Review of Gods of Egypt (2016) by Bobby C — 15 Jun 2016

At the very core of filmmaking is to have ideas, set out to express those ideas and the people involved usually have the means to properly execute these ideas. Some times filmmakers don't have enough of the required tools to effectively go about the ideas but with Alex Proyas's 2016 digital oasis Gods of Egypt they had too much-too many ideas, too much CGI and just.

.. too much-ultimately hurting the film. Proyas directs with a soft tone, which makes sense-nothing is to be taken too seriously, or seriously at all, within Gods of Egypt and intends no historical accuracy-but this leaves the characters and events as three-dimensional as a hieroglyphic.

To show off the best landscapes a computer could generate in 2016, the director insists on a quick pace throughout, blitzing past important plot points, characters and locations. Mixing story beats from The Lion King, Clash of the Titans, Indiana Jones and many other works, writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless go about the strategy of broad strokes hoping something will stick but nothing manages to stay with you because your senses become dulled from it all, which is a shame because there are cool and interesting ideas peppered in here.

With some inspired art direction in certain scenes that look pulled from a Terry Gilliam film, Proyas shows us intriguing things that are muddled in a sandstorm of CGI, poor decisions and a negligent understanding of the phrase from Mark Twain, "too much of anything is bad.

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