Gods of Egypt (2016)
Directed by Alex Proyas
A common thief joins a mythical god on a quest through Egypt.
46 connections found
View:
46 films that influenced Gods of Egypt
What critics say influenced Gods of Egypt
The same kind of speeches Butler gave the Spartans in “300” that were so inspiring come across in “Gods of Egypt” with so little enthusiasm its as if he’s trying to rally the troops into an afternoon nap.
Gerard Butler regurgitates King Leonidas from 300 and spends most of his screen time stomping around, waving his weapon, preening, and yelling.
He did Knowing , a much-derided Nic Cage vehicle with, it must be said, the courage of its loony convictions, and now here is Gods of Egypt , many years late to the post- 300 ripoff boom.
It’s a mix of “300,” “Clash of the Titans” and “Prince of Persia,” all rendered to look like a video game.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau trades in his missing hand as Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones for an eye patch and Gerard Butler is back in 300 beast mode as a very naughty god who pouts over not being the Chosen One, but neither can save this CG mess.
Mientras que Nikolaj Coster-Waldau y la bella Elodie Young parecen pasárselo genial en la piel del orgulloso Horus y Hathor, la seductora (y traviesa) diosa del amor, respectivamente, y Gerard Butler pasa de marcar abdominales como el heroico Leónidas de Esparta de 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006) a convertirse, con cierto desparpajo, en el malvado de la función; menos inspirado se muestra el joven Brenton Thwaites como un héroe terrenal de manual, casi un sosias del Matthew Broderick de Lady Halcón (Richard Donner, 1985), sobre el que se sostiene la mayor parte del protagonismo de la cinta.
Years ago, a staple of weekend matinees were movies based on Greek mythology, whether it was badly-dubbed Italian films about Hercules, or cheesy epics with great stop-motion special effects by Ray Harryhausen, like “Jason and the Argonauts.”
And he has to, because the pair’s script is rather laughable, a melodramatic hodgepodge of ideas liberally borrowing from influences as varied The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars , Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Cleopatra and any number of Ray Harryhausen event spectacles ranging from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad , to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts , to 1981’s Clash of the Titans .
Experiencing the shot-in-Sydney Gods Of Egypt is a bit like watching Jason And The Argonauts (1963) or Clash Of The Titans (the 1981 original, not the remake), in that the action unfolds with a twinkle in its eye, and you’re either on board or you’re not.
That’s only appropriate for a movie that will make its most lasting impression on children, just as Clash of the Titans , Jason and the Argonauts and The Thief of Bagdad once did on me.
It wants to play with surreal Egyptian imagery but is so 2016 that it mistakes human gods with animal heads for organic derivatives of Michael Bay's Transformers .
God of Egypt wants to be a swords-and-sandals epic that can upshift into a Transformers movie when it needs to, but the movie is so roughshod and anemic that it barely wrestles up the energy to be either.
I will, however, compare the film to a franchise in the same medium, Michael Bay's "Transformers," which is pretty much as far from fun as I've ever experienced at the multiplex.
I compare this to Transformers because it really looks like someone thought, “You know what Exodus needed?
Or take something more recent like the first “Transformers” film.
And he has to, because the pair’s script is rather laughable, a melodramatic hodgepodge of ideas liberally borrowing from influences as varied The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars , Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Cleopatra and any number of Ray Harryhausen event spectacles ranging from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad , to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts , to 1981’s Clash of the Titans .
Where's Flash Gordon 's Brian Blessed when you really need him?
It belongs in an era where the cheesiness of Flash Gordon (1980) and Masters of the Universe (1987) miraculously garnered a cult following.
Advertisement
Silly but somehow touchingly sincere, this defiant throwback mixes up old 1940s Saturday-afternoon serials, Indiana Jones flicks, Disney cartoons and Ray Harryhausen adventures such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad .
And he has to, because the pair’s script is rather laughable, a melodramatic hodgepodge of ideas liberally borrowing from influences as varied The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars , Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Cleopatra and any number of Ray Harryhausen event spectacles ranging from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad , to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts , to 1981’s Clash of the Titans .
