Minor thing. But the fact that Tzipporah's youngest sister constantly has a scarf covering half of her face has always struck me as an odd choice of character design. And I remember thinking this when I watched the film at my tender, single-digit age. Why does she wear a headscarf when no one else does? Is it like how little kids can get fanatically attached to a particular piece of clothing? Is her face horribly injured? It's also odd because in the West we're always taught to think that a woman's headscarf is a sign of oppression (which I do not buy into). It's just... weird.
Judging by the fact that she lives next to a desert, its probably a good way of stopping dust entering the lungs. Maybe she is the only one who has asthma?
As the scarf moves, we can see the rest of her face in a couple shots. She looks fine.
Other people don't always buy into any of that oppressive symbolism either, especially when the men are wearing scarves too. Also, you may recall there had recently been a sandstorm. The only real question is why we don't see the other characters wearing them more often.
It may also just be their way of portraying her as a shy girl, kind of like the way Violet always had her hair draped over her face in The Incredibles until she got more confident and learned to stick up for herself.
Plus, didn't she have her scarf completely down at one point? In the scene where Moses first meets the leader of their tribe, he reaches out for a food, and someone hisses at him, saying, "Not yet!" and her scarf was lowered. Was this her?
No, that was a different girl.
Regarding the Pharaoh's Genocide Backfire: if Aaron is Moses' brother, wouldn't that mean that he would be the one targeted by the Egyptian soldiers? I mean, HE'S the firstborn, not Moses.
You're getting it mixed up. The tenth plague was the first-born because Ramses specifically targeted the Jews' first-born. Ramses and Moses' father's genocide was to kill all the male infants who had recently been born, so presumably Aaron was older than that genocide began.
And he was. Aaron is shown during those events as just past a toddler.
I'd put Aaron as four or five just based on looks.
This raises an interesting question about the tenth plague: if it targets the first-born, regardless of age, why did Ramses himself survive?
Because Ramses's father was dead, making him the head of the family.
It's not clear as to whether the tenth plague targeted adults. In The Ten Commandments it did, in this movie only children are seen as the victims.
There were adult victims. When the Angel of Death enters the palace, the guards flee and it moves in the direction of one of them.
Would first-born also only apply to families with more than one child? Because to be the first born implies there are other children that were born after you or otherwise you're an only child. And while Ramses did consider Moses his brother, technically he was the only child born of Seti and his queen.
Not necessarily. Catholic tradition holds that when the Gospel of Luke refers to Jesus as Mary's "first-born" son, it doesn't imply that she had other sons, but that Jesus was entitled to all of the rights, inheritance, and privileges of a first-born son — which was a bit of a big deal in ancient Judaism, just ask Jacob and Esau.
Empathy, to feel a PARENTS pain the Egyptian's got what the Jews got and if you think about it the Egyptian's with young children then would have been the same age as the children killed before. Harsh laser guided karma via sins of our fathers.
Why do so few of the Jews have their heads covered? And why does Tzipporah dress...like that?
Tzipporah seems to be from a different country, maybe for her its cultural differences.
Yep, she's from Midean (which is where Moses wanders to after leaving Egypt).
And considering the Hebrews (as the people are from the 12 Tribes, which includes Judah), most of the rules don't get put into place until after the Exodus.
How was Baby Moses not injured or at the very least crying after his little journey down the Nile? Let's recap what happened: He's nearly nommed on by crocs and hippos, he's battered by oars of fishermen quite violently, he's hoisted up in a net before plunging back into the Nile to complete the journey. When he's taken out of the basket, he's very cheerful, having seemingly forgotten what had just happened.
God and, of course- a script-writer? Chances are the real Moses didn't have such a rough ride, but there's nothing like a bit of Mood Whiplash to help set the tone for the rest of the film, in which we get to see all of Egypt's grandiose architecture and terrible cruelty side by side.
This troper has heard claims that an infant under sufficient stress will go into a kind of shock and not make any noise at all. Just a potential explanation.
He fell asleep just before he was shipped away. Maybe he was too tired to notice.
Why did Seti accuse his son, Ramses of nearly bringing down a dynasty just because he accidentally demolished a statue? Seems kinda harsh. What is he, a drama queen? "You dumped wine all over the floor!? YOU ARE BRINGING DOWN MY DYNASTY!!"
Because he thinks it's a portent of things to come. He sees Ramses as someone who prefers fast chariots, pranks and a life of luxury than actually running a country.
