Joseph Howell
“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” is a series that focuses on movies which have a bad critical reputation, bombed in the box office, or serve as guilty pleasures. Also, I am aware it’s been a while since I wrote one of these articles, so sorry it took so long.
Before “Warcraft” came out, film critic David Ehrlich said that it is the “Battlefield Earth” of the 21st century. Granted, it doesn’t look like a good movie, but I haven’t seen it yet so I can’t judge yet. Also, I wonder if I’d agree with him after seeing “Gods of Egypt”, which to me, felt more like that notorious big budget fiasco than any movie in recent memory-something that does for Egyptian mythology what BE did for science fiction. It turns it into a mix of unintended hilarity, mind-numbing boredom and aggressively bad special effects.
I could tell things had gone south as soon as the first trailer hit the internet. Not only did it look bad (indeed, many were unimpressed) there was also an understandable backlash over the fact that for a movie about Ancient Egypt, there sure were a lot of white people. After a Superbowl ad and increasing disinterest towards the product, the film ended up making little over $31 million overall, and barely recouped it’s bloated $140 million budget with help from overseas ticket sales. However, the studio itself didn’t lose a lot of money out of this thing – they only paid $30 million to make the damn thing, with most of the money coming from production companies Thunder Road Pictures and Mystery Clock Cinema. Oh, and after it bombed with audiences and critics, Proyas took to social media to lambaste said critics. How ’bout that?
Well, I’ve gone into the backstory, now for the story of the movie itself.
“Gods of Egypt” takes place in an alternate ancient Egypt in which the gods can walk among men. Granted you can tell who is a god and whose a man because the gods are like eight feet tall and bleed golden blood because this is a PG-13 movie and God forbid we actually show red blood. Anyways, a ceremony for Osiris ends badly when a Scottish white dude playing an Egyptian deity-uh, I mean god of darkness Set (Gerard Butler), who takes the throne and causes the kind of bad things you’d expect a deity of destruction to cause.
So, who can stop Set from destroying the world? Well, first of all is Bek (Brenton Thwaites), a mortal being who has little love for the gods, and whose love Zaya (Courtney Eaton) must be saved. So, who will help our hero? None other than the god Horus (Nikolja Coster-Waldau), who had his eyes gouged out by Set, but has one retrieved by Bek. Also, Horus also has a love interest in Hathor (“Daredevil” actress Elodie Yung), and he’s gotta save her too.
Watching “Gods of Egypt” is…something, to say the least. The acting is dreadful, but Gerard Butler, in particular, stands out. Shouting most of his dialogue, chewing massive amounts of scenery and generally making an ass of himself, he delivers the kind of over the top, terrible performance that is practically career destroying. Nobody else reaches that level, though Geoffrey Rush as the goofiest looking Ra imaginable certainly tries. The only actor who comes close to having a sense of dignity in this movie is Chadwick Boseman, who seems to be the only person who realizes he’s in a bad movie.
The action scenes-well, they lack anything resembling flair or style. Really, when people aren’t embarrassing themselves, the movie is actually pretty boring. In fact, it ends up suffering a similar problem that other bad blockbuster movies suffer-too many special effects and green screen, and not enough story or character. The fact that the special effects are awful doesn’t help matters much either. This is a movie that cost $140 fucking dollars to make, and it looks like shit. The CGI effects at best look like a ScyFy channel movie, and at worst like something out of a shitty late 90’s video game. All of that money, and the laughable visual of Gerard Butler turning into what looks like an ancient Egyptian Transformer is the best they can do.
One thing I think critics overlooked when it comes to criticisms is the fact that the thing feels clueless and dated. Sure, “300” was a huge hit, but it’s sequel-while not a bomb-wasn’t. “Immortals” might be a guilty pleasure of mine (in fact, I’d argue it’s better than “300”) didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Movies like “The Legend of Hercules” and the Hercules movie with the Rock, as well as the likes “Wrath of the Titans” were box office duds-I hope you see a pattern. Why a major studio thought a poorly written and directed mix of all the movies I mentioned would be a surefire success in the box office is baffling to me.
Pictured: one of the few minorities in a movie about Egypt.
As a whole, I’d say “Gods of Egypt” is at least worth watching once. Not in a way that screams “sure, you might see it”, but in the same manner something like “Battlefield Earth” is worth watching once-just so you can say you’ve seen it. That you saw something studio executives actually thought would be a good idea, though all basic logic would say otherwise. Ain’t the movies grand ladies and gents?
IMDB Rating: 5.6/10 (Too high of a rating IMO)
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 15%
Metacritic Score: 23/100
Budget: $140 million
Box Office: $31.2 million (U.S.), $111.1 million (overseas) $142.2 Million (overall)
