The Prince Of Egypt: The Villain Song by the two priests (Playing with the big boys now...) didn't seem that amazing to me, it was more calling on their gods and doing some sleight of hand than anything particularly impressive happening. It might have just been that it was hard to make coolness contrast, given the soundtrack. Then I realized: This is a Bible story. These are priests calling on their gods in the face of a prophet. Of course it feels fake.
The blinding light in the "Playing With the Big Boys" sequence was the magicians way of switching their staffs with snakes.
In "When You Believe", the phrase, "We were moving mountains long before we knew we could" is sung. What were the Hebrews doing at the beginning of the movie? Building the pyramids.
I'm not sure those were pyramids. I did see plenty of building construction, but no pyramids under construction. The Bible itself says they built, or refurbished (blame the Egyptian leaders for credit claiming) two cities.
Fridge Horror / Harsher in Hindsight: The movie ends with Moses walking down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments in his hands. Anyone who's familiar with the story of Moses (or just watched The Ten Commandments) will know that, by this time, the Israelites have been worshiping the Golden Calf...
Or it could be the second time he came down, after the Israelites had been chastised for what they had done and held a greater reverence for God.
By "chastised" you mean slaughtered. If they are sticking as much as possible to the original story, the cutoff ending has some Unfortunate Implications....
A lot of what came after that sequence (yes, it was probably the second time after all the blasphemous revelry and outright revolt had been put down with extreme prejudice) would have been rather depressing to portray as well. Things did end well for Israel on the whole, but only after all the first generation's constant complainers died out, leaving their children to claim their promised inheritance. Getting to that Esoteric Happy Ending would have required at least another feature-length movie, so one can hardly blame the writers for having pared things down to just that one last snapshot from the long journey ahead of them before rolling the credits.
Fridge Horror- That sequence of young Miriam watching her brother endure all that crap in the Nile, looking terrified as hell? At first glance, we may be used to it, because we've seen terrified characters before...but think about it. This is a terrified young girl who is watching helplessly as her infant brother narrowly miss getting nommed by crocs and hippos, being knocked around by oars, then raised up onto a net before dropping back into the Nile.
Bully Hunter or not, it was a Disproportionate Retribution, pure and simple. Even the Egyptian Gods would've just smote the man rather than punish his entire civilisation.
Funny you should say that. Just going by the Biblical account, the Israelites were enslaved for multiple generations even if you don't count any time before Moses was born (Moses left Egypt at age 40, returned at age 80 in the Bible). I'd say Egypt was asking for trouble at that point.
Not to mention that even in the original story, it's a deliberate mirroring of the crimes of the Egyptians regarding the Hebrew firstborn.
The dying gasps. It's a bit of a Freeze Frame Bonus, but when the Angel of Death passes, it sucks their soul out. The dying gasp refers to the Hebrew concept of the soul leaving with the breath. And it also provides a bit of a Pet the Dog moment for the Angel of Death, as the way it's killing the children is both gentle and painless.
Fridge Horror: In the beginning of "All I Ever Wanted" Moses accidentally knocks over an old Hebrew man on the streets as he's running away from his sister. The man cringes in fear, as though he's expecting to be beaten.
Fridge Brilliance: Rameses is against anything that will make him look like "the weak link in the chain" because he wants to live up to his father's hopes, but his inability to bend and change was his downfall. In short, the kingdom fell, not because he was weak, but because he was strong.
I'd say rather because he valued strength far too much. He had neither the wisdom nor the confidence in himself to realize the strength that lies in gentleness and mercy.
