Jesus H. Christ what the hell did I just watch? Now, I normally don't go out of my way to write purely scathing reviews, unless you count "50 Shades of Grey." But, "Gods of Egypt" is a film, if you can even call it that, that takes the concept of bad CGI and turns it into a running gag. No this is not a comedy, this is a film that takes a star-studded cast, 140 million dollars and a loose guesstimation of Egyptian mythology and turns it into 2 hours...wait hold on, this was two hours? Why? What? How? I can't believe I actually watched this...
"Gods of Egypt" follows the story of Bek (Brenton Thwaites) and Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) as they fight against the new mad king Set (Gerard Butler) after he takes over the throne. This is an alternate Egypt where the earth is flat and the gods live among the mortals. You can tell who the gods are by their size, golden blood and their ability to Animorph into super-powered animal-headed deity forms. (No, I am not making this up.) During the overthrow, Set takes Horus' eyes, leaving him powerless. He also steals his Queen to be, Hathor (Elodie Yung). Bek's girlfriend --fiancee, wife, not really sure-- Zaya (Courtney Eaton) gets taken as salve to the new government. She helps get Bek the plans to steal back one of Horus' eyes and after he does the two are caught. As they run, Zaya is fatally shot with an arrow. Bek goes to Hours to give him his eye back and ask for his help as the two journey across land and space to try and save Zaya and all of Egypt from Set's apocalyptic plans.
This is CGI the film. From start to finish you're loaded with completely noticeable CGI backgrounds, god to animal transformations and copy and paste crowds of people in the background. This wouldn't be so awful if the CGI wasn't so unbearable. This film is loaded with motion blur and PS3 level design animal transformations. Nothing is seamless and everything looks like it was made in a rush. That is the theme of "God of Egypt," hastiness. The story winds on and on, with a lot of it being pointless filler that made it seem like it justified the 140 million dollar budget. The story itself is bare-bones, because this is a "bad guy takes over, good guy loses and emotionally scarred pretty boy has to change his ways to save the earth" story. Cliche in every aspect. Yet this film spends an hour and a half trying to build one dimensional characters that really didn't matter because the CGI was the focal point of everything. I will give it to Chadwick Boseman and Elodie Yung, Thoth and Hator. They had fun with their roles and actually gave some of the more okay moments of this disaster. Gerard Butler has gone back to his trend of playing King Leonidas in every role. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is pretty good on "Game of Thrones," but here he's pedestrian at best. Finally, I legit thought Bek and Zaya were Aladdin and Jasmine knock-offs for a solid portion of the film.
"Gods of Egypt" is the worst big budget film of the year by a landslide and might be the worst big budget film I've seen since "Jupiter Ascending." The acting, though they were given nothing to work with, is abysmal. The story is a cliched mess. While the CGI that is supposed to help out at times, is poorly done and looks terrible. I can't recommend much of anything at all in this film. I will say, at least three of these actors have other things going on, "Daredevil," "Black Panther" and "Game of Thrones." Because this was clearly a film that they were held hostage to make, that is the only logical explanation I can think of.
Real nice review, buddy. Keep up the swell work!
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