Review of Gods of Egypt (2016) by Aaron D — 07 Jul 2016

This CGI and sandal would-be epic is an inoffensive, if all too silly, outing. Proyas is another director who can't help bleaching and desaturating the living daylights out of everything. Remember when old school directors had to film their epics in glorious real life colour? Yes, those were indeed the days.

But it's artistic licence when the director drains the colour away! Perhaps. I suspect it also helps second-rate special effects to better merge with real action footage. The mix of stilted epic dialogue together with modern wise cracks doesn't sit well, and there is far too much obvious, that is to say, glaringly bad, CGI for the viewer to ignore, let alone to become engaged with.

When things look too fake, too often, why should we care to immerse ourselves is such laziness? And when it is pretty self-evident that our mortal hero will surely get his way, why should the death of any other character really matter? In a time when many films are happy to deconstruct gods and religions out of ancient epics which were filled with gods and religion, this effort at least includes them literally.

But will this save it from being lost to the desert sands of time? Nope!