Official Synopsis
The ultimate battle between good and evil threatens to destroy all creation in this epic fantasy-adventure bursting with spectacular action and amazing special effects. Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau star as rival gods Set and Horus, who are locked in a war to rule the universe. To defeat the merciless Set, Horus joins forces with a brave mortal for a journey that will take them across Egypt, through the heavens, and into the afterlife in an unforgettable quest to save mankind.
I had a huge amount of doubt with this one. After viewing the trailers, which didn’t do a good job of portraying what the heck the film was about, I personally withheld my excitement to curve any sort of preconceived notion of a ‘good film’. What came out of those efforts after viewing the film was one of disappointment in what could have been, but not total collapse. You can certainly see what director Alex Proyas, as well as writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless were trying to do with the movie, but it simply didn’t become the film they wanted it to end up being.
Anyway, let’s get right to it.
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Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is about to become king of Egypt. He is literally going to be crowned by his father Osiris (Bryan Brown) and rule a wealthy, happy kingdom. Unfortunately, his uncle Set (Gerard Butler) has other plans, which include taking Horus’ new crown and gouging Horus’ eyes out (Horus’ source of power), as well as storing his eyes in his vault so that Horus can never challenge him. He does all this and sends Egypt’s residence into a tizzy, whom he doesn’t care about, and pretty much destroys the Egyptian dream, which Osiris was trying to build.
The first act starts strong, but it s a bit gross with the violence. Lots of people getting stabbed and mutilated by Set, but it does what it needs to do to set up the next act. It gives motivation for the audience to keep watching, as well as motivation for Set to be overthrown. It also introduces a useless human protagonist named Bek (Brenton Thwaites), who is supposed to headline this movie with heroics, but sadly is a tiny side story to a bigger shallow story thanks to act one. His character is so unimportant in the scheme of things that he is given 5-10 minutes of screen time in the first act to set up his story about being a star-crossed lover with his main squeeze Zaya (Courtney Eaton) and a hopeful protagonist to help Horus save Egypt and himself. This poor character might as well have been the ellipsis between one sentence about Horus’ defeat and the other half where Horus is brought back into the mix. I don’t want to be spiteful, but Bek pretty much doesn’t do much other than be Horus’ sidekick in this adventure.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Onto act two!
Act two finds Bek locating and retrieving the first eye of Horus, so that he can revive him. He does so in Set’s treasure chamber of fun traps and brings the eye to Horus, who is less than grateful (seriously, why kill Bek, Horus?). Once the eye is re-attached, Horus and Bek go on an adventure together to retrieve the second eye and take back Egypt, in hopes of putting it back to its former self or at least Osiris’ dream. Act two is filled with weird moments of action from two giant cobras trying to kill Horus to giant Minotaurs trying to kill the pair of heroes. Most of act two is about Set’s plan to rule all Godly areas and become rightful king of everything. Anyway, act two has Horus and Bek fighting their way through random bad things in hopes of getting to Horus to stop him from seeing his plan through.
Act two is kind of a random mess. Bek gains motivation to help Horus after witnessing the murder of a loved one, which he hopes can be brought back by Horus (fat chance). It has random moments of Set somehow tracking down Horus and crew and sending certain enemies with unique entertainment value to try to kill Horus/company. Act two also features an incredible amount of downtime between fights, which attempt to patch up potential holes in the story, as well as create some sort of God/human relationship between Bek and Horus, but sadly just end up confusing things a bit. Act two has some value, but it comes in small spurts, which is sad. This is the main crux of the adventure, or is supposed to be, but is so poorly done that you don’t get an even balance of action and story, but it does try, unfortunately it just leaves out any sort of build on the way there.
Act three begins with Set finally crossing the line (as if it wasn’t crossed by now) by killing his own father Ra (Geoffrey Rush — where did he come from?), who is fending off some beast that chases the earth every night…yeah…yeah, I’m not sure what happened here, but onward. Once Ra is dead, Set begins to push his final plan of total domination over Egypt and worlds (both Human/God), ends up unleashing a beast he wants to kill (I think), while Bek/Horus are the only ones who can stop him. It is all kind of confusing by the third act, but the action is at least there.
Anyway, I shall end there because I don’t want to give the rest away.
Overall, Gods of Egypt wasn’t a complete disaster that most critics are making it out to be. It was bad, but not an epic/colossal fall from movie making grace, though I’m sure the bottom-line of the film says otherwise. The actors seemed to have fun with the material and the movie did have some bright spots to it, which include Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s performance (I like that guy, he done good).
Having said that, though, I understand its glaring faults that most people brought up when talking about it. It had some really bad story build, some poor character development and some holes in the actual story that needed more explanation. It certainly was far better than I was expecting (the trailers really looked awful), but its shortcomings are out in the open by act two and never get corrected. It ends on a high note with action, but it was far too muddled in story to recover itself through action. Maybe a few less characters, possibly a little bit more focus on Horus and Bek and this might have been a great movie.
As it stands, it just didn’t do as well as it could have done in a lot of its movie elements.
What did do well on this release is the special features, though. Here’s what you’re getting:
· 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
This is a good set of features included with a less than good film. You will get a better perspective about intentions through some of the featurettes and some great behind-the-scenes work with others. The deleted storyboards give a bit more light on what could have been, but I’m not sure they would have righted this ship. Anyway, good features are included.
Onto the summary!
