5. Gods of Egypt
I’m not sure what happened here. I’m at a loss. Alex Proyas’ bloated, muddled, deeply-misguided Gods of Egypt is a film with wall-to-wall insanity, the kind of ambitious high-scale production I usually champion readily. It has a vision, however misdirected, and it clearly comes from an inspired, if likely insane, filmmaker. So why, then, is this movie so gosh darn boring? Besides a fiery Gerard Butler and an underused Geoffrey Rush, everyone looks comatose or confused most of the time, trying desperately to work against the limitations of imposing green screens and disproportioned demigods interacting with regular humans. It’s wonky and weird to the point where nothing connects and nothing holds any water. For all the insanity it brings, the entertainment value is about as dry as the sands of Egypt.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Gods of Egypt literally bored me to tears. It’s stupefyingly bad, and perhaps the kind of truly mismanaged blockbuster only a truly talented filmmaker could cobble together. And I haven’t even discussed its rightfully-controversial white-washing, which is a whole other discussion. Lionsgate took a big hit with this one, and they should have. This was never going to be the next Hunger Games, and it was silly of them to think it ever would. Proyas’ latest is a mystifyingly inept production, a disaster that would be utterly spectacular if it weren’t so sleep-inducing. Intolerable, insipid, clumsy and oddly savorless, Gods of Egypt should go down in history as one of the biggest, strangest, most ill-advised and unholy studio failures ever brought to the big screen.
