Gods of Egypt will forever be a “turn off your brain” staple on cable or on demand. This movie is stupid, explosiony, lazy fluff. The fluff goes on for too long, but for a good hour or so you’ll find yourself incomprehensibly chuckling as Oke-Doke cheese poporcons lay on your chest and you guzzle a Keystone Ice.
Gods of Egypt takes place when gods and mortals roamed the earth together, on the Nile via Europe’s North Sea and Queensland. Danish Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his Scottish uncle Set (Gerard Butler) are from the lineage of their Australian father Ra (Geoffrey Rush). On Horus’s coronation, Set usurpes the throne, killing Horus’s father and removing Horus’s all seeing eyes. Set enslaves the populace and kills his opponents, forcing mortal Bek (Brenton Thwaites) to steal an eye back and seek out the exiled god to save his love Zaya (Courtney Eaton). Bek and Horus then journey, encountering strange lands and beasts to try to reclaim the crown.
Gods of Egypt’s closest parallel is The Mummy. That movie knew how weak its script was, and make up for it with a breezy tone and cool special effects. Gods of Egypt gets close to this mark. Alex Proyas, returning after a 9 year directorial hiatus, launches himself fully into the crazy CGI. There are giant snakes, a sphinx, golden bleeding animorphs and mechanical pyramids among many of the bonkers visuals in the movie. The tracking shots and epic battles will make you ooohhh like you were 8 years old. In addition, the glossy CGI is accompanied by a frolicky tone. Bek and Horus may be allies, but they never quite reach a full understanding of each other, sniping during the valleys between fighting. Set chews scenery like a squirrel on an acorn. The cartoonishness of the sets/characters fits like puzzle pieces for a delightful romp through an empty mind.
Just DON’T think too hard. The script bounces from place to place arbitrarily to show off another cool visual, pretty much every 10 minutes, and the Egyptian mythology is loosely applied. Also, I don’t know if I made it clear, but the women are very correctly skinned while the men need more red spots from the sunburn due to their Caucasianness. Hey, at least the bad guys are white too! Gods of Egypt is also hindered by an over 2 hour running time, a bit too long to put a brain on standby. If the movie were 90 minutes, Gods of Egypt could have tricked you into thinking you just blacked out.
The acting does what is necessary for a hot mess. Gerard Butler gets to scream and rule, like he did when he led another ancient tribe. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gets some good jokes in and looks godlike shirtless, the two biggest requirements for Horus. Brenton Thwaites fits the best as Bek, he gets to mock God incompetence and angst over love, easy for him. Elodie Young is super hot, her primary job, but she also carried more emotional heft than I expected. However, the scene stealers are Geoffrey Rush and Chadwick Boseman. Rush gets to boom shaka laka as Ra, doing a stage play in a feature film, and Boseman uses straight logic and condescension for some good lol’s.
Go into Gods of Egypt with little to no expectations, and you’ll have a lot of fun. Go in with hype, and you’re screwed. Go to see Gods of Egypt because you were expecting a historically accurate showcase of ancient Egypt, and I will laugh at you and tell you that you are the perfect audience member to see this film.