Gods of Egypt - Movie Review

Friends and family of mine have heard me use the term "Hilariocity" sometimes when talking about movies and it's a term invented by movie critic and small-time director, Chris Stuckmann, to describe a movie that is such an atrocity that it's hilarious. To expand upon the term this could be a so-bad-it's-good film, a so bad it's incredibly awful, a guilty pleasure, or a film that is so bad you continually question how the hell it was even made. Examples of such films include The Room (from Tommy Wiseau), Battlefield Earth, Batman and Robin, and Manos: The Hands of Fate (to name a few). This week the film I'm talking about is a absolutely a hilariocity and it 100% fits into the final version of this term. When the film ended I just sat there in my chair, stunned into silence with a few random chuckles, utterly blown away by levels of terrible this film blasted into my face because it thought like a little kid in that if it shouted and put on a huge display, no matter how poor it looked, people would love the movie. Guys... I watched Gods of Egypt.

This movie is about a thief named Bek who, with his girlfriend Zaya, attends the crowning of the new king of Egypt, the god of air Horus. In this world gods live among men, but are revered because of their power and they rule over all of human kind. But during the coronation Set, the god of the desert, kills his brother and current king, Osiris (the god of the afterlife). He then defeats Horus, takes his eyes, and declares himself the new king of Egypt. Soon after that Zaya is killed and Bek forges an alliance with Horus to dethrone Set and in return bring Zaya back from the afterlife. With this summary of the movie you might think that sounds awesome. But it's not.

There are so many problems with this movie. So many incredibly obvious, crippling problems with Gods of Egypt. Let's start with the most obvious one that you see when you look at the title/ cover of the film: There are no Egyptian actors. Or at least no Egyptian actors that portray any named characters in this movie. Almost everyone in this movie is Caucasian, either of northwestern European or Australian descent. Horus is played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones), Gerard Butler (300, Law Abiding Citizen, Reign of Fire) plays Set, Élodie Yung (Daredevil (2016)) is the goddess of love Hathor, Geoffrey Rush (Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribean) is the sun god Ra, and Rufus Sewell (A Knight's Tale, The Man in the High Castle) is Urshu, Set's architect. I could go on, but none of these actors can realistically play Egyptians or Egyptian gods. Hell, they never even changed their dialects for the movie, I could clearly hear Gerard Butler's Scottish accent as clear as day. In Egypt! The only non-white actor with a named character Chadwick Boseman as Thoth, the god of wisdom. That is just sad.

Now you're all probably saying this is massive white-washing and you're absolutely correct. Before the film came out people were saying this was ridiculous and there should be more diversity and actual Egyptians in this movie. The director, Alex Proyas, did apologize, along with Lionsgate (who released the film) and reading through it I felt it was they were serious, but it also felt like any other apology a big corporation makes after making a huge error. I have a disturbing quote though from Alex Proyas that really puts into mind what he was thinking when he decided to make a movie set in Egypt without any realistic Egyptian culture:

"... the world of Gods of Egypt never really existed. It is inspired by Egyptian mythology, but it makes no attempt at historical accuracy because that would be pointless — none of the events in the movie ever really happened. It is about as reality-based as Star Wars — which is not real at all ... Maybe one day if I get to make further chapters I will reveal the context of the when and where of the story. But one thing is for sure — it is not set in Ancient Egypt at all." (2015)

Now Alex Proyas has worked on a few odd films in the past like I-Robot and Dark City, and these are some pretty interesting and enjoyable movies. But this... this level of either carelessness and ignorance of the culture of a significant group of people is unsettling and insulting. Unlike Star Wars he was using a real culture and mythology to create this movie and while I am no an expert in ancient Egyptian mythology I found that none of what the characters did to be at all believable with the gods of the real Egyptian mythology. In a ways you can ignore this because he wasn't intending the culture in the film to connect to the real world at all, that Alex Proyas wanted to make an original story and movie. He wanted to disconnect his audience from the real world and be pulled into his world. The problem though is the real culture is so significant that it cannot be pushed to the side.

