Gods of Egypt (C or 2/4 stars)
Oh, 'Gods of Egypt' (directed by Alex Proyas, Dark City). My, my, my. Where to begin. It's horrible. And yet, not unlike other films of its ilk, there are moments sprinkled throughout the overstuffed, senseless, frenetic-yet-boring proceedings that gave me a chuckle or nod of 'knowing' what the filmmakers were going for ... silly fun. Set in ancient Egypt when - fictionally - the gods lived alongside mortals, this film begins on the day that the God, Osiris (Bryan Brown, an Aussie Egyptian), is about to crown his strapping son, Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Lannister of Game of Thrones fame and, a Danish Egyptian???), God of Air, the next king. At the grand coronation ceremony - and not unlike Maleficent - Osiris' embittered, peevish, jealous brother, Set (Gerard Butler, a Scottish Egyptian who sounds like he just came from the pub), arrives to kill Osiris, exile Horus (by gouging out his all-seeing eyes), take the crown for himself, & send Egypt into crisis.
Meanwhile, a mortal couple - young thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites, another Aussie Egyptian) & his devout love, Zaya (Courtney Eaton, of Mad Max: Fury Road) - toy with the gods by conspiring to steal Horus' eyes from Set's vault. Although Bek retrieves one of the eyes, fate separates him from Zaya after her employer, Urshu (hammy Rufus Sewell, a British Egyptian), Set's royal architect, murders her for her treason. Grief-stricken Bek takes Zaya's body to Horus, where he strikes up a bargain with him: Horus' cherished eye for a promise to revive Zaya from a shadowy underworld limbo state. Together the mortal & the god embark on an unlikely journey to defeat the megalomaniacal Set before he unleashes his reign of terror to destroy one & all.
This cornball, woeful action/fantasy is SO bad that you might imagine that the filmmakers knew that this thing was unredeemable as they shot it. Director Alex Proyas even publicly apologized for the lack of diversity in the casting. Now, I kinda dug the 1st 20 minutes or so. I was IN it. I was clearly watching something of a poor quality, but it was goofily self-aware, snappy, & visually arresting. But then this sword-&-sandals epic narratively crumbles, stops being interesting (cliches abound), becomes a succession of bizarre monster chases, of nonsensical booby traps, & go-for-broke effects-aided action that abandons plausibility. Nothing is done to make us care a lick about what's going on. Horus & Bek riff & banter as they drudge through their journey together, but it's all just so witless. There is no plot momentum. And the 'action', meant to dazzle, just winds up being a visual & sonic bombardment of nonsensical STUFF happening, and with zero stakes involved.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Horus in the traditional hero mold. He lightens things up with some sarcasm, but really, he mostly just looks the part. As the big, bad villain with no nuance, Gerard Butler stomps, poses, preens, flexes, growls, bellows ... and all in a Scottish accent. Like, what!? Butler, Coster-Waldau, has a beefy presence that aids the movie (think 300), but his performance is just too surreal, overblown, & misguided. As the sun-god Ra, Geoffrey Rush looks old, bored and, most damning ... ridiculously campy. Each scene with him in it was mindblowingly bad & boring (nodded off twice). Brenton Thwaites, with his odd auburn wig, looks the part, but is a dull mortal hero. Chadwick Boseman gives a lively, if bizarre little turn as Thoth, the God of Wisdom. And while I liked Elodie Yung as Horus' goddess love interest, Hathor, she's underwritten & disappears from the proceedings early. There was just no consistency of style among any of these performances.
