With that said, it’s tough to truly rip apart Gods of Egypt, because director Alex Proyas (who is actually Egyptian) is a visionary, and is desperately doing whatever he can to mitigate this awful script and budget constraints by at least giving us something entertaining. None of the action carries much weight or is anything remarkable, but at least there is a lot of it, alongside getting to see Gerard Butler ham it up as a villain usurping the throne of Egypt for himself, and basically being your typical ruler of the world bad guy. The movie also uses humor to its advantage, with quite a few quips here and there.
One of the only real saving graces for Gods of Egypt is the protagonist Bek (Brenton Thwaites), who is a kleptomaniac mortal that is messed up in this tussle with the gods in an effort to do whatever is necessary to save the love of his life in a rather unconventional way. The movie is still rather predictable, but there is at least an effort to try something different. Bek also just generally has a lot of charm, and is very thrilling to watch during many of the parkour sequences that have him accomplishing many seemingly impossible acrobatic feats to obtain critical possessions.
When Gods of Egypt isn’t assaulting you with a cacophony of action and cheesy villains doing bad things, it is unfortunately boring you to tears by dumping a bunch of unnecessary expository dialogue on viewers that ultimately has no bearing on the plot. Some of it would work better if it were more fleshed out, but the movie is already over two hours so that’s pretty much a no. Instead, viewers just have to accept a narrative that is essentially a mess.
I will say one thing though; Gods of Egypt knows its audience. There is a reason pretty much every female in the film wears skimpy clothing revealing a major amount of cleavage, or that many of the plot beats feel lifted from your average video game. The movie was never meant to have anything of substance, but rather be a visual treat for the eye. Clearly it failed… aside from the cleavage.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder – Chief Film Critic of Flickering Myth. Check here for new reviews weekly, friend me on Facebook, follow my Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
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