Hey, I Actually Like the Panned ‘Gods of Egypt’

Gods of Egypt takes place in an alternate world where the Earth is flat and mythological Egyptian gods live among mortals.  The gods are like humans in appearance, but they are of greater height, their blood is gold, and they can take animal-deity forms.  The movie starts with the desert god Set (Gerald Butler) seizing the throne of Egypt from the rightful heir, Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), god of the air.  Set beats Horus in a duel and takes off his powerful eyes.  But before Set can deliver the killing blow, Hathor (Elodie Yung) – the goddess of love, and Horus’ lover – begs Set to spare Horus’ life in exchange for her serving as his mistress.  A year later, a young human thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) steals one of Horus’ eyes from Set’s treasure vault, and brings it to the blind Horus.  Driven by different motivations, the mortal and the god form an unlikely alliance to free Egypt from Set’s tyrannical rule.

When Gods of Egypt came out earlier this year, the consensus was that it’s an awful movie.  So I wasn’t keen of watching it.  But now that I’ve seen it for myself, I actually had fun.  And not because I think it’s a trainwreck of a movie and I was amused of its failures.  I legitimately found enjoyment with it as an Egyptian mythology-themed, action-adventure film.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s by no means an epic movie – though it has the materials that could have made it so.  It’s not free from stupidity, incoherence, and clichés.  But the spin on Egyptian mythology and the character arcs made the story appealing to me, despite being corny in general.  Visually, it’s CGI heavy.  There are times it looks phony and unattractive, but there are also scenes which I found visually thrilling and aesthetically pleasing.

Again, I’m not saying Gods of Egypt is a great movie.  It’s flawed and could have been done better.  But as far as “popcorn” entertainment is concerned, it would do.  I personally think it’s an okay movie, and better than Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans (which I found to be snoozefests).  Maybe it’s because I didn’t watch Gods of Egypt in a theater.  So in a “small screen” perspective, I got to like this movie.  This probably means it would have worked much better as a TV or direct-to-video movie.