It’s hard to take this movie seriously due to its accumulation of not-so-great special effects, a complete lack of originality in the plot, and rather weak acting.
Since ancient times, gods and ordinary people lived side by side in Egypt. By virtue of their origin, longevity, and the ability to transform into monsters, the gods reigned on earth, and the rule of Osiris brought prosperity to the Nile Valley. However, when the long-time ruler decides to pass his throne to his son Horus, the peaceful life of Egypt is interrupted by the warlike Set, who arrives from the hell of the deserts. He kills Osiris, blinds Horus, and becomes the ruler of gods and people in the once-prosperous country. The resourceful thief Bek, in order to save his beloved from slavery, undertakes to return Horus’s eyes so that he can regain power and free the gods and people. But Horus has his own view of the world, and agreements with mortals are not part of it.
The public’s outrage that the main cast of “Egyptians” was made up of white actors forced the director and producers of the film to offer an official apology to the audience.
Our well-versed readers can easily list the topics that Hollywood, for various reasons, has failed to adequately reveal over the years, and we believe that the adaptation of myths, legends, and tales of the Ancient World will not be the least in this list. They just can’t seem to clearly demonstrate either the ancient Greek pantheon of gods or the Hindu one; even the “class-close” Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf” constantly turns out to be some kind of obscenity. It would have been reckless to expect anything good from “Gods of Egypt,” and the result exceeded the most gloomy forecasts. The topic is still not disclosed, but whether someone will be able to shoot something worthy in this niche remains a big question.
.jpg “Still from “Gods of Egypt””)
The transfer of filming from the Sahara to Australia was associated not only with the dangers lurking for filmmakers in the African desert, but also with the tax incentives of the Green Continent, which made it possible to more than halve the cost of production.
Gods of Egypt: A Critical Look
However, let’s return to “Gods of Egypt” and try to disassemble Alex Proyas’s picture into details. Alas, neither internally nor externally do the “Gods” have a single fresh note; the plot and the shell of the picture are all repetition of the past and trampling in the dusty boxes of the past. Sazama and Sharpless should be banned from high-budget productions for the script, especially since their “Dracula” and “The Last Witch Hunter” were also not particularly inventive. The “Gods” are as simple as a coin: on the one hand, the story of a playboy god, overthrown by a warlike uncle and thirsting for revenge, but gradually realizing that the world is not so simple, and on the other hand, a man who goes to confront the gods for the sake of his beloved and even has the opportunity to manipulate their weaknesses. Both sides cannot boast of special brilliance - the “divine” motive is childishly naive, and the characters from the world of people are surprisingly unattractive.
It is quite obvious that in the absence of a somewhat fascinating script, Proyas focused on spectacle in the film, but here, too, movie fans will be disappointed - at the moment of “divine” battles, “Gods of Egypt” turns into a video game of not the best quality, where the fighting figures look little like animated creatures. The abundance of computer graphics, its careless stuffing into every little episode, turns watching into torture; it is simply physically painful to look at this “riot of pixels.” In addition, the effects specialists managed to make the monster gods surprisingly unremarkable - they look like angular transformers or overgrown Jar Jar Binkses. And this is with the richness of the imagination of the ancient Egyptians, which makes dozens of generations of teenagers breathe faster when they see drawings and hieroglyphs from ancient pyramids.
Let’s be careful to criticize the complete inconsistency of the relationship of the gods in Proyas’s film with the canon that is accepted by researchers of Egyptian civilization. Let’s consider this the author’s vision and the right to fiction; after all, the ancient Greek pantheon also produces either “Percy Jackson,” or “Immortals,” or “Wrath of the Titans.” But it is difficult to dismiss the motivation of people - the heroes of the film. The fact is that the film focuses on how mortals get into the underworld of Anubis. This is, of course, very interesting, and the legends of the Egyptians provide a wide field for fantasy here, but when most of the characters are only interested in finding ways to die profitably throughout the film, this does not quite fit in with the optimistic mood of the audience.
Acting and Overall Impression
Unfortunately, “Gods of Egypt” does not give a single opportunity to praise the actors involved in the film. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is noticeably inferior to his television self, Geoffrey Rush serves his duty in the frame with undisguised torment on his face, even Butler’s eyes lack the fire to ignite a real screen fire, let alone the young Brenton Thwaites and Courtney Eaton, who did not get divine brilliance. The picture, almost devoid of humor, goes overboard with pathos, saturated with computer effects, and thereby suffocates the actors, who, it seems, simply do not understand what they have gotten into.
If you, like many, believe that Alex Proyas is a noticeably overrated director, then “Gods of Egypt” easily fits into this theory. Weak action, completely transferred to computer reality, wretched characters, naive dialogues, and vague motivation - such a movie could be forgiven in the era of “The Lawnmower Man,” but after the dilogy about the “Titans,” changes are needed in the adaptation of mythology. The “Gods” failed.