And he has to, because the pair’s script is rather laughable, a melodramatic hodgepodge of ideas liberally borrowing from influences as varied The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars , Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Cleopatra and any number of Ray Harryhausen event spectacles ranging from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad , to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts , to 1981’s Clash of the Titans .
Experiencing the shot-in-Sydney Gods Of Egypt is a bit like watching Jason And The Argonauts (1963) or Clash Of The Titans (the 1981 original, not the remake), in that the action unfolds with a twinkle in its eye, and you’re either on board or you’re not.
There is a harum-scarum raid on a booby-trapped vault right out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, an encounter with the riddling Sphinx and a desert showdown with a pair of warlike goddesses riding giant fire-breathing serpents.
We get some elaborate pyramid-raiding, with too-busy death traps that suggest the filmmakers haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark but have played Lego Indiana Jones.
And he has to, because the pair’s script is rather laughable, a melodramatic hodgepodge of ideas liberally borrowing from influences as varied The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars , Flash Gordon , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Cleopatra and any number of Ray Harryhausen event spectacles ranging from 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad , to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts , to 1981’s Clash of the Titans .
Luckily a mortal boy named Bek (Brenton Thwaites), an expert burglar, manages to rescue one of the magical sparkling eyes from its place amid a deadly series of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”-style traps.
Opulent, gold-plated visuals, B-level actors, 300 ripoff… you’d be forgiven for confusing Gods of Egypt with Immortals (if you remember it), and for confusing Proyas, the poor bastard, with Tarsem Singh, who also has a distinctive music-video sensibility that hasn’t always been served by his Hollywood career—but has made more of a go at it in recent years than Proyas.
As a friend said, the movie, if it were going to have those elements, should have been a hard R so they could have focused on the really dark stuff in mythology, which made me remember the noble failure that was Immortals from Tarsem Singh.
En este aspecto, Dioses de Egipto hace bien no tomándose a sí misma demasiado en serio, incluyendo unas buenas dosis de sentido del humor que hacen que el filme sea más divertido que otro fiasco reciente de similares características como fue Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011).
Thanks to the success of films like 300 and Clash of the Titans, every studio has been scrambling to latch onto their coattails with their own action-filled fantasy epics, which has ultimately led to diminishing returns for the weaker sequels to those films and obvious rip-offs like Immortals.
What’s more, there’s a method to the director’s madness here – the slow-mo shots and whirling camera-play he employs to capture destructive brawls between the gods (who sometimes enter a kind of beast mode, transforming into super-sized mech creatures of combat that resemble an unholy cross between one of Immortals ‘ gold-fetishizing warriors and a super pissed-off Transformer) make those sequences an absolute blast to behold.
At its best, the visual milieu is fondly reminiscent of Tarsem Singh’s Immortals, his immensely flawed but visually stunning ode to mythology.
Advertisement
As I thought further back however, imagery of warring god-kings and a giant worm plowing through the desert sands also reminded me of David Lynch's Dune.
Like with Ridley Scott's equally melanin-free "Exodus: Gods and Kings", an epic disaster by any measure, "Gods of Egypt" eventually becomes so laughably terrible that you forget about the lack of diversity.
Didn’t we see from the failed “Exodus: Gods and Kings” that whitewashing Egyptian history doesn’t work?
It has the potential to be as lifeless as Ridley Scott’s overblown slog “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” but it at least has a sense of humor about itself.
As if the mostly white-washed cast wasn’t shameful enough (did no one learn anything from the whole “Exodus: Gods and Kings” debacle?), Butler is covered in so much bronzer that he’s practically in brownface, and he can’t even be bothered to conceal his Scottish accent.
Pretending the Middle East was solely populated by white faces is a problem, especially in quasi-historical epics like last year's Exodus: Gods and Kings , which cast Christian Bale as Egyptian-born Moses and slathered him in self-tanner.
“Gods of Egypt” takes all the worst parts of films like “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” “Prince of Persia,” the 2010 version of “Clash of the Titans,” “300,” and the visual aspect of “Immortals” and shoddily slaps them together in the most haphazard way imaginable, which results in everything crumbling under its own weight long before giant fire-breathing snakes enter the picture.