"Gods of Egypt": Serial Structure Cannot Save It

Now In Theaters

After the financial success of the remake of Clash of the Titans and its sequel, it only seems natural that another studio would step up and try to cash in on some CGI mythological action.  Lionsgate has now taken its shot with Gods of Egypt, and the results aren’t exactly the cream of the crop.  This is going to be a film that will be ripped apart by popular criticism, not the least of all for Lionsgate’s choice to cast primarily Caucasian actors to play the roles of Egyptian characters.  That criticism is valid and should definitely be a part of the popular discourse, but I think it worthwhile to point out some things that the film does well, even if it isn’t worth the price of admission.

Set in a mythological version of Egypt, Bek is a mortal young man who spends his days as a petty thief.  As he and his lover, Zaya, attend a ceremony at the palace of the gods, benevolent King Osiris is murdered by his brother Set and Prince Horus is left blinded and cast into exile.  Set takes over the land, subjecting mortals to slave labor and ruling that admittance to the afterlife is dependent on personal wealth.  After Bek steals one of Horus’s eyes, Zaya is killed in the escape and Bek goes to Horus for help.  In return for bringing Zaya back to life, Bek will assist Horus in retrieving his remaining eye and his rightful place as king.  Basically, this is Hamlet meets Perseus, with Horus and Bek filling out the character arcs of those characters respectively.

The film at first feels very disjointed, with minimal effort given to establishing characters and letting the world speak for itself without much by way of exposition.  It remains coherent, but any piece of dialogue feels as if it is a contrivance to bring us to the next CGI action setpiece.  What turned the film around for me was when I realized that this was a conscious choice, that the filmmakers had explicitly crafted the film in this way so as to be a walking tour of Egyptian mythos in a variety of locales.  It’s reminiscent of old adventure serials in that way, right down to the redundant expository dialogue in later portions of the film that seem crafted to remind us of character motivations after a period of time away.  In other words, this film has built in commercial breaks and would work perfectly as a bit of cable programming.

But what’s going to rub a lot of people the wrong way about this construction is that it doesn’t lend itself well to continuous viewing from start to finish.  I found myself waiting for the film to just get on with it during the second act, as each action setpiece became more and more tedious as I waited for the climax to finally come.  The setpieces themselves are serviceable and entertaining in the moment, but they are pretty forgettable for the most part and definitely aren’t worth the price of admission, even in its touted 3D format.  And while the screenplay does do its job in telling a compelling if pulpy story, don’t expect the performances to similarly engage you.

Were it not for the film’s explicit whitewashing, it would likely be quickly forgotten or even potentially ignored upon release.  It definitely isn’t worth seeing in theaters and isn’t even worth the cost of a rental.  However, if you see this pop up on Netflix or on cable in a couple years, there are worse ways to kill two hours, especially if you only want to pay partial attention or need to watch in spurts.  Its adventure serial inspiration is novel enough if you know to look for it, but beyond that, Gods of Egypt best serves as an egregious example of Hollywood casting inequality.

"Triple 9": Great Cast, Awful Script

In Theaters on February 25, 2016

In a time when sequels and reboots dominate the cinematic stage, it’s always exciting when a new intellectual property takes its time in the spotlight, particularly if it seems to be backed by an immense amount of talent.  Triple 9 started out as a spec script, screenwriter Matt Cook’s dream of making it in his chosen profession, and the fact that the film finally got made would normally be a testament to at least some innate quality in the work presented.  Unfortunately, that very script, the piece of the puzzle that caused all others to shift into place, is so fundamentally flawed and riddled with cliché that it drags the entire production down with it.

The premise actually seemed to carry some promise, with four bank robbers, two of whom are corrupt cops, being blackmailed by the Russian mafia into performing a seemingly impossible heist.  In order to buy themselves time, the crooks contrive to set-up a triple-nine police scenario, an officer shot far enough away from the scene of the heist that the police would be too distracted to provide any real resistance to the group’s escape.  The bait?  A corrupt cop’s new rookie partner.

Despite an actually engaging opening heist sequence, the film's first big mistake is to make little to no effort in establishing its characters beyond the most basic of archetypes, if it can even be said to have bothered with that minimal step.  A fantastic cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, and Kate Winslet, turns in some adequate performances, but are ultimately held back by dull dialogue that doesn’t give any of their characters room to breathe or interact in ways that aren’t plot critical.  I couldn’t tell you any character’s name or relation to the other characters beyond the vaguest of memories I have from a few throwaway lines that only barely establish who our protagonists even are.

