Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Gods of Egypt"

Definitely not Stargate

Gods of Egypt (2016)

Directed by Alex Proyas
Produced by Basil Iwanyk, Alex Poryas
Written by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless

Starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Chadwick Boseman, Elodie Yung, Courtney Eaton, Gerard Butler, Geoffrey Rush

Budget: $140M

Let's jump right in, shall we?

Gods of Egypt is the best live-action video game I've ever seen. That could really function as all the review you need, because there's very little here of any substance. Suffice to say, the entire movie feels like a Blizzard cinematic they would put before the Egyptian-themed World of Warcraft expansion.

In a fantasy version of Egypt where gods are real and everybody's white, Bek (Thwaites) is a mortal thief who's got all the powers of a protagonist at his disposal. We spend just enough time with him and his lover, Zaya (Eaton) to learn he's a nice guy and she's a nice girl and they're both nice together.

Turns out Osiris is abdicating the throne of Egypt and wants his son, Jaime Lannister Horace Horus (Coster-Waldau) to follow after. Just as the crown is passing on, Set (Butler), Horus's uncle, shows up out of the desert and does the evil uncle thing where he attacks the heir and declares himself king. Horus and Set fight a bit, and it's made abundantly obvious this was one of those movies made for 3D, because the direction is flat as a fitting analogy.

Neat. Also, what?

And this is where things go off the rails. After locking blades for a bit, Horus and Set back off, burst into flame, and transform into giant metal animals.

After this bit of nonsense, Set rips Horus's eyes out of his skull and makes Egypt great again. Years later Bek steals one of the eyes back, visits Zaya at her work, and then watches her die after getting shot by her boss, Urshu (Rufus Sewell). After half of the speaking female cast gets stuffed into a refrigerator kidnapped by Anubis to serve as a plot motivator, the boys set out to save the day.

Long story short, there's a trip to the underworld, Butler kills a bunch of people and turns into Voltron, and there's a whole bunch of moderate-quality CGI covering up a reskinned telling of Marvel's Thor. It feels like a bunch of kids got ahold of third-rate Egyptian-themed Beastmorphers and told the only story they could think of. Though the first 45 minutes or so have some mild entertainment, it's two hours long.

I wonder if he ever gets tired of killing Jews.

Overall the acting is...fine, but incredibly inconsistent. Butler chews the scenery with the same vigor as Leonidas. Thwaites and Coster-Waldau are doing their best with the script they've been given. Rush (complete with braided white rat-tail and white robe) and the rest just seem disinterested. With the direction hampered by the requirements of filming for 3D, it's tough to really care over the full length of this slog. If Rufus Sewell wasn't playing an asshole, I would have checked out really, really early.

The Mildly Entertaining
Overall the production seems sincere, if misguided. The director used some nice forced-perspective tricks to highlight the height differences between the mortals and gods, the scenes with multiple Thoths (Boseman...Bosemen?) were shot multiple times, then superimposed, and I guess I have to respect the director attempting to make an original fantasy movie free of franchise restrictions.

Alongside the above, the design and creativity behind some of the visuals is really, really cool. I fully admit to being a shameless geek where worldbuilding is concerned, and Egyptian-themed fantasy is not done terribly often. The divine and mythical aspects of the film are actually pretty cool, and it's such a shame they are wasted here. There's a sort of ancient-aliens visual aesthetic to the entire movie that's, unfortunately, never really expanded upon.

Way cooler than some stupid eight-legged horse.

In particular, Hathor's (Yung) teleport involves getting dragged through the Underworld by demons, represented by eternal passageways of grasping, writhing arms. That's more metal than most stuff you'd find in Gods of Norway. Also, the gods bleeding gold is kind of cool, even if it looks like paint at times.

The Obviously Problematic
Yeah, it would be disingenuous of me to not mention how everybody in this movie, except the all-wise teacher and a single mean goddess, is white. There's been plenty said on this, from Forbes to BET, and I don't really know that I can add a fresh take to it. After the criticisms from all these channels the director and Lionsgate actually issued apologies, which were generally greeted with "eh, alright." As of yet it's too early to see whether they'll actually follow through on doing better, but one can always hope. At least Boseman has Black Panther coming up.

But let's be honest, if you're going to make a movie about (even fictionalized) Egyptian gods and cast a predominantly white cast, there's no one to blame but yourself.

Otherwise the movie suffers from your usual blockbuster problems: poor screenplay, over-reliance and under-performance of CGI, and weak story decisions that break your immersion, shallow though it may have been.

The Batshit Insane

Praise the sun \[T]/

Here's some gifs of Geoffrey Rush flying a space gondola while shooting a chaos-snake with a spear made out of sunlight.

No, really.

This was released in theaters.

I think this honestly could have been the start to a really fun cinematic universe. Have a movie per pantheon, then have them team up to take on alien gods or something. Or, you know, you could just adapt K.A. Applegate's Everworld, but that's never going to happen.

One final note, this movie strongly reminded me of Steven Brust's novel To Reign in Hell, which is essentially a science-fiction / fantasy retelling of Lucifer's fall. It's definitely worth checking out.

Verdict
Not worth the time. Watch clips on Youtube if you're intrigued, but you shouldn't sit through the entire thing.

Tomorrow: 50% man. 50% borg. 100% justice. I think, I haven't ever heard of this one before.