The story of Egypt and its people have been told often and in many different variations. While some might have a problem with the fact that non-Egyptians keep playing Egyptians, I try to reserve judgement based on the story that is being told. Granted some of the ways we’ve seen a film like this seem to be the same one over and over again. After “Exodus: Gods and Kings” from a just last year, you would think it would be time to put these stories to rest, but some filmmakers had other ideas.
Writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless took a different path on telling the story, by first stating that in fact, the previous versions have all been told wrong. It seems the Gods actually did live among the people of Egypt, but they were not in the image of men. Instead they were much taller and gold flowed through their body instead of blood. Bek (Brenton Thwaites) is not a God, but instead a thief who steals things for his love, Zaya (Courtney Eaton). Everything is good in the land, as a new king is being crowned, Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who is the Lord of the Air. Not everyone wants Horus to be king though, as his Uncle Set (Gerard Butler) has other plans, namely assuming the throne for himself. After a great fight, Horus is blinded and goes into exile, leaving Set to rule. Set is a little power hungry and makes life in Egypt hard, as he turns most of the population into slaves. Bek though, with the help of Zaya, still believes in Horus, and retrieves one of his eyes and seeks him out. Together they team up to try and defeat Set and free Egypt and its people.
Having seen more then my fair share of movies about this subject, I didn’t really know if I was ready for another one. Watching how the story unfolded, and knowing it was directed by Alex Proyas (“Dark City”, “I, Robot”), I decided to give it a fair shot. Visually it looks pretty good, although the film suffers from being in 3D and the over use if the color red in the film. That though is not the weakest point of the film, instead that belongs to the dialogue that feels often uninspired. With the bad dialogue and the good visuals, most of the time the movie feels like a video game, almost like what “Prince of Persia” wanted to be. The performances are fine, and neither helps nor hurt the over all picture. Instead “Gods of Egypt”, comes off as kinda fun, because you do not really have to use your mind, as the film is loaded with action that helps numb your senses. This is a film that can be enjoyable upon first viewing, but feels like when you have a one night stand. I didn’t have very high hopes for this film based on the trailer and I walked out kind of having a good time. So take that for what’s it worth and go in for the fun, just avoid any future commitments.