Now, there are a few moments where the 'camp' works. i.e., I laughed at Horus being massaged in a bubbling Jacuzzi by 3 mortal female slaves (all half his size, the gods are 12 ft. tall) and then joined by his girlfriend, the goddess of love, for a make-out session. I also chuckled at the production design; sometimes it looked majestic & grand, other times ... chintzy, like a Vegas version of Egypt. But other examples just irked me. Like, why is Gerard Butler being pulled in the air on a chariot by giant beetle bugs? And who approved the visualization of Ra dragging the sun around Earth while fighting an enormous smoke worm who, naturally, is Apep, the Egyptian god of chaos? Horrifying. 'Gods of Egypt' is too long (127 minutes for THIS?), ungainly, un-engaging, artificial (video game-like CGI), & lacking in admirable quality. So why didn’t I hate it? Because there are isolated moments that intrigued me, grabbed me, made me chuckle, & I love Greek mythology in film – just wish it were better.
Meanwhile, a mortal couple - young thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites, another Aussie Egyptian) & his devout love, Zaya (Courtney Eaton, of Mad Max: Fury Road) - toy with the gods by conspiring to steal Horus' eyes from Set's vault. Although Bek retrieves one of the eyes, fate separates him from Zaya after her employer, Urshu (hammy Rufus Sewell, a British Egyptian), Set's royal architect, murders her for her treason. Grief-stricken Bek takes Zaya's body to Horus, where he strikes up a bargain with him: Horus' cherished eye for a promise to revive Zaya from a shadowy underworld limbo state. Together the mortal & the god embark on an unlikely journey to defeat the megalomaniacal Set before he unleashes his reign of terror to destroy one & all.
This cornball, woeful action/fantasy is SO bad that you might imagine that the filmmakers knew that this thing was unredeemable as they shot it. Director Alex Proyas even publicly apologized for the lack of diversity in the casting. Now, I kinda dug the 1st 20 minutes or so. I was IN it. I was clearly watching something of a poor quality, but it was goofily self-aware, snappy, & visually arresting. But then this sword-&-sandals epic narratively crumbles, stops being interesting (cliches abound), becomes a succession of bizarre monster chases, of nonsensical booby traps, & go-for-broke effects-aided action that abandons plausibility. Nothing is done to make us care a lick about what's going on. Horus & Bek riff & banter as they drudge through their journey together, but it's all just so witless. There is no plot momentum. And the 'action', meant to dazzle, just winds up being a visual & sonic bombardment of nonsensical STUFF happening, and with zero stakes involved.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Horus in the traditional hero mold. He lightens things up with some sarcasm, but really, he mostly just looks the part. As the big, bad villain with no nuance, Gerard Butler stomps, poses, preens, flexes, growls, bellows ... and all in a Scottish accent. Like, what!? Butler, Coster-Waldau, has a beefy presence that aids the movie (think 300), but his performance is just too surreal, overblown, & misguided. As the sun-god Ra, Geoffrey Rush looks old, bored and, most damning ... ridiculously campy. Each scene with him in it was mindblowingly bad & boring (nodded off twice). Brenton Thwaites, with his odd auburn wig, looks the part, but is a dull mortal hero. Chadwick Boseman gives a lively, if bizarre little turn as Thoth, the God of Wisdom. And while I liked Elodie Yung as Horus' goddess love interest, Hathor, she's underwritten & disappears from the proceedings early. There was just no consistency of style among any of these performances.
Now, there are a few moments where the 'camp' works. i.e., I laughed at Horus being massaged in a bubbling Jacuzzi by 3 mortal female slaves (all half his size, the gods are 12 ft. tall) and then joined by his girlfriend, the goddess of love, for a make-out session. I also chuckled at the production design; sometimes it looked majestic & grand, other times ... chintzy, like a Vegas version of Egypt. But other examples just irked me. Like, why is Gerard Butler being pulled in the air on a chariot by giant beetle bugs? And who approved the visualization of Ra dragging the sun around Earth while fighting an enormous smoke worm who, naturally, is Apep, the Egyptian god of chaos? Horrifying. 'Gods of Egypt' is too long (127 minutes for THIS?), ungainly, un-engaging, artificial (video game-like CGI), & lacking in admirable quality. So why didn’t I hate it? Because there are isolated moments that intrigued me, grabbed me, made me chuckle, & I love Greek mythology in film – just wish it were better.