Gods of Egypt (2016)
Director: Alex Proyas
Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Courtney Eaton, Brenton
Thwaites, Elodie Young, Gerard Butler, Rufus Sewell, Geoffrey Rush
Every once in a while a movie tanks at the box office, when
it shouldn’t have. I mean surely, most of the films that get the shaft by
audiences usually deserve it, but in the case of Alex Proyas big budget fantasy
extravaganza Gods of Egypt, it didn’t. I kick myself in the ass for listening
to that first batch of negative reviews that accused the film among many things of “white
washing” the cast, which means that a group of people got angry because characters
that were Egyptian (and therefore should look Egyptian) where being played by
white actors. I don’t really care about that sort of thing; I’m just enjoying a
movie here. Weren’t we past the whole skin color thing? Guess not. Anyways, reviewers
decided to spew their hatred at this one and well, no one went to see it. This
is the kind of film that was badmouthed even before it was released. And so, it
only made back 31 million dollars on a 140 million dollar budget, which means
it was a gargantuan flop. It’s sad because a box office flop of this magnitude
cold spell the end of Alex Proyas career,
which means no more big budget films for him. The worst part is that this
movie, in my opinion, is an excellent action adventure fantasy extravaganza
that deserved to be embraced by audiences.
The story is multi faceted, on the one hand it’s about Horus,
the God of Wind, trying to recover his god hood and his kingdom. On the other
hand, it’s a story about a young man named Bek, trying to recover the love of
his life from the icy grips of death. You see Set, the God of Chaos has taken
over the land and rules it with an iron fist. Since this is a full on fantasy
film, Set can do things like changing the rules of what happens after you die.
Where in the past all you had to do was be a good citizen and work to go to
heaven, now in order to earn your way into the afterlife you have to pay! If
you don’t have something of value you are sent to hell, but if you got the
goods you go to heaven with the Gods. This of course spells certain doom for
poor people who have nothing to give to the Gods. Will order be set again? Can
Horus learn to fight for the rights of the people? Will the Gods learn to care
about humans? Or will they remain self centered and egotistical?
This film was awesome for many reasons, number one, it has a
good story. It grabs you from the get go because it pits the despotic ruler vs.
the unpredictable rebel trying to fight for his rightful place in the world. Unfortunately,
Set the despotic ruler cares nothing for “the little people”; he only cares about
power and riches. So it’s that classic class struggle story, the powerful vs.
the working class. They had this awesome visual idea for this movie where ‘The
Gods’ look slightly bigger than the humans, so it’s like they aren’t gigantic,
but they are a few inches bigger than the regular humans, which made for a cool
visual. I’m sure it must’ve been hell to film though, this visual effect makes
practically every scene in the movie a special effect! And speaking of effects,
they are top notch on this show! It's a visual feast, more so for lovers of fantasy and escapism.
Gods of Egypt is one of those movies in which most of the surroundings
are computer generated. In this sense Gods of Egypt is like the Star Wars
movies, which is normally something that I frown upon. I’ve always resisted “all CGI” movies, where only the actors are real. Sadly, this is the face
of the new Fantasy/Science Fiction film. They’ve evolved into this; we might as
well accept it. Stop motion, matte paintings and the use of miniatures have all
been replaced by computer generated images, which is fine. It’s just another
form of art, thought if I had to choose, I’d choose practical old school
effects. Call me old fashion but they had more artistry to them if you ask me. I
have to admit that this “all CGI” element of this film was the main reason why
I didn’t go see it in theaters. Yet I have to admit that like all types of
special effects, when done right, they can (and should) blow you away. I have to say that on Gods of Egypt the
effects worked extremely well. There’s this show stopping scene with these two
giant monster Cobra snakes attacking Horus that was just awesome. Actually, what Gods of Egypt feels the most
like is those old Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies, with all the monsters and
creatures.