@ OP- Remember, Ramses just ruined a statue/temple that likely took a good few decades to build, so he just added another few decades just to get it back to how it was in the first place. Seti's afraid that Ramses' seeming recklessness and apparent apathy toward the station he'll have to bear later will spell Egypt's doom.
In mythology, damaging a god's statue is generally considered Serious Business - and gods generally aren't subtle in showing their displeasure.
How did Moses change his physical appearance dramatically between his Egyptian attire and his own calling?
I think that was more "wear and tear". As a prince, he lived well and didn't have to work. After he left Egypt and lived with Tziporra, he worked and was exposed to the sun and the wind and the elements more.
Pretty much. As a prince, they probably didn't encourage him to go outside as the hot sun would damage his 'prince-ly' skin. With Tziporra's people, he had to work out in the fields with them, and his job, clearly, was to herd sheep. Though the movie doesn't show it, I imagine he was a little more rugged in appearance.
His hair and beard also grow out, which massively changes his appearance because he no longer fits Egyptian fashion standards.
Also, in The Bible, Moses was eighty when he went back to Egypt. If anything, he should have looked even more wizened.
What were the high priests trying to prove by turning a bowl of water into blood? (even though they faked it) It's not like they reversed the blood in the river back into water, all they did was a small scale version of what Moses did, they didn't beat him or stop him so why does the pharoah act like they trumped him rather than just made his last scrap of water undrinkable?
It was to prove that Moses wasn't acting with God's power, but was just using ordinary magic/tricks they too could replicate. Their line of reasoning was that if they could copy them then Moses had no real divine power.
But they claim they were showing the superior might of their god over Moses god, and they still havent really done that, turing the river back into water would have but now they have no water, and turning the last bit of water into blood if anything made things worse for them.
Then by it they show that their gods are just as powerful, since he allows them to do the same tricks. Gradually that shows itself to not be true, as Moses' snake eats theirs, and they eventually find themselves unable to replicate the later plagues. There's an interesting theory out there connecting each plague to a specific Egyptian god, arguing that Yahweh was trying to strike directly at their religion to show his power was greater. With that in mind, the magicians were trying to show that their gods could do the same as Moses' and thus they didn't have to fear this Hebrew God, which quickly proved untrue.
The explanation does help clear things up a bit, but I'm still confused on one thing: Just how gullible would Ramses have to be? Moses simply puts his staff into the water, and bam, Nile turns into blood. Priests dumped red powder into a bowl of water. How does that show that they're copying Moses? If anything else, they, too, should've just stuck a little stick into the water. Sorry, but I think they were cheating there. For an (albeit weird) analogy: What Moses did was effectively put a golf ball in a hole that was yards and yards away. The priests simply took their ball, walked over, and dropped it into the hole and declared it a victory. Plus, the 'blood' on Ramses hand was clearly dirty water, not the blood observed by Ramses' son, Miriam, and the Egyptian soldiers.
It becomes clearer in the next scene where the plagues go into high gear that Ramses is in self-denial, so he'll take anything that looks like it matches Moses' miracle. He does the same thing earlier when he orders his magicians to copy Moses' snake miracle, and while Moses changed the staff into a snake out in public, the magicians did it with a bright flash of light that obviously let them trade the staffs for real snakes. And Ramses had no problem with it, he still thought he had won. Long story short, Ramses' not gullible, but he's deliberately trying to ignore the falseness of his magicians just so the score looks even to him.
In other words, Ramses isn't stupid, he's just in denial. Of course he knows the priests didn't do what Moses did, he's just willing to pretend they did because he wants to believe it. A little like the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter ignoring evidence of Voldemort's return, not because they were stupid, but because they wanted to be believe everything was fine.
Did the Queen not think that a random non-Egyptian-looking baby boy floating into her palace, on the day her husband orders all the newborn Hebrew boys to be killed, was suspicious? Or even the Pharaoh for that matter. I know God was meant to save Moses to be the Deliverer, but it seemed a bit far-fetched (to me) that they both just accepted Moses into their family without wondering about his origins.
In the original story, Pharaoh's daughter (exchanged with the queen in this film) knew perfectly well that Moses was a Hebrew boy. Maybe they were aware here too, but chose to chalk him off as an exception, figuring that one survivor couldn't hurt and raising him away from the Hebrews might do him some good.
Given the dangerous trip that Moses takes down the Nile and the fact that he floated up to the Queen's little dock/pier, she likely took it as a sign from the gods. They had sent them a Hebrew boy as their own, which was probably interpreted as a sign that the gods approved of the massacre and Moses was a symbol of the Egyptians having been giving the Hewbrews as their own.
