Gods of Egypt (2016)

Review

127min

Genre:     Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance

Director:  Alex Proyas

Cast:       Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler, Brenton Thwaites…more

Writers:   Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless

-Synopsis-

A fragile peace is shattered when a princely God and would-be-king is betrayed by his ruthless and powerful uncle. Now exiled, he will need the help of an acrobatic mortal thief on his own mission, to defeat the megalomaniacal usurper king and restore peace to Egypt.

Armed with a massive $140million budget, a multi-national cast with an Australian feel and locations down under; Greek-Egyptian Aussie director Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot) takes ancient Egyptian mythology as far out of left field as his bionic, CGI-powered filmmaking boots can take him in this huge sprawling fantasy adventure.

Since its February US release, ‘Gods of Egypt’ has been savaged by critics and heavily criticized for “culturally insensitive” casting; at the risk of provoking the wrath of Alex Proyas and his apparent hatred of subjective criticism, the critics have got it unanimously right on this one. But disappointingly, if not surprisingly, the focus on the “Whitewashing” of the actors is misplaced, as cultural appropriation is well down the list of problems with this epic disaster.

The ‘Game of Thrones’ “Kingslayer” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as “Horus”, the Sky god destined to be king of all Egypt, only to be betrayed and crippled by his violent uncle “Set”, god of the desert and usurper king played by Gerard Butler. Young Brenton Thwaites completes the trio of lead actors as mortal and acrobatic thief “Bek”, on his own mission which involves helping “Horus” to defeat “Set” and save Egypt.

‘Gods of Egypt’ is based heavily on the “Osiris myth”; one of the most important stories in ancient Egyptian mythology and religion, and although Alex Proyas and the writers take plenty of artistic liberties with the story and characters, they remain close to the core narrative and themes of man’s relationship with the gods, the order of the world, family devotion and the path to the afterlife.

So we can’t completely blame the filmmakers for the massive scope of this sprawling and convoluted story, but interpretation and execution is key, and the lack of artistic discretion shown to either in this case is quite mind-boggling.

The film looks and feels like a shimmering, gold-plated Shakespearean family drama as made by part-time video game designers. For a huge, over-the-top fantasy spectacle that’s entirely reliant on CGI, it’s truly remarkable that the quality of digitally imagery could often be so low.

Expect a fantastical “ancient Egypt” which wouldn’t be out of place in a ‘Transformers’ movie; full of giant, gold-blooded Gods with special powers and the ability to transform into robot-like creatures. Not to mention plenty of bulging muscles and heaving cleavage in a cartoon-like world with none of the charm of something like ‘The Mummy’, but much more along the lines of the recent and woeful ‘Jupiter Ascending’.

The narrative isn’t much better; basically consisting of a bunch of ludicrous action sequences which serve to amplify the glaring golden mediocrity of the film rather than hiding it. Broken up by cringeworthy dramatic moments,  painfully corny romances and moral messages which wouldn’t be out of place in an 80s Disney theme park ride.

The performances from the actors a pretty subpar as well, although they really don’t have much to work with here. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau just about scrapes by unscathed while Gerard Butler’s ‘300’ inspired, over-the-top and charismatic villainous performance is just about the only remotely captivating element in the film.

We initially took the overwhelmingly negative reception of this film with a grain of salt; but one hour and several half-decent action scenes into this decidedly dull affair left us fighting against the urge to leave the cinema.

The Bottom Line…

The epic scale and endless CGI-laden action sequences can’t gloss over a woeful narrative and poor performances in this decisively dull interpretation of ancient Egyptian mythology; ‘Gods of Egypt’ might become another addition to the vault of ironically popular cult flops, but we can’t recommend spending well over £10 and two hours on this.

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Jupiter Ascending (2015)

A young immigrant domestic cleaner’s life on Earth is shattered when she is discovered as the heir apparent to a dynasty of intergalactic landowners and planet harvesters, only to be pursued by the tyrannical head of the family whom she is determined to fight with the help of a genetically engineered super-soldier.

Directed by Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski and starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne among others.

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