Going to the movies
IN MY OPINION
Klaus Doring
Film Review: Gods of Egypt
This week, for the first time ever, my wife took me to a cinema in Davao City. Gods of Egypt in a 3D screening. It was my first experience with 3D seating, and was pretty fun. I hadn’t heard of Gods of Egypt, despite it having such a large budget and star crew, so I went in without expec-tation. It was so close to being so bad I loved it. Close, but no cigar.
Gods of Egypt is set in, controversially, not Egypt. In the very beautiful establishing shot at the beginning, you see this fantastical city with impressive buildings, which have been loosely based on what can be considered Egyptian designs. This confused me, but as the film goes on, I realized that it wasn’t even earth, and I kind of wish I had known that from the start. A very minor thing, but it bugged me the entire way through the movie.
Now I really want to point out how much I wanted to enjoy this film. I loved Egyptian mythology as a child, I love fantasy as an adult. ‘Gods of Egypt’ had the concept and budget to be able to pull off something really amazing. It had elements of things I love seeing on screen. Gods transforming into beasts, rich scenery and with a diverse variety of settings – mythology. Yet despite having all the ingredients, the final dish was disappointing.
The plot is very simple. King is killed by evil brother, who takes over kingdom. Prince must go on a journey to defeat the evil new king and take his place as rightful ruler. Helped along by a mismatched sidekick. With such a classic plot line and colorful costume arrangement, I really would have expected the film to be marketed towards a family audience.
The film instead takes itself seriously to be an epic adventure, and the actors deliver the shoddy script with as much vigor as they can. Some scripts however will sound wooden no matter how much effort one puts into delivering it. The few jokes and banter that is written between the main characters Horas (Nikolaj Coster-Walda) and Bek (Brenton Thwaites) fall flat as I can only assume there is no chemistry between the two characters. That and their size difference, made by cgi, is a bit disconcerting.
Overall, I don’t really want to write much about this film. I felt like it had everything it needed to be something I really enjoyed, as a fan of Hollywood blockbuster films and Egyptian mythology. I’m still sort of dealing with the disappointment it left me in. I feel like you should see it in the cinema, simply to enjoy the beautiful scenery work, which won’t come across as well on TV.
The 3D experience was really interesting, possibly more so than the film. Going to the movies. Maybe once more. It’s something different than being a cable television subscriber. And, of course, it depends, which movie I am going to watch next time.
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