To address the elephant in the room, casting exclusively
white people in a film about the Biblical exodus from Egypt is a particularly
stupid move in the 21st century.
Given the problematic history of Hollywood productions whitewashing
Biblical characters in order to preserve the unfounded belief that Christian
heroes were somehow whiter than the people of that time and place likely were,
it is exceedingly inappropriate to misrepresent the racial diversity inherent
in that setting. Hell, even casting
Christian Bale as Moses is a stretch, considering exactly how NOT Jewish he
looks. However, this film doesn’t need
racial politics to drag it down, because the film’s poor execution does that
well enough without any of the surrounding controversy.
Remember the plotline of The
Ten Commandments or The Prince of
Egypt? Well, lo and behold, we’re
going to adopt that exact same interpretation of Exodus here again, right down
to Moses and Pharaoh being adopted brothers, a detail that is ungrounded in the
source material but is somehow now mandatory for film adaptation. And the film seems to know this on some
level, because it devotes next to no effort in developing characters or
interesting dialogue. Clocking in at two
and a half hours, one would think that there would be some opportunity to know
who these characters are, other than the stock versions of Moses and Ramses and
various nameless supporting cast that we’ve seen so many times before. And yet, every actor’s performance is layered
in so much haughty stoicism that everyone simply seems bored with the material,
going through the motions so that we can justify the monumental Ten Plagues
set-pieces.
Director Ridley Scott’s later career has been marred by
emphasizing style over substance, crafting visually spectacular scenes with the
latest computer technology but letting the story and characters necessary to
make them impactful fall by the wayside.
Exodus: Gods and Kings feels
like the epitome of that sentiment, except now the visual spectacle doesn’t
even rise to the bar of memorability that something like Prometheus attains. The most
interesting thing Scott conjures for this film is an army of crocodiles to kill
people and make the Nile bloody, thereby creating a uniquely realized reason
for the waters to turn red. However,
that is where the creativity starts and stops.
Every other plague or miracle plays out pretty much exactly how you
would expect, making the whole experience dry and dull, not to mention
painfully drawn out.
Having just spent over two hours
watching this piece of crap, I honestly can’t think of much more to say about
it. It’s the Exodus story, but sucked
dry of any emotional weight that would make the story interesting, with only
computer generated rehashes of familiar scenes acting as the film’s raison d’etre. In short, this is a bad movie, and you should
most definitely skip it.
Have a favorite Exodus film?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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