Some movies deserve long reviews to talk about their significance, acting, storytelling, or to get to the root of the movie’s message. Gods of Egypt is not such a movie. It is all bad: the acting is bad, the special effects are bad, the story is bad, the cinematography is bad, and to top it all off it is racist and sexist, which is bad. Granted it is so bad that if you know what you are in for you may have a good time trashing it with your buddies. To some up, it is the opposite of good.
What is baffling about all of this is that it was greenlit in the first place! And not just greenlit but given a $140 Million budget, so it was a major movie for Lionsgate. With some insiders even saying that executives hoped that Gods of Egypt would be the franchise to replace Hunger Games. What?! I can’t believe so many people had so much faith in this movie. Had Wrath of the Titans been a success, maybe, but it was a failure.
Now I could see making a fun little sword and sandals movie based on Egyptian culture instead of the usual Greek based tale, and then amp up the cheese, give it a small to medium budget, and I am sure it would have played well enough. It probably also would have been wise to cast at least a few Egyptians to be in the movie, but $140 Million with almost a completely white cast? Surely someone must have told them that this was a bad idea.
In the end Gods of Egypt got the box office result and critical lashing it deserved, but if you are looking for a movie for Bad Movie Night, they don’t come much worse than this, and from a major studio to boot. However, that is the only circumstance where Gods of Egypt gets any sort of recommendation. I wish I could have been in the meeting where Lionsgate’s executive group agreed that Gods of Egypt deserved their full support.
