Gods of Egypt could have been an epic Science Fiction Masterpiece but its not
Gods of Egypt? or Aliens of Egypt?
Did you give it a miss, not your cup of tea. I rolled my eyes at the trailer for this film. The obvious whitewashing, for some reason everyone has a British accent, the terrible CGI, the clunky acting... Who'd want to see that. This is not the type of film I would normally review but I needed to vent and rant about this just a little so bear with me.
I am not even sure what made me watch this. Well I'm the type not to judge a film by its trailer and will watch almost anything to the end and give it a chance. If you made it to the end of 'The Lobster' I am sure you can make it through this. I gave Exodus about ten minutes before I turned it off so I had hoped that this would have been a slightly better attempt at putting ancient Egypt on screen. Unfortunately it didn't deliver.
Science Fiction How So?
Oh yeah did I mention the Gods are all 8 foot tall and dwarf even the tallest mortal and have.... Yes you guessed it golden blood.
Aliens!!!!
Get the notion of Star Gate SG1 out of your head. It would have been so much cooler of the writer and director had gone down this route but instead we have to settle for Ra the Sun God on his Space Boat (yes an actual boat, so no not a spaceship) orbiting the earth defending it from some relation of the Sarlac or a giant Space Slug that wants to devour the nile. Ra can only be reached by the other Gods donning Epic Golden Battle armour with wings and flying up to space to chat with him.
Aliens!!!!
There was even one scene where Gerard Butler's character 'Set' comes down into battle on a golden chariot pulled by giant green flying beetles. I really half expected Brian Blessed to fly out of the sky, land and shout 'Gordon's Alive'. I can't tell if the movie was meant to be this ridiculous or what. They really need to pick a genre, as it jumped from comical historical drama to action science fiction film in a heartbeat.
Well this could have been a cool Science fiction effort, where the God's were aliens instead of trying to make this seem like some historically accurate drama based on fictional mythology.
When this movie started I was already rolling my eyes so far in the back of my head I thought they were going to be stuck there. We have conventionally handsome boy off to save conventionally beautiful skinny girl with conventionally handsome super God Horos (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his ridiculously conventionally beautiful girlfriend Hathor so that they can defeat ruggedly handsome Set (Gerad Butler).
Ugh! All the conventionally handsome beautifulness was enough to make you puke. Ugh.
Anyway apart from the banal plot the humorously bad CGI that had me thinking of that bit in Chain Reaction... You know the scene... Yes that one with the awful CG explosion. You got it... Or some really bad gaming footage from 10 years ago, the film was entertaining enough to keep me watching and I have no idea why. Maybe I half expected them to explain that the God's were in fact Aliens. I mean you can't just accept that the Space Barge and Epic Golden Battle Armour are just magic. Right?
Anyway if you want a good laugh or are into conventionally beautiful people or just fancy trying to explain away the whole magic gods vs aliens shenanigans, I urge you to watch this and give it the full effect of your eye rolling. I truly can't imagine where this was supposed to be going as the plot does not go in one particular direction, but I tell you what, it had more scientific fiction than any Egypt movie before it and I include 10,000 BC in this assessment.
Alice T
Alice T