The other thing working against this story is that it is hopelessly and needlessly complicated by subplots that grind the second act to a halt.  These include an extended shootout between the police and a minor drug-runner who doesn’t relate to the main Russian mob plot in the slightest, a member of the heist gang cracking under pressure, a quirky detective trying to make sense of seemingly unrelated events (Woody Harrelson doing his best to be this film’s Willem Dafoe surrogate), and a relationship of one heister with his young son.  There are too many pieces moving at any given time, and most of it is unnecessary given that these subplots mainly serve to either eliminate superfluous characters or set-up the climax in overcomplicated ways.  It got so bad that I didn’t even realize the third act had started until already neck deep in it, which says something of how little care was put into guiding the audience through the labyrinthine passages of the narrative.

This doesn’t even address the fact that every single person of color in the film is either a criminal or inept, including the police officers, and the two heroes of the story are white men coded to the audience as good guys by literally wearing an American flag and a crucifix.  I was hoping that a contemporary film dealing with police corruption would not be quite so tone deaf, but perhaps that was one hope too many.  Even absent that glaring textual blemish, Triple 9 is an absolute mess of underdeveloped characters and overcomplicated nonsense.  Don’t bother with Triple 9.  It's a shambling corpse whose screenplay should have been announced dead on arrival.

"Z For Zachariah": The Wasted Potential of Adaptation

Now Available on DVD and Blu-ray

When making an adaptation, making changes to the source material does not have to be a cataclysmic affair.  Take, for instance, Jurassic Park, a film that wildly veers away from the original novel in regards to tone, characters, and even major plot points, yet the film has ended up as more beloved than the book ever was.  However, sometimes a singular change can completely destroy the intent of the original work, which not only can make the adaptation unfaithful, but also thematically muddled and thereby inferior.  This is what seems to have happened in Z for Zachariah.

Though I have not read the novel of the same name, the parts of Z for Zachariah the film does a good job with are apparently those lifted straight from the page.  Set in a post-apocalypse wherein seemingly nobody has survived (presumably after a nuclear war), Ann (Margot Robbie) is living alone on her family farm, trying to eke out a living by hunting local game and tilling her fields.  While out hunting, she comes across a man, John (Chiwetel Ejiofor), bathing in a pool that she knows to be radioactive.  She offers him shelter and nurses him back to health.  Ann’s farm is seemingly protected from radiation due to a geographic anomaly, so she lets John stay and the two try to build a life together.

What’s remarkable about this scenario is that it plays out pretty much how one would think a scenario where two straight people of the opposite sex remain as the last living beings on Earth.  They are ideologically opposed on a number of things: Ann is a religious and sentimental farm girl who only wants to remain comfortable with what she has, yet John is a scientist who wants to focus his efforts on rebuilding society, even given the meager resources at his disposal and what that might cost Ann.  But the two are still drawn to each other in compulsively sexual ways, feeding into a biological need that is simultaneously romantic as it is creepy.  It is an oddly compelling way to watch two people interact, particularly when one takes into consideration how vulnerable Ann is around John and how he could very easily exploit that, yet never crosses that tempting line.

But the film completely destroys that tension by adding a third character not found in the novel, Caleb (Chris Pine).  Never mind the fact that Chris Pine is a poor excuse of an actor who is only remotely enjoyable when he’s imitating William Shatner, but this completely subverts the entire point of the story.  Instead of exploring the ramifications of two strangers trying to build a life together, the film decides to contrive a love triangle that transforms its unique premise into a mundane soap opera.  The character of Caleb is more ideologically similar to Ann, yet Ann sees more hope for her survival in John, and I was just waiting for one of them to turn out to be a werewolf or a vampire so that the Twilight parallels could be more blatant.

This film fails purely because of its wasted potential.  It had a good thing going with its two-person cast, painting a dark and disturbing romance between uneasy strangers that works just fine as originally written.  However, with the inclusion of an unnecessary third character whose actor couldn’t even bring anything to the role that the screenplay didn’t, the tension quickly unravels and the entire film’s thesis becomes buried in trite romantic clichés.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have what I’ve heard is a vastly superior novel to read.