Gods of Egypt: A Cinematic Disappointment
It’s hard to take a film like Gods of Egypt seriously. It’s a jumble of not-so-great special effects, a completely unoriginal plot, and pretty weak acting.
Long ago in Egypt, gods and humans lived side by side. Because of their origins, long lives, and ability to turn into monsters, the gods ruled the land. The reign of Osiris brought prosperity to the Nile Valley. But when the long-time ruler decides to pass his throne to his son Horus, Egypt’s peaceful life is interrupted by the warlike Set, who arrives from the desert’s depths. He kills Osiris, blinds Horus, and becomes the ruler of gods and people in the once-thriving land. The resourceful thief Bek, to save his beloved from slavery, takes on the task of returning Horus’s eyes so that he can regain power and free the gods and people. However, Horus has his own view of the world, and deals with mortals are not part of it.
The public’s outrage that the main cast of “Egyptians” were white actors led the director and producers of the film to issue an official apology to viewers.
Our well-versed readers can easily list the topics that Hollywood, for various reasons, has failed to adequately explore over the years. We believe that the adaptation of myths, legends, and tales of the ancient world would be high on that list. They just can’t seem to clearly demonstrate the ancient Greek pantheon of gods, or the Hindu one. Even the “class-close” Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf” always 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 gloomiest forecasts. The topic is still not revealed, but whether anyone will be able to shoot something worthy in this niche remains a big question.
.jpg “Scene from the movie “Gods of Egypt””)
Moving the filming from the Sahara to Australia was not only due to the dangers lurking for filmmakers in the African desert, but also to the tax breaks of the Green Continent, which made it possible to more than halve production costs.
A Closer Look at the Flaws
But let’s get back to Gods of Egypt and try to break down Alex Proyas’s film into details. Alas, neither internally nor externally do the “Gods” have a single fresh note. The plot and the film’s shell are just a repetition of the past and a shuffling around in 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 one side, the story of a rogue god, overthrown by a warlike uncle and eager for revenge, but gradually realizing that the world is not so simple. On the other, a man who confronts the gods for the sake of his beloved and even has the ability to manipulate their weaknesses. Neither side can boast any particular brilliance. The “divine” motive is childishly naive, and the characters from the human world are surprisingly unattractive.
Special Effects Failures
It is quite obvious that in the absence of a somewhat fascinating script, Proyas focused on spectacle in the film. But here, movie fans are in for a disappointment. Gods of Egypt, at the moment of “divine” battles, turns into a video game of not the best quality, where the fighting figures bear little resemblance to animated beings. The abundance of computer graphics, its careless stuffing into every little episode, turns the viewing 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 despite the richness of the ancient Egyptians’ imagination, which makes dozens of generations of teenagers breathe faster when they see drawings and hieroglyphs from ancient pyramids.
Questionable Motivations and Character Development
Let’s be careful about criticizing the complete inconsistency of the gods’ relationships in Proyas’s film with the canon accepted by researchers of Egyptian civilization. Let’s consider it the author’s vision and the right to fiction. After all, the ancient Greek pantheon also produces Percy Jackson, Immortals, and Wrath of the Titans. But it is difficult to dismiss the motivation of the 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.
Poor Performances
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 unconcealed torment on his face. Even in Butler’s eyes, there is not enough fire to ignite a real screen fire, let alone the young Brenton Thwaites and Courtney Eaton, who did not get divine brilliance. The film, almost devoid of humor, goes overboard with pathos, saturated with computer effects, and thereby suffocates the actors, who seem to simply not understand what they have gotten into.
Final Verdict
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 film could be forgiven in the era of The Lawnmower Man, but after the Titans dilogy, changes are needed in the adaptation of mythology. The “Gods” failed.