I saw The Odyssey with my brothers on the weekend. Fittingly, we got lost on the way home.
I bring this up, because – at least on certain corners of the Internet – the various controversies revolving around Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey, particularly where the casting is concerned, have inspired me to write about another big-budget mythological adaptation that was also embroiled in a casting controversy: 2016’s Gods of Egypt.
Though, unlike The Odyssey, this one isn’t a good movie…
Getting this right out of the way, Gods of Egypt is not an especially good movie (though not entirely without merits) nor a movie which did particularly well at the box office (losing about $100 million) nor a movie which was subsequently been vindicated as a cult classic, though it does seem to have achieved a modicum of popularity on Netflix – to be fair, watching it on Netflix on a weekend when you’re bored with nothing better to do is probably the ideal way to watch.
Whereas The Odyssey is being acknowledged as an impressive piece of filmmaking and production values in spite of the various controversies, Gods of Egypt is probably most remembered for its casting controversies.
The short version: the movie has no Egyptian actors, the major characters are overwhelmingly white and talking with British accents, the non-white characters are all in minor or not even particularly good roles, and since the god characters are depicted as gigantic, most of the non-white characters are literally small enough for the white characters to step on.
I think (hope?) that it’s just trying to represent an actual element of Ancient Egyptian art: That the gods and important, powerful humans are bigger than everyone else – see, for example, the Narmer Palette, depicting the Early Dynastic Pharaoh Narmer literally towering over his defeated enemies. But the general clumsiness and racial aspect of it makes it pretty uncomfortable all around.
Yeah.
It’s not great. And even without the unfortunate racial implications of this decision, it’s a weird stylistic choice that just doesn’t look good on screen.
Now, there are a couple things to be noted about this controversy. Modern notions of race can’t really be applied to Ancient Egyptians. And, in fact, there’s still some degree of scholarly debated over what Ancient Egyptians actually looked like.
Perhaps complicated by the fact that one of the most famous Egyptians was ethnically Greek.
Ancient Egyptian art depicts the people of Ancient Egypt looking like this:
Men tend to have reddish skin representing that they get tanned working outside. Women have paler, yellowish skin, representing that they stay pale by staying indoors. It’s all very stylised and abstract, but it’s probably a safe bet that real Ancient Egyptians didn’t look Danish, Scottish, or Australian…
There’s also the fact that Gods of Egypt is explicitly set in a pre-historical, ahistorical mythological past, so it doesn’t necessarily reflect the real world in real ways — though, of course, Gods of Egypt is not really an intelligent enough film to really do anything with that premise.
Of course, the movie’s case was not helped by the fact that the people involved with the movie reacted to the controversy in the worst, most petulant way possible. Thereby providing a pretty keen demonstration that all publicity is not, in fact, good publicity. Despite the controversy, the movie flopped hard.
Photo by Mahmoud Yahyaoui on Pexels.com
Now, buried under all the controversy and bad decisions, there is at least some semblance of a decent Good Bad Movie somewhere, buried not unlike the treasures of the Valley of the Kings.
Photo by Omar on Pexels.com
While inspired by one of the most famous stories in Egyptian mythology and getting at least enough of the broad strokes right to be recognisable, the plot is pretty standard “evil god wants to take over the world” stuff. Worth noting, perhaps, that in Egyptian mythology, Set is not, in fact, evil. He is absolutely Horus’ antagonist, at least in this common version of the myth – there are variations. Of course there are, over the course of about 4000 years, the specifics changed.
In some versions of the mythology, Set is actually a force for good and assists Ra in the Underworld as he navigates the Solar Barque each night. And, in general, Set is the god of unpleasant and dangerous but ultimately necessary natural forces like storms and the desert.
On the other hand, Worth noting, however, that Gods of Egypt does depict Anubis mostly correctly — as a fundamentally benevolent deity whose function is to be the guide of souls and gatekeeper of the afterlife. Despite the popular perception of Anubis as the god of Death and the Underworld, he actually has a fairly precise role as the aforementioned guide and the overseer of the various mortuary rituals during the mummification process.
Which is particularly impressive given Gods of Egypt’s general approach to, um, everything else pretty much…
The CGI isn’t great, but the art direction is, to the point where I’d probably be a lot more favourable to Gods of Egypt if it had been animated. And, hey, that way, at least the characters could have been made to look at least remotely Egyptian.
Actually, given how disjointed the plot is despite Horus’ overarching quest to defeat Set, Gods of Egypt would have made an awesome 90s cartoon.
