Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Directed by Ridley Scott
The defiant leader Moses rises up against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, setting 400,000 slaves on a monumental journey of escape from Egypt and its terrifying cycle of deadly plagues.
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39 films that influenced Exodus: Gods and Kings
What critics say influenced Exodus: Gods and Kings
The popularisation of epics in the vein of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and William Wyler’s Ben Hur is also political.
Scant, that is, when compared to Cecil B. DeMille, who needed a good 220 minutes back in 1956 in “The Ten Commandments.”
Ridley Scott’s grand and goofy take on Cecil B. DeMille’s holiday chestnut, The Ten Commandments, is a scant two-and-a-half hours compared to Paramount Pictures’ 1954 three-hour-plus marathon, and while Exodus is not quite as much fun (the reflective properties of Yul Brynner’s pate are sorely missed), it is very much in the tradition of Fifties and Sixties-era Biblical epics – and much more entertaining than Darren Aronofsky’s recent Noah.
Scott, a filmmaker who can often paint stunning visions on a wide canvas and still delve around the narrow, detailed corners of a story, gets lost in a production that’s every bit as grand and massive as either of Cecil B. DeMille’s versions of The Ten Commandments .
Unlike Cecil B DeMille's classic “The Ten Commandments” (1956) or the animated “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), it’s not funny or campy enough to be purely entertaining.
In the almost 60 years since Cecil B. DeMille made “The Ten Commandments,” movies have gotten very good at creating seas of blood, frog infestations and plagues of locusts.
It's one thing to compare it to the bloated DeMille picture, but this isn't even as smart or comprehensive in its storytelling choices as DreamWorks Animation's 99-minute cartoon musical The Prince of Egypt (which remains, against all odds, the most satisfying cinematic treatment of the story to date).
In this humble reviewer’s opinion, the beautiful, criminally underrated animated film The Prince of Egypt , from 1998, is the only Exodus movie we need.
Borrowing much of its dynamic from 1998’s The Prince of Egypt , also dealing heavily with the kinship between Moses and Ramses, Exodus hones in on the dichotomy and tension inherent in Moses’ predicament; he’s a regarded member of a great dynasty, but his heritage lies with the people whose backs are being broken to build that dynasty.
Unlike Cecil B DeMille's classic “The Ten Commandments” (1956) or the animated “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), it’s not funny or campy enough to be purely entertaining.
I mean, even “The Prince of Egypt,” the 1998 animated musical take on the material that nobody seems to appreciate or even remember, told the story better.
"Exodus: Gods and Kings" has a flurry of undeniable technical merits and two fine central turns from Bale and Edgerton, but how successful can a sprawling live-action spectacle really be when it predominately makes one wish he or she was revisiting 1998's superior animated film, " The Prince of Egypt ," instead?
Bale's Moses, despite the miscasting, is a conflicted, sometimes compelling figure, but the rest of the actors recall John Wayne's cameo as a Roman soldier in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" more than they do Willem Dafoe in "The Last Temptation of Christ."
Moses (Christian Bale) and Ramses (Joel Edgerton) are equals in many ways and revered both within the walls of Memphis and on the battlefield where they prove themselves as generals for the Egyptian Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro, barely skirting Harvey Keitel/The Last Temptation of Christ territory).
Bale's Moses, despite the miscasting, is a conflicted, sometimes compelling figure, but the rest of the actors recall John Wayne's cameo as a Roman soldier in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" more than they do Willem Dafoe in "The Last Temptation of Christ."
Such movies were big, in every way, in the '50s and '60s, when pictures like Ben-Hur , Quo Vadis , King Of Kings , The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told regularly ran between two-and-a-half and four hours, their vast desertscapes rendered in widescreen, CinemaScope and VistaVision to tempt viewers away from their 4:3 TV screens.
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Audience members who have been around for a while can’t help but compare the Christian films made by Cecil B. DeMille – The Ten Commandants949), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The King of Kings (1927); Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951) and Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953); all far more authentic Bible stories.
Audience members who have been around for a while can’t help but compare the Christian films made by Cecil B. DeMille – The Ten Commandants949), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The King of Kings (1927); Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951) and Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953); all far more authentic Bible stories.
Audience members who have been around for a while can’t help but compare the Christian films made by Cecil B. DeMille – The Ten Commandants949), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The King of Kings (1927); Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951) and Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953); all far more authentic Bible stories.
Audience members who have been around for a while can’t help but compare the Christian films made by Cecil B. DeMille – The Ten Commandants949), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The King of Kings (1927); Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951) and Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953); all far more authentic Bible stories.
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Audience members who have been around for a while can’t help but compare the Christian films made by Cecil B. DeMille – The Ten Commandants949), Samson and Delilah (1949), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The King of Kings (1927); Henry King’s David and Bathsheba (1951) and Henry Koster’s The Robe (1953); all far more authentic Bible stories.
The opening battle scene is standard fare for Scott, but then so are the slower segments that follow, mirroring in many ways the first half of Gladiator .
“Exodus” is not unlike the interminable slogs through “Robin Hood,” “Kingdom of Heaven” and even the freakishly overrated Oscar-winner “Gladiator.”
But alas, the acclaimed English director of similar post-2000 epics Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven decided to revisit the Book of Exodus with a film that’s spiritually confused and altogether void of any tangible characters.
Given the relative financial and critical disappointment of Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood—unjustified in the case of the former, very justified in the case of the latter—it makes sense that Scott would return to Gladiator, the first and most successful of this series, for inspiration.
It’s an economic reality that Scott — whose best films remain “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” — couldn’t cast unknown but ethnically appropriate actors in a multimillion-dollar wannabe epic, but there could still have been inspiration, like maybe Adrien Brody or Ben Foster as Moses.
Crafting scenes of real emotion has never really been Scott’s strength, and you’d have to go back to his early ’00s filmography (Gladiator, Matchstick Men) to find movies where he managed the feat.