Hollywood whitewashing has been a constant issue of controversy in the media. Liberal interest groups have historically complained that when a film adapted from source material with non-white characters casts white actors to play these non-white roles.
Recently, The Last Airbender and The Lone Ranger have received media backlash for casting white actors in non-white roles. So, the notion would be that the media prefers when actors of the same race as the characters in the source material play the respective role. This begs the question as to why the new film Annie is being described as progressive for casting black actors in traditionally white roles, yet that aside, Exodus: Gods and Kings is being ridiculed for casting white actors in Egyptian roles. To me, this seems to be a double standard in the media. Exodus: Gods and Kings should not be ridiculed for whitewashing its cast; it should be ridiculed for it is a horrible film.
Ridley Scott’s career has hit an absolute low point with his latest film Exodus: Gods and Kings. Depicting the plight of the Jewish people from slavery in Ancient Egypt, Scott has taken rich source material and turned it into two and a half hours of intense boredom. The biblical story centers on Moses, a Jew who is adopted by the Egyptian pharaoh Seti and his family, his Jewish identity concealed to the Pharaoh as well as himself while the rest of the Jewish people are enslaved to build pyramids. When Moses learns of his true ethnicity, he leads the Jewish people against the new pharaoh out of slavery, with the help of God who casts ten plagues upon the Egyptians to entice the Pharaoh to let the Jews go. The new pharaoh is Ramses, Seti’s son who was raised with Moses, which adds a level of personal drama between the two leaders as Moses and Ramses are practically brothers.
Exodus: Gods and Kings depicts this story in a relatively faithful manner to the source material, with all of the biblical details taught in religious school carrying through to the big screen. The movie has a reputable cast, with Christian Bale playing Moses and Joel Edgerton playing the pharaoh Ramses. As Moses leads his people in revolt, the plagues unfold in beautifully rendered CGI. The sets of Egyptian temples and desserts throughout the film look vast and lived in, with attention paid to detail in the costume and weapons department.
Exodus is made very well on a technical level. With a cast of the likes of Christian Bale, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, and Aaron Paul, Exodus: Gods and Kings should have been a masterpiece.
Yet when Christian Bale seems to be phoning it in, something is wrong. Moses’ lines are often unintelligible as he puts on some odd British-Middle Eastern accent. Ben Kingsley seems to just be reading off a script in the few scenes he is in, with no real purpose to his character. Sigourney Weaver is the same case. Joel Edgerton is decent as pharaoh, yet the horrible screenplay makes his efforts null and void.
Throughout the film, Moses’s confrontations with God depicts God as a child, for a reason that is neither artistic nor logical. The only entertaining part of the film is the segment when the Ten Plagues unfold. Thousands of frogs and locusts blend in seamlessly with live action actors. Yet Exodus returns to dry and weak character centered plot soon enough.
The failure of Exodus: Gods and Kings can really be attributed to Ridley Scott. In any film, the director’s main job is to make sure everyone else involved, from the actors to the screenwriters and cameramen, is doing the best they can do to make a good film. A director has to have the vision of what he or she wants their film to be. Furthermore, a director has to use the actors as tools to get the most effective performances. Scott has utterly failed with Exodus, as he clearly has not inspired any of the cast to deliver a convincing or even adequate performance. Perhaps Ridley Scott is getting too old to direct. It’s been a long time since he brought renowned films such as Alien and Gladiator to life. Then again, Prometheus was only two years ago and I personally thought it was a very good film. Perhaps Scott is not completely out of steam when it comes to film making. Yet with Exodus, Scott has just failed at making an engaging story. In the back of my head, I kept thinking that if the Red Sea part in the beautiful CGI the rest of the film had, I could walk out satisfied. Yet instead of a grandiose display of might evoked in Charlton Heston’s parting of the sea in The Ten Commandments, the film sloppily skips to the Jews walking through the dry sea, not giving everyone what they came in for in showing the massive sea part.
I felt cheated, and cheated is what I was. Exodus is one of the most disappointing films of 2014, up there with The Amazing Spiderman 2. What should have been a return to classic biblical epics along the lines of Noah was one of the worst films I have ever seen in the movie theater. While the Ten Plagues look great, the screenplay and performances are just too offsetting to justify anyone wasting time on Exodus: Gods and Kings. The Prince of Egypt and The Ten Commandments are far better Exodus films. Heck, even The Rugrats Passover special is more entertaining than Exodus: Gods and Kings.