The setting is Ancient Egypt embiggened to an epic, larger-than-life, gold-plated scale. The god characters have super-powered armoured, transforming superhero-esque forms (what I like to refer to as the Magic Melting Fighting Robots, see below) that reflect the Ancient Egyptian iconography: Horus turns into a shiny gold falcon, Set turns into an evil and impressive… whatever it is that Set is (possibly a fish).
On the other hand beyond a few visuals that are pretty cool, it still feels remarkably generic. If I wasn’t devoting an entire post to it, could you tell what movie this image was from?
Actually, leaning into the generic aspect might have actually been helpful. If the movie was just called something like “War Between Gods” and either set in a non-specific mythological Earth or just another fantasy world, it probably would have avoided most of the casting controversies, since then they wouldn’t be supposed to be the specific gods of a real, specific place inhabited by a real, specific culture.
At most, I think War Between Gods would have had a few well-read nerds disapprovingly going “You know, this is awful derivative of Horus and Set.” Though that probably wouldn’t have been enough to do any better at the box office.
“Gods of Egypt” does sound cool. Unfortunately, that explicit connection to Egyptian mythology is probably responsible for most of the movie’s problems.
Like how nothing says “Ancient Egypt” like White People and Magic Melting Fighting Robots!
Aaaaaaand, even though I wrote the first version of this post at least six years ago and I’ve beheld and contemplated the Magic Melting Fighting Robots many, many times since, it only just occurs to me that that’s probably supposed to be their blood…
Admittedly, this has been pretty negative for a purported recommendation. Maybe I just have more fun talking about Gods of Egypt than I did actually watching it.
But, like I said towards the top of this post, there are at least a handful of positives.
None of the actors are delivering very good performances, though Gerard Butler as Set is probably the best part of the movie. He has the right amount of bombastic swagger to excel as an evil god, though he is pretty hard to buy as an Egyptian god.
Even without the whole casting controversy, the movie is going for “Fantasy, therefore everyone’s British” approach, which is super distracting.
On the other hand, the depiction of Ra’s defence of the Solar Barque against Apep is really cool and suitably conveys the high-stakes, fate-of-the-world-in-the-balance aspect of the fight between Ra and Apep. And there are some pretty decent action and fight scenes between the overall monotony and mediocrity.
Basically, Gods of Egypt has two speeds: Generic and Forgettable, and Actually Kinda Cool.
Gods of Egypt: Summit Entertainment and Thunder Road Pictures. via IMDB.
I said that Gods of Egypt would have been an awesome 90s cartoon. Thinking about it, it would have also thrived as a goofy, self-aware adventure TV series like Hercules or Xena. Gods of Egypt‘s biggest problem is that it’s not dumb enough. A movie about gods fighting to determine the fate of the world shouldn’t be this boring. A movie with such a larger-than-life premise and characters shouldn’t be wasting time telling a down-to-earth, emotional, introspective character-driven story.
For one thing, the god characters don’t benefit from being humanised, and we have no reason to care about the human characters, so they can’t carry the movie on their own.
It should have leaned in fully to the spectacle and ridiculousness. It should have bright lights and big noises and, hey, there are enough cool creatures and monsters in Egyptian in mythology that there could have been plenty of things for Horus to fight.
A bad movie with cool action scenes is better than a movie that’s mediocre in all regards.
Gods of Egypt should have just been two hours of Set badassfully trying to take over the world while Horus badassfully punches his way through Set’s minions before the inevitable final Magic Melting Fighting Robots showdown.
There are flashes that Gods of Egypt could have been awesome when it’s in Actually Kinda Cool mode. And it’s actually kind of impressive (granted, in the worst possible way) that they thought up these action scenes and decided not to run with them.
Gods of Egypt isn’t terrible, just disappointing. Approached with the right mindset and maybe a couple friends, there might just be enough to salvage a mostly-entertaining couple hours. Though maybe only for the wrong reasons…
I think, fundamentally, I’m counting this a recommendation because I do think we need more crazy, bombastic movies based on mythology (especially mythology that isn’t either Greek mythology or King Arthur).
Gods of Egypt is at least a story that, although I am familiar with, isn’t something I can ever remember seeing on a big screen before.
Though I do vaguely remember a Canadian kids’ show that did a storyline about the Isis and Osiris. Funnily enough given my motivation for this post, at first I thought it was the show called The Odyssey but further research led me to MythQuest.
Unfortunately, I remember literally nothing else about it…
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