“What would I be the god of? Stupidity?”

There used to be a time when B movies weren’t ashamed of themselves. But sometime in the 2000s it became the norm for big studios to dress up these farcical stories in an attempt to capture larger audiences and make more money. Since our society is pretty dumb and easily influenced, their plan has worked. The trend really took off after Transformers and the Marvel movies were massive hits, and now it’s inescapable. Marvel’s done the best at offering a consistent product, but most of their efforts are still fairly empty of ideas, relying on spectacle and loose ends to keep audiences coming back. But now it seems like every other film that’s shoveled onto the queue is a mid-budget, high-concept blob of nothingness full of handsome, steroided actors spewing meaningless lines in front of a green screen, asking me to take some half-baked fantasy seriously. It is disappointing to see Alex Proyas, who began his career with such promise (The Crow, Dark City), throw his hat in the ring and cooking up one of these travesties. It’s almost like an imposter Alex Proyas made Gods of Egypt, a film characterized by choppy editing, whirling cameras, muscled dudes, tasteless CGI, and its “whitewashing” controversy.

I miss the days when B movies took some kind of perverse pride in getting something done with a limited means of production. Smaller sets, smaller casts, smaller stories. In Gods of Egypt, we have a cast of thousands, but most of them are digitally rendered. I struggle to enjoy such scale when it’s obviously artificial. Likewise, the sets look vast and magnificent, but they’re cartoonish. I’d much rather see the creative use of miniatures (which I know Proyas has used before). To mask the poor CGI, action shots are cut rapidly and make use of a horrid “floating camera” style that I abhor. Basically, so much of the film was punted onto the computer graphics team that there’s scarcely much left for our cast to do but stand around, look pretty, and chat. And that’s essentially what happens. But since this film promises spectacle, and hence so much of the budget went into making it all look “magnificent,” barely any time is spent on meaningful dialogue, character development, etc. It’s just a bare bones outline of a story with lots of over-the-top fight sequences and action movie clichés.

Further deviating from what constitutes a good B movie, Gods of Egypt (along with all the other generic CGI action films that my diatribe is targeting) lacks the risqué elements that tend to pop up when a production team is allowed to do what they want because they’re making a film for cheap. It’s very tame, and with so many other crucial elements missing, it becomes tasteless and bland. The most controversial thing about the film was its casting of a nearly all-white cast in roles that should have been given to those of Egyptian descent, according to critics. I tend to not care, and agree with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau when he defended himself by saying, “I’m not even playing an Egyptian; I’m an 8 foot tall god who turns into a falcon.” The film is completely fictitious, including a flat earth and a sun god. Proyas offered a longer apology that I also kind of agree with, basically saying that the audience votes who they want in future movies by paying whose movies to go see; it is not his fault that the budget requirements for Gods of Egypt meant he had to have certain actors that had box office draw. Some accepted his apology, some didn’t. But he never apologized for making a terrible film, which to me is a larger crime than not casting Egyptian actors in a terrible film.

Proyas usually has a decent initial vision for his films, even if he doesn’t always pull everything together, and that is the case here as well. Egyptian mythology, airborne chariots drawn by winged beetles, vaults of treasure, demon-repelling bracelets, glowing eyes, gold blood. He certainly had a vision here but it just doesn’t pan out. As the groundwork is laid via narration and we’re introduced to a few main characters, there’s a gently comedic tone that seems like it could possibly carry us through what will undoubtedly be a ridiculously cheesy action movie. But this is soon thrown by the wayside in favor of a straight faced take on this amateur material. This is a shame because there’s actually a fairly talented cast here—Gerard Butler, Coster-Waldau, Chadwick Boseman, Rufus Sewell, etc. But everything goes to waste because the film is dominated by dizzying fight scenes that are not engaging at all.

I’m already pretty cynical about the tentpole movies that films like Gods of Egypt are trying to imitate, but I can usually swallow back my bile and enjoy them for what they are. But stuff like this is just too putrid to stomach. If you’re going to try to fool me into liking something that has no passion or heart, at least go all the way and actually fool me. Don’t do a halfway job or you’ll end up making something like this. What should have been a fun romp of swords, sandals, and sorcery is instead a joyless mess.

Sources:
1. Sturm, Rüdiger. “This Game Of Thrones star is at home on two wheels”. The Red Bulletin. 12 April 2016.