But guys, as insane as this sounds, as much as I've already bashed this movie... I'm just warming up.

The next major problem this movie has is the CGI. I never seen so much CGI used in a big-budget film before. Some of it meh, while some is not too bad/ pretty good, but a lot of it is awful/ laughable. But the bigger problem is not the quality, its over use. Like I haven't seen so much CGI in big budget film since the Star Wars prequels. That's 10 years from this movie was released in theaters since the last prequel, Revenge of the Sith, was released. But in Gods of Egypt it's used so much more that we cannot escape it. George Lucas, who used CGI way too much in the prequels, at least had some sort of limit or restraint in using it, giving us at least a few scenes where its just in the background. But Alex Proyas didn't seem to care or realize how much CGI was used because barely any scene in the film looked believable to me. I was laughing so hard at how bad everything looked and the way the film just kept shoving it in my face, thinking if it showed how huge of a spectacle it could make I would love it. And I did, but absolutely not in the way the people behind the film wanted me to love it.

Let's talk about the Egyptian gods in this movie. Aside from them all not looking like Egyptians they're honestly pretty lame and bland. They're just bigger humans (like 1.5x bigger than a normal human) that can transform into metal animal-human hybrids that look like they belong in a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Additionally the clothes their wear look absolutely ridiculous, so much golden jewelry and gemstones, sometimes to the point that they're wearing robes consisting entirely of the two. They also bleed liquid gold instead of blood. In the end they don't look or feel like they're godly in any way, especially they keep getting damaged by human-like dangers, from getting stabbed to huge rocks. Yes, they got super-strength and the ability to transform and a few unique abilities like Thoth with his all-knowing intelligence, but that all fails with the terrible CGI, writing (which I will really get into soon), and how dull they are in power.

Let's make a comparison right now between the gods of this movie and the Asgardians from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now before you start saying, "Hey the Asgardians in those films are nothing like the real Norse gods," I get it and you are correct. Both of these groups though take real world deities and attempt to add flare to them for their own original stories. In Asgard in the MCU the magic of the original source has been changed into science fiction technology bordering on magic. While stuff like Thor's hammer and the rainbow bridge are never fully explained with science there is enough information to make it look or sound ridiculous, but instead cool and unique. In Gods of Egypt the world appears to be in a old era of technology, just like how the real, olden Egypt was. There was a moment where I thought the film was going to be revealed as really a science fiction movie, but that didn't happen. The film is too set on being just like the real ancient Egypt that viewers think both worlds are the same thing and become angry that this version of the Egyptian god pantheon doesn't stand out as being different.

Now about the characters: Most of the people on Asgard in the MCU are kind of regular, but there are notable, more powerful entities that really stand out, similar to how a real godly pantheon works. Thor, while looking very human in appearance (including being the size of a slightly taller human) is not only super strong, but able to summon lightning and at first is a bit of puffed-up prince. As the MCU progresses he becomes more down to Earth and gains a care-free attitude, later to be replaced as hopelessness after having witnessed almost everyone he cares about die. Loki is also very human in looks, but can also create illusions, clones, and is a very bitter person with a malicious personality. Both of them are very hard to damage. In Gods of Egypt there's not much to distinguish a "god" from a human except height. I never felt like these were actual gods since they felt and acted too human to be gods. In fact there is a moment where Set actually takes pieces of a few other gods and combines them with himself, making him some sort of "Super Set" or "Super God." Like... WHAT?!

