See full gallery on TechnoBuffaloEverything you’ve heard about Gods of Egypt, a mind-numbing pile of VFX pyrite, is true. It’s not the worst movie you’ve ever seen but it’s pretty disastrous. There are movies that fall into the category of “so good, it’s bad,” but this is not that. I’m just glad it’s over with.
What’s so absurd about Gods of Egypt is how utterly serious it takes itself. There are flying robot things, laughable CGI, and dialog so bad you’d think the script was written using Google’s auto-fill. Here is one such exchange between Horus, a god, and Bek, a mortal:
Horus: Are you sure you’re not a god?
Bek: What would I be the god of? Stupidity?
Horus: The impossible.
Here is another during an exchange between Set (Gerard Butler) and Ra (Geoffrey Rush):
Set: [to Ra] I will take your place. But it won’t be sitting on some damn boat!
It never gets better than that, and is often worse, almost as if an 8th grader came up with the first draft in an attempt to impress a girl. Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is I don’t even know; a spoiled god in line to take over the throne as king of Egypt. But on his big day his eyes get ripped out and he becomes depressed.
Set (Gerard Butler), meanwhile, crashes the party and kills the king and beats up Horus. All because Set is jealous and loves power. He is unlike his character from 2006’s 300, King Leonidas, just a littler meaner and a little older. Besides killing other people for fun and ripping the wings off his wife, his favorite thing to do (I think) is yell. Hold your arms out and yell seems to be the only instructions he was given by director Alex Proyas.
Gods of Egypt tries, it truly does, using a classic revenge tale as an excuse to slap together a terrific cast under the grotesque sheen of pre-1999 CGI. But it never elevates itself beyond the Walmart bargain bin. It’s spiritless and boring and cheesy to the point of neurosis. How did it go from pre-production to the editing room to your eyeballs without anyone voicing their concern? It makes Batman v Superman (which I liked) look like Citizen Kane.
It’s as if a bunch of Hollywood executives got together and picked the most generic dialog, the most generic characters, and the most generic plot right out of a hat. And in an effort to glue it all together, everything was put through a PlayStation emulator, ran over with a monster truck, and then site on fire. Dipping into Egyptian mythology should have been fun and exciting. And, yet, Gods of Egypt is beyond insane, disastrous and completely incoherent.
By the way, Gods of Egypt is available beginning today on Blu-ray and DVD.
BLU-RAY/ DIGITAL HD SPECIAL FEATURES*
Deleted Storyboards
“A Divine Vision: Creating a Cinematic Action Fantasy” Featurette
“Of Gods and Mortals: The Cast” Featurette
“Transformation: Costume, Make-up & Hair” Featurette
“On Location: Shooting in Australia” Featurette
“The Battle for Eternity: Stunts” Featurette
“A Window into Another World: Visual Effects” Featurette
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES*
“The Battle for Eternity: Stunts” Featurette
“A Window into Another World: Visual Effects” Featurette