Gods of Egypt

To be honest the original Stargate movie that began the series was...not that good, in my opinion. The series was so much better.

It certainly had interesting ideas, but overall it was a mediocre sci-fi film. Thankfully SG-1 used it's mythology to it's full pontential and created an amazing series.

Kurt Russell could out-act Richard Dean Anderson with one raise of his eyebrow. That said, you're mostly right. The series WAS slightly better than the film, with that sole caveat.

Stuckmann's review is in. Taken by surprise, he loved this movie for all its So Bad, It's Good glory.

I heard one review that described the movie as being like it was adapted from a Tabletop RPG campaign, in a bad way.

Which actually makes me more interested in seeing the movie than I would have been.

I'll still wait to catch it at a matinee or second-run theater, though.

Some good quotes from reviews:

So... I saw this movie. There was a meet up with the Rocket Jump crew and I brought along my trusty two-headed Triceratops for some signatures. Then we went to point and laugh. I add my own quote to the blurb pile. *ahem*

Think Transformers meets 300 meets Thor, starring Snake Plisken as Horus and his human buddy Discount-Aladdin. My thoughts:

The greenscreening is super obvious, as it's frequently clear the characters aren't being affected by the sandy winds and burning sun. There's also a part where Discount Aladdin/Bek apparently climbed an incredibly tall and steep mountain and doesn't look the least bit tired or strained. Also, landing on gold? Should hurt. A lot.

Just as much gratuitous PG-13 Fanservice as you'd expect. Shame, because the female characters like Zaya the dead girlfriend and Hathor the goddess of love are actually the more interesting over our "heroes". Courtney Eaton, already great in Mad Max: Fury Road, gives Zaya a Pollyanna spirit who never loses faith in Horus, even after poverty, death, and then a desolate journey to the afterlife. And Elodie Yung, who we'll see in Daredevil as Elektra, gets the best line of the movie, said when she chooses to give up her protection-from-underworld-demons bracelet so Zaya can use it to pay her way to the afterlife. "I'm the goddess of love. If I don't do this, I'm nothing."

Brenton Thwaites as Bek is insufferable in a overly-quippy-Disney-Channel-lead way. He never sounds truly amazed or scared or desperate, even when he dies just after making yet another quip. As for Jaime Lannister guy as Horus, he's too much of a jerk to root for during most of the movie.

Gerard Butler does his best trying to make Set a complex villain, even if his motive boils down to: "Graaah! Daddy never loved me!!" Also, his demands make no sense. So he wants people to pay riches to get to the afterlife, but he doesn't need riches because the gods literally bleed gold (which also looks pretty terrible SFX wise.)

Set outright kills Osiris and blinds Horus right at the coronation ceremony, and none of the other gods do anything to stop him. Even the slave girls in Mad Max actually helped Furiosa in battle multiple times. Actual gods? Nothing.

The movie is more ethnically diverse than I expected, but mostly just the background extras. It's still jarring to see the very white Geoffrey Rush as Ra. He's still entertaining because he's Geoffrey Rush, but really? Ra also seems like a jerk because he apparently banished Set and doted on Osiris for some Secret Test of Character stuff that isn't well explained. Should've cast Morgan Freeman and then he could've been double-God.

The only worthwhile CG setpieces are Ra flying a starship boat pulling the Sun over a flat Earth while laser-blasting a giant shadow alien worm, Hathor using her seduction powers to make a giant firebreathing snake fall for her and immolate itself, and Chadwick Boseman as an army of Thoths in his personal library. The gods themselves turning into Transformers-esque metal animals are eh.

Speaking of which, Boseman as Thoth is the only African castmember, and the most entertaining. Think super-intelligent Mr. Jarvis army. Too bad he didn't go animal form too. Could've been a steampunk ibis.

The whole movie is an Idiot Plot because 1. Horus's deal is that he had the source of his power, his eyes, ripped out by Set. He gets one back but can't turn into deity form without the other one and challenge Set again. Except he does in the climax for BS reasons. 2. Bek first gets from the capital to Horus's prison in a horse chariot. They then walk to the capital even though they have a time limit, and the horses are all forgotten.