The humans are just as bland and boring as the "gods" though. There are not as many, but they're so boring in character. Bek is very similar to our main god character, Horus: They're both lovable rascals with hearts of gold and love interests that are just there to be trophies or prizes that they hold onto. Seriously, when Zaya is dead and being sent to the underworld Anubis, the lord of the Underworld in Egyptian mythology, asks what she has to offer in order to get the "good ending" in the afterlife and she says all she has to offer is her smile. I know that's supposed to sound heartfelt, like there's an emotional meaning behind it, but it shows how insignificant she is in the film. Additionally, with Bek being the only main human in the film, we never see the other background humans under the conditions before and after Set takes over. Well, a little bit before, but it's just one scene where the humans are at the crowning for Horus, but nothing else. We don't see if Set is being a cruel ruler or if he's treating them fair (though probably not), so I never cared about any of the humans in the movie. But most of all none of the characters, human or god, stand out with any notable traits or flaws, written so plain and vanilla that they're just boring.

But now comes the big problem my friends, what really turns this so-called film into a laughable example of a big-budget movie: The writing. The film was supposedly written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, who also wrote Dracula Untold and the live action Power Rangers movie. But my conspiracy theory-related thoughts almost think that there were no professional writers working on this film because the writing is inexcusably bad. I know earlier this year I reviewed The Rise of Skywalker and slammed it for its crappy, rushed writing and pacing, but compared to God of Egypt that Star Wars movie's writing is a beautiful work of art. It feels like a first draft, with plenty of moments that didn't need to be shown and no way to condense the story and pacing down to make the whole thing more efficient.

Let's start with the beginning of the film, which starts with exposition. Guys, if you don't already know, exposition at the beginning of a movie can be the literal death of a movie. It explains the history of why gods are in Egypt and what should have happened is instead of just being told with a voice-over and hieroglyphs we could have actually seen it in some way. But that's only if we want the exposition. After that we meet Bek, Horus, and their love interests, and go to the coronation. When Set comes in he then explains his whole evil plan, why he feels he should be king, and demands that everyone bow to him, adding in that over 1,000 years of peace under Osiris's rule is nothing to boast about. After Set kills his brother and defeats Horus though we get a one-year time jump. Immediately the audience is already bored by the dump of pointless information in a series of scenes at the start of the movie that could have been cut out. We could have and probably should have started the main movie after Set took over, using the intro to summarize how he did so, saving us a lot of time.

Later on, after Zaya is killed and brought into we start the second act, where he and Bek are supposed to get Horus's other eye back after Bek gave one of them to the god. That's a simple goal, something the two and the audience can follow. But soon after so we get so many McGuffins that veer the story off track so many times and are never actually that important in the end. There's meeting Ra and finding out about his battle with Apophis, a giant demon slug that is trying to consume all of the Earth, something about divine water that when used in Set's home will remove all his power, a sphinx with riddles that challenges people, and so much more. They're supposed to be getting Horus's other eye back, why are they doing all these other things? It baffles me that nobody looked over the script and though, "You know we can trim this down, right?" All these new elements that keep getting added bloat the second act so much, dragging and stretching it out over and over again that audience loses track quickly of what the goal of our heroes are. Along with all that we see this war between a bunch of unnamed gods and Set's armies, none of which is explained.

Lastly we got act three, which is more of a CGI fight than anything else in the movie. Set gets all those other god powers I mentioned earlier and defeats Ra, allowing Apophis to start eating the world. That'll somehow destroy the afterlife and Set will become immortal in some way. They're trying to make everything super big like I've mentioned before, thinking that doing so will make the audience love the movie. But with the last act so muddled with side stories and McGuffins there wasn't a chance for characters to grow. Before even that the characters are so boring and uninteresting that there's nothing to really grow. All of this, combined with no real interest or care for the characters or world makes the ending just a bunch of CGI fights and nothing else. To summarize, I felt no excitement towards the climax of the movie. And the ending was just any other regular, happy finale, leaving the film to end on a dull note.

Now with all of this bashing, all this ripping apart of the movie, you would expect I was bored out of my mind and hate this movie to the extreme. There is a universal rule to media, whether its film, TV, video games, books, etc.: Be good, be bad, just don't be boring. I was never bored with Gods of Egypt. Watching the movie felt very similar to watching The Room for the first time, I was so overwhelmed by the decisions made for the film, like this was something no sane person would ever approve or make. The way Gods of Egypt kept trying to show off its dated CGI, horrible acting, horrendous storytelling, stupid action scenes, and awkward comedy, like the film was high-class art, made me laugh so incredibly hard, in a way I never laughed before. When I was not laughing I just stared in awe at what I was seeing, my mind utterly blown away by how unbelievable this all was.

