Gods of Egypt review – a big mess of a film with no redeemable qualities

by | 17 Jun 2016 | Film Reviews

‘In an alternate Egypt the gods Horus and Set battle for Egypt’s throne.’

It’s been seven years since Alex Proyas’ last film The Knowing (2009), which was a rather underwhelming affair and wasn’t that well received by critics. Now after all that time we have his latest feature, Gods of Egypt, which apart from an original and interesting premise also fails to engage and entertain it’s audience. It’s a shame really. As the director of such cult films like The Crow (1994), and the underrated Dark City (1998), Proyas’ latest also has the potential for cult status. Who knows, maybe it will in the future as other films have proved, but for now it’s just a badly made film with very little to enjoy.

Set in an alternate Ancient Egypt where the world is flat and the gods live among mortal men (you can tell them apart because they’re taller and have gold for blood). The story centres around a young man named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) who must ally himself with defeated god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and undertake a daring mission to save his one true love and the world from Gerard Butler’s Set, the God of Darkness.

You could describe it as a sort of mash up between Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) and the 1980 version of Flash Gordon (1980), which sounds awesome on paper and has great promise, but Proyas fails in the execution and is unable to combine all the elements of this film to create a cohesive narrative; in short, it’s a bit of a mess and all over the place.

The plot alone is so convoluted and badly written that your struggle to follow what’s going on and make any sense of what you’re watching. In fact, it looks like Proyas’ direction is to make everything loud and over dramatic, thinking that will give the film an epic quality, or at least distract you from the glaring inconsistencies and uneven pace. What also doesn’t help is that he also makes no attempt to hide the obvious references to similar, arguably better films.

For example, there are a couple of scenes that visually will bring up memories of the final act of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) or parts of The NeverEnding Story (1984) which only accomplishes in making you wish you were watching those films instead of this one.

Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless’ script gives us thinly sketched characters with the most basic of motivations that you’ll barley care what happens to them. Butler’s antagonist is a campy one dimensional character with daddy issues who obviously just wants to take over the world. Coster-Waldau is basically playing his Jamie Lanister role from Game of Thrones (2011-present) but with none of the depth and Thwaites gives an unconvincing performance as a romantic lead. All the performances are so cheesy and over the top that you might as well be watching a pantomime. We also have another example of Hollywood whitewashing as most of the principle cast are all white while supposedly playing Egyptian deities and citizens.

Unfortunately, the acting isn’t the only problem this film has. The visual effects and action scenes also play a big part in bringing this movie down as way too much CGI and green screen is used. Proyas actually makes George Lucas look like he showed some restraint in his Star Wars prequels. It’s not surprising the cast struggled in their performances if there was literally nothing to act against except each other.

Every environment feels like it was artificially rendered with green screen and the CGI is so awfully done it will feel like you’re watching something from the 90’s when the technology was still in its infancy. As a result, when it comes to the action everything looks so fake and unreal that none of it will draw you in. It’s so badly done with messy editing and terrible visuals you’ll struggle to see what’s happening and wondering how any of the studio execs let this pass.

‘In the end, there’s no denying it, Gods of Egypt is a terrible film and it’s hard to find any redeemable feature in it.’

The story’s all over the place, the acting’s dire, and the visuals and action is of an incredibly poor standard. It takes itself way to seriously and with no sense of fun it is just painful to watch. It’s hard not to imagine this movie making it in a lot of “worst films of 2016” lists, if not the decade.

David Axcell

Film Critic

David has quite a broad taste in film which includes big budget blockbusters and small indie films; including International and Arthouse cinema. As long as it’s good in that particular genre, he’ll watch anything.

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