Movie Review: Gods of Egypt (2016)
I have heard a lot people complaining about this movie, claiming that it’s one of the worst movies ever made. With all that hoopla I thought I might give the movie a watch.
The first thing that I noticed was the overwhelmingly white cast. I don’t know why Hollywood continues to paint a wrong picture of historical events as they pertain to Egypt but this is done deliberately. I’m normally not much of a social justice warrior but this is something that’s just plain disrespectful. I mean, have you ever seen a movie about the history of China that was cast almost entirely with white people? I don’t think so. Then why the exception with Egypt? I digress.
The movie starts out with a fair share of CGI effects which kind of gave me an idea as to what should be expected. The CGI wasn’t very convincing so it seemed a little cheap at times. Especially the “transformations”, they were quite goofy in my humble opinion. Nowhere in the hieroglyphs does it say that Egyptian gods are Transformers so I really don’t get why they decided to go this route.
Storytelling-wise the movie doesn’t have much to offer. It’s so one-dimensional that even a child could predict most of the occurrences beforehand. The deaths that occur during the movie are what I’d call “premature death scenes”. Instead of waiting until some sort of emotional bond can be established with the viewer the characters just die way too early. So early indeed that no one really cares. Even the other characters in the movie seemed totally apathetic towards the deaths of their “loved ones”. I call that bad storytelling.
Towards the end the movie gets actually interesting. But unfortunately that’s not enough. The negative points clearly outweigh the positive ones (of which there are few to begin with), I’m afraid.
It’s not the worst movie I’ve ever seen but I wouldn’t recommend it either. The movie has a strong cast, weak story, and mediocre VFX.
Final verdict: can’t recommend it
IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt2404233/
Ontology: #movie #review #gods #Egypt #action #controversial
