Everyone enjoys a good period piece, right? Oh…is that just me? Ok, well I enjoy a good period piece. Even ones that start off historically enough and end up bordering on some fantastical acid trip. Was Exodus: God and Kings a great movie? No. Was it even good? Unfortunately...no. I wasn’t into it for a lot of reasons. One being the whitewashing of the cast. There was a distinct lack of dark skin for a film based upon a country in Africa. But then again, who knows? Sigourney Weaver could be 6.4% Egyptian. We don’t know! I’ll tell you what else… That braided wig they had Ms. Weaver in was ravishing. Really brought out her inner African queen.
You can tell that the studio put a lot into production of the film. I just wished they would have tried a bit more on the casting instead of just going with a bunch of recognizable people. There were a few roles that I felt were cast correctly, but I was mostly disappointed in the choices made.
I just didn’t believe it. I’m sure that’s all I need to say about that, but watch it and tell me what you think about it.
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So now, on to the extras…
For the most part they are extraordinarily boring. I tried, I really did, but there was no making the enhancement pods interesting to me. I suppose that if you’re into those type of things then they would be much more interesting. But, having said all of that, it was the best part of the extras. The mandatory commentary with the director and one of the writers. Honestly, I enjoy commentary with the actors more. They pretty much talked about why they chose the particular scenes that they did, what it did for the integrity of the movie, etc… They talked a bunch, which was good and bad. Good, because I didn’t have to pay attention to the film again. Bad, because they didn’t really have anything to say that I cared about hearing. The Gods and Kings Archive has storyboard drawings, some videos in what they call Ridley-vision, the HBO First Look and some other things. The storyboard drawings were cool (although the notes on the pages were damn near indecipherable).
So there you have it, people. The movie looked great, but it was uninspiring at the very, very best. The extras were nothing special. I hate to be harsh, but I would say don’t spend the money to either buy or rent this movie. Maybe watch it on cable or convince a friend to buy it so that you can experience all it has the offer (which isn’t much, believe me). If you’re looking for something special, this isn’t it.
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Everyone enjoys a good period piece, right? Oh…is that just me? Ok, well I enjoy a good period piece. Even ones that start off historically enough and end up bordering on some fantastical acid trip. Was Exodus: God and Kings a great movie? No. Was it even good? Unfortunately...no. I wasn’t into it for a lot of reasons. One being the whitewashing of the cast. There was a distinct lack of dark skin for a film based upon a country in Africa. But then again, who knows? Sigourney Weaver could be 6.4% Egyptian. We don’t know! I’ll tell you what else… That braided wig they had Ms. Weaver in was ravishing. Really brought out her inner African queen.
