By Erik Luchsinger
The story of Moses and the Exodus is known to many people for many different reasons. Many of us know it from the Dreamworks classic Prince of Egypt. Others know it from this book called The Bible, and still others know it as just another elaborate lie the Jewish World Order has spun to garner sympathy for itself and to hide the doings of our evil reptilian overlords. This year we have yet another retelling of the story, this time by Ridley Scott of Alien fame.
The first exposure any of us had to Exodus was undoubtedly the trailer, which was fucking sweet. Here's Christian Bale, some dudes in excessive eyeliner, and massive, sweeping shots of the plagues fucking up a beautifully rendered ancient Memphis. Every time I saw the trailer I would turn to my moviegoing buddy and quietly exclaim "fuck, that looks AWESOME!" And I was right, It did look awesome. Exodus has a very engaging visual style that's cleanly executed, resulting in a movie that doesn't hurt to look at. Unless, of course, it's meant to be. The landscapes are vast and breathtaking, the city of Memphis is glorious. The storms send a tingle up your spine. When the frogs and locusts and crocodiles descend upon Egypt the visuals evoke the kind of revulsion you may actually feel if being set upon by millions of frogs of locusts in the comfort of your massive royal palace. If you are looking to see the biblical plagues depicted in stunning 21st century graphics, go fucking see Exodus, because that's easily the best thing about the movie.
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The acting was also good. Christian Bale does quite a good Moses, even if he is a bit more of an arrogant swordsman than the bible depicted him. Joel Edgerton's Ramses is also very entertaining. I don't know if it was the actor himself of the eyeliner, but Ramses displayed a lot of emotion. The scenes between the two were actually engaging and I wish more time had been spent on that.
Those good points aside, I really disliked Exodus for numerous reasons. If I had to put my complaints succinctly, I would say that this movie came off as a young Michael Bay's re-imagining of the tale.
First, I will address the Michael bay comment. Exodus was thoroughly Hollywood-ized. Flashy visuals trumped nearly everything, including any kind of story or character development. Before you even have a chance to figure out which movie you're seeing we're thrust head first into a massive battle. It's relentlessly loud and everything is burning, screaming or gushing blood. Bale does some Batman-esque martial arts and sword fighting while chariots and horses fly everywhere. According to the story, the scene was necessary because of a prophecy (made 2 minutes prior in the preceding scene) about a hero saving someone and the savior becoming a leader. According to anyone who knows Hollywood, the scene was necessary because they thought our little brains might get hurt if we have to deal with something that doesn't involve burning death for more than a couple minutes at a time. I don't feel like the whole prophecy angle was necessary to set up some kind of schism between Moses and Ramses, as Moses being a secret Jew provides that schism well enough. Plus, such a pitifully small amount of time is spent exploring how Moses and Ramses feel about each other that any strife the prophecy brings to their relationship would be rendered irrelevant.
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This brings me to my next point, which is the character development and general plot. Everyone already knows the story of the Exodus, which suggests to me that there is some fertile ground for re-thinking the smaller details while still leaving the major plot points unchanged. Scott and the rest of the Exodus team took this opportunity and squandered it by making Ramses and Moses generic badass sword guys and just blowing over every single other detail in the story. The relationship between Ramses and Moses is very simple and not at all interesting: they are loving brothers willing to die for each other, then Ramses finds out Moses is a Hebrew from a scheming Viceroy, then Ramses wants to kill Moses because he's angry. Very deep stuff. Oh, and that Viceroy I mentioned? He's like, a tertiary character at best, but he's far more developed than anyone else in the movie. He starts off as an overseer of slaves who's squandering money on his palace and has an active hate for Moses because of an inferiority complex. Later, he ends up being a trusted councilor of Ramses after tipping him off that Moses is a secret Jew. Even this slight arc is more interesting than Ramses and Moses, who are just left to be flat and boring for reasons I don't know or understand. Everyone else in the movie is glossed over entirely.
Speaking of which, Exodus has the tendency to spend a lot of time on shit that doesn't matter and no time at all on stuff that does. Moses spends all of 3 minutes tops making a perilous climb up a forbidden mountain in the middle of a rainstorm. This is a big deal in a religious sense (God forbids climbing this mountain in particular), it's where he first sees and speaks to God (a big deal for the plot) and it's just generally interesting because he's in danger and can't just stab the things that are threatening him. Meanwhile, we get 10 minutes of the same boring "charge" sequence as Ramses' army rides their horses into a tidal wave for no good reason. Moses meets, marries, has a kid, and then abandons them to help the Jews in Memphis in the span of 5 minutes. Meanwhile, the whole 10 commandments/golden calf thing is shoehorned in at the end. Exodus tried to tell way more of the story than it needed to. This resulted in important character development being eschewed for flashy battle scenes and half-assed plot peripherals, not to mention the movie being at least half an hour too long.
Overall, I really didn't enjoy Exodus. It was exceptionally long winded and boring. It didn't have any sense of what parts to give time to, which parts to be short about, and which points to completely cut from the movie (re first battle scene, golden calf incident). The characters are so hard to care about that watching them charge into battle under a thousand-foot tidal wave could barely convince me to keep my eyes open.While the visuals were stunning and the acting was good, the rest of the movie lacked so significantly that I don't ever want to see this movie again. With the notable exception of the plague scenes, Exodus: Gods and Kings was pretty forgettable and a real snoozer. I give it 2/5 bible stories that are actually interesting if they aren't ruined by yawn-inducing writing and Hollywood-ized battle sequences. Go see it if you wanna see crocodiles turn a river to blood in epic CGI glory or if you're trying to go to sleep. Otherwise, go see something else. Or just take a nap.
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