My final score: Just watch Thor again, or wait for Youtube clip rips.

edited 28th Feb '16 8:54:28 AM by Tuckerscreator

So I take it that this is 2016's Jupiter Ascending?

The acting was par. The effect were decent, though they could have been better - the visuals were great idea-wise. And I started rooting for Set after the reveal that Ra deliberately made him sterile so he wouldn't miss his children, since he was groomed to take over the endless fight against an eldritch abomination. Meanwhile, Osiris got to have a family and a kingdom, because his own "test" was to give up the throne... which he was regarded as having passed in advance. Basically, the story made the parenting skills of actual ancient gods look flawless.

Comparisons to Thor are apt, though Loki got a better deal there. For that matter, what is it with making villains out of the unfavorite children in fantasy fiction? For coming from a country literally built around the idea, Hollywood films are strangely resentful of rebellious lower nobles with genuine grievances regarding current management.

Because all the evil in the world stems from DADDY ISSUES™! If only every family had a strong father figure in his rightful place, think how many calamities could have been averted!

Ever notice how daddy issues are considered faults of the children in fiction? See, it's Set's own fault that he was deliberately set up for a life of bitter loneliness, all for the noble cause of... a continued life of bitter loneliness, because the gods of Egypt have yet to invent the tour of duty system of border defense. I guess one can try and point out some Satanic parallels, given how the god Set is one of the mythical progenitors of Lucifer... except that Lucifer is considered to be the favored creation, grown too proud to regard the puny humans as anything but garbage. With Set, it's just about the opposite, and he's actually more appreciative of the token human hero's abilities, if not quite his loyalties.

All in all, if you want appropriate imagery for a King Leonidas fighting Jaime Lannister fanfic, that's the film you should see wait for Youtube videos to appear of.

Well, there are many, many stories where the hero is the one with the Daddy Issues, and is usually treated sympathetically for it. It usually leads to some kind of reconciliation with the estranged/distant father figure, or with the hero bonding with a substitute father who fills the void left by the biological father. I suspect that because Most Writers Are Male, there's this unconscious desire to depict a healthy father/child relationship as essential to a child growing up to be a functional, well-adjusted adult, and that if it isn't present the character will inevitably carry a chip on their shoulder until it is fixed.

The reviewer I watched said the main lead is unforgivably obnoxious. I could tell that was gonna be the case from the first trailers. As soon as they got to the "You should try running! Us mortals do it all the time! :D" line, I was mentally going "This kid is gonna be really goddamn annoying."

I would've been completely fine with that kid actually dying and no BS resurrection. Ra can bring folks back from the dead, but tells his son Set that immortality's impossible. What a jerk.

At least the film avoids the "Egyptian gods were aliens that built the pyramids" thing.

Saw this poster◊ at the movies yesterday. Guy kinda looks like a worthy Iron Man villain.

With him that small he looks like Yellowjacket from Ant-Man xD

Man someone should make a movie where it turns out that the European medieval castles were actually build by Morgan Freeman looking-ass aliens

Shit'd be hilarious

My reaction when I saw the trailer: "Egypt Has Fallen."

My reaction when I saw the negative reviews: "I must be psychic."

This movie always looked like dumb generic blockbuster noise, so I'm not surprised to see the low reviews.

I wouldn't compare this to Jupiter Ascending though. This just looks like a general "yawn this sucks" kind of bad, while Jupiter was a special "holy fuck this is boring me out of my goddamn skull" kind of bad.

I think both of them have the "hey this looks like an interesting premise...what the hell happened to the execution and what the hell is up with the acting?" thing going on.

Indeed. Jupiter Ascending attempts to be a Game of Thrones-like political drama but is too boring and confusing to get any depth out of it, and Gods of Egypt is an attempt to make a really good action movie but is also too confusing, not to mention not really on any sort of scale that you might expect from a premise like that.

edited 29th Feb '16 10:10:09 AM by theLibrarian

The director is not happy about the reviews.

Maybe he should have made a better movie then.

typical entitled primadonna response from someone who can't take criticism.

So basically Josh Trank? Remind me who directed this movie?