After watching the movie and taking a few hours to digest what I had just watched I started to research this movie, desperate to find out how a studio could throw away 140 million dollars on a film like this. That's right, 140 million bucks went into this piece of crap movie. I went through interviews with the cast and crew, breakdowns of the CGI shots, and articles about the movie and I came to several conclusions: First, I could not find anything concrete on what happened to the budget, where all that money went is a complete mystery. Second, Alex Proyas was really nasty to critics who rightly gave the film very negative scores, which to me seems like he couldn't understand the obviousness of his failure. And third, it seems like while almost all the cast agreed that the film was white-washed (especially Chadwick Boseman, who only joined because he wanted it not to be just white people on set), they all got along with each other and having fun. Most likely they weren't taking it very seriously and knew they were getting involved in something really, really bad. That's my guess though after going through the interviews.

Now if I have to give this film one positive trait, something I genuinely liked about the movie, it would have to be the CGI interactions between the gods and humans. Yes, I have said so much on how the special effects are awful, but as I watched the film it looked like the actors portraying the gods were physically interacting with the human actors. There a number of scenes where we see like Horus is grabbing Bek and it looks real, like they're actually holding each other and it doesn't look fake. That's really all I can say positively about Gods of Egypt, everything else is trash. I mean I can't even describe how terrible and unfunny the humor was, how the earth in this film is flat, or how the fights felt so weak and stupidly flashy to the nth degree. I could pick this film apart all day and when I see this film again I'll probably find even more errors with the movie.

Gods of Egypt is somehow a real movie. How it is real with its awful and dated CGI, confusing and super bloated story, terrible acting, mostly white-washed cast set in ancient Egypt, and many more elements that I didn't mention (and are just as bad) will forever be a mystery. All of this, combined with the film taking itself so damn seriously makes this movie an amazingly hilarious watch. I haven't experienced a film like this in years and it'll be a miracle/ disaster if another big-budget movie ends up like this movie. Despite how incredibly bad it is I absolutely recommend Gods of Egypt because it's a masterpiece of failure, a lesson on everything you shouldn't do if you want to make a great movie. This is a film that you have to see it to believe it.

Tentative Score: 2/10

Definitive Score: 2.25/10

I have discover a legendary, cinematic piece of trash. Maybe one day in the near future I'll get Gods of Egypt on blu-ray so I can view it whenever I want. It's just so hard believe this is real... but it is and I'm kind of happy it is. You might be wondering why I'm not giving this film a one out of ten... well I find that score is only for films that are not only inexcusably bad, but has at least one additional element that makes it feel like it should be purged violently and completely from history. An example of such a film would be Cats (2019) because it's not just horrifyingly bad, but the CGI was so off-putting and scary that only cocaine snorting, money-hungry, out-of-touch Hollywood CEOs would think making such a film would be a good idea. Gods of Egypt, despite its endless flaws, is not that bad of a movie. Plus at least I was entertained by Gods of Egypt, even if it wasn't the how the director wanted me to be entertained. Films like Cats are literal nightmares to think about...

But think about this readers: If a film like this, a film with crappy visual effects, terrible and unfunny writing and dialogue, and all these big actors was given a 140 million dollar budget and was released in theaters... your ideas are possible and can make it big. If you watched or are planning to watch this movie after reading my review then after its over think about what is possible since this was made possible. All you creators out there with big ideas, you can make them real! You can do it! If Gods of Egypt could do it, then so can you! SO GO OUT THERE AND MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF!!!

Now I really, really got to get a drink and play some Hades. That there is a proper way to portray a pantheon of gods and make it all epic and genuinely fun.