Gods of Egypt, AKA The Avengers / 300 / Stargate slash flick

[SurfD]

So,  was bored and browsing IMDB on the computer at work this evening, when I stumbled across this fantastic gem of a new release trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJBnK2wNQSo

This gets my vote as what could possibly be the most hilariously bad movie of 2016.

I mean, jesus christ. It's a movie called "GODS OF EGYPT".  Why the fuck is there only ONE even remotely Egyptian looking person in the hole goddamned trailer.

I will get to see this thing for free, so you can be sure I will be there, just for the laughs if nothing elese, but wow, holywood, you could have flushed that money down a toilet and filmed the whole process, dollar by individual dollar, and that still would have likely made a better movie then this abomination.....

[Sir T]

Ahh remember the good old days when they had people in bad makeup to represent ethnics. Good thing we are no longer disrespectful like that.

[satael]

Looks like a very forgettable action movie where the overuse of cg (where most of the movie's $140m budget probably went) tries to cover up a terrible script and the trailer seems to reflect that.

[Velorath]

Let's see here... the writers have two other credits to their names and those are Last Witch Hunter and Dracula Untold. "From the Visionary Director of I, Robot and The Crow". One of those was 11 years ago (and not very good) and the other was 21 years ago. Also, the best movie Proyas made was Dark City. I love the Crow but it's almost impossible to separate the movie from Brandon Lee's death and judge it on its own merits.

[SurfD]

Ahh remember the good old days when they had people in bad makeup to represent ethnics. Good thing we are no longer disrespectful like that.

hehe, at least they used to try.   These days it looks like they dont even bother to do that.  Movie about Egyptian Gods? Lets cast the most unegyptian looking guy we can find as one of the gods.  He needs a mortal sidekick? Lets cast an EVEN MORE unegyptian looking kid as his sidekick.  I mean, seriously, with all the CGI budget you had for this thing, you couldnt have, I dont know, given Butler a nice tan or something?  At least tried to make it look like he had been somewhere near a desert sometime in the last decade?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Can't do that, giving him a tan would be racist. 

[Shannow]

Open link.
See the movie stars Gerard Butler.
Close link.

No more info needed.

[HaemishM]

Holy shit. Jamie Lannister, Egyptian God of blond Aryan-ness vs. Kind Leonidas, Egyptian God of Irish Swarthiness in a movie that couldn't look worse if it was the CGI intro movie for Titan Quest 6.

[Hawkbit]

However, it does have someone slo-mo leaping for something. More movies need a scene like that.

[Margalis]

This looks like "Hollywood Executive Created Movie: The Movie."

[angry.bob]

That did not deserve to be denned. Well, okay. Maybe a little. But it's still all true.

[Ginaz]

I don't think anyone has to worry about racist casting or whatever.  No amount of cast diversity will save this.  Movie looks like trash so no one will care. 

[Ginaz]

The director has issued an apology for the casting of this film saying "our casting should have been more diverse".  While it looks kind of stupid to have white Europeans playing parts that are probably best left for people who actually look like those being represented in the story, there's a lot of money involved in making a movie.  Ridley Scott didn't apologize for his casting choices in Exodus: Gods and Kings because he claimed he wouldn't have got the $140 million needed if he hadn't hired well known actors for the lead parts.  When it's your $140 million on the line, concepts of racial, gender and cultural diversity might not seem as important.  

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/28/entertainment/gods-of-egypt-cast-apology-feat/index.html

[Margalis]

Normally I don't care about this kind of stuff unless the "whitewashing" is done to a story grounded in reality (for example the movie 21, where they made the Asian guys white) but this really was an extreme case. Impossible not to notice that the "Egyptian" people were not Egyptian at all. They didn't even try to make their accents, dialogue, etc, sound even slightly Egyptian.

[HaemishM]

Impossible not to notice that the "Egyptian" people were not Egyptian at all. They didn't even try to make their accents, dialogue, etc, sound even slightly Egyptian.

This. Also, this movie looks really fucking stupid too, which makes the very very whitey white casting stand out even more.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Stargate had more authentic casting than this and they were fucking aliens.

[angry.bob]

Normally I don't care about this kind of stuff unless the "whitewashing" is done to a story grounded in reality (for example the movie 21, where they made the Asian guys white) but this really was an extreme case. Impossible not to notice that the "Egyptian" people were not Egyptian at all. They didn't even try to make their accents, dialogue, etc, sound even slightly Egyptian.

I'd like to point out, in a much more civil way than last time, that many "Egyptians" weren't Egyptians either. European-looking ruling class (including gods) and arab-looking commoners works just fine. People could argue against that if they give a specific period and it was one of the times when Egypt was actually being ruled by native Egyptians, but that's a level of scrutiny not applied to any other film in this genre. Even ones that blatantly gave the middle finger to established canon derived from source material long past questioning.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'd like to point out, in a much less civil way.  No one gives a fuck.

[angry.bob]

I'd like to point out, in a much less civil way.  No one gives a fuck.

Is it that you don't care, or that you don't care to hear anything that contradicts your incorrect opinion. Because the post you made right above mine broadcasts that not only do you care, you're opinionated enough to complain about the casting, and that you don't really have that firm an understanding of who ran Egypt and what they looked like, and who egyptians were and what they looked like. Perhaps you could explain why you feel the casting for this movie was so off and we can use that as a common ground for discussion. Maybe we can go back through other threads and look at your other opinions on casting choices that break with canon. Given your demand for total authenticity about an action movie about giant space gods, I'm sure you've always demanded strict casting choices.

Or you could keep doing that other petulant, tantrum-y thing you're doing. Whatevs.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Look at this, it's taking me less than thirty seconds to write something before I go take a shit.  Lot of effort here.

[Threash]

Another soulless CGI fest. Honestly wouldn't give a fuck about "whitewashing" as long as the end product is worth watching, but this looks horrid.  CGI is at the point where you can do anything you want, and when you can do anything you want then absolutely nothing is impressive.

[Merusk]

Wife wanted to see this instead of waiting until 9:45 for the next showing of "Race."

Costume design was amazing. The mortal love interest is incredibly hot. Gerard Butler chews scenery like no other. The direction, creature design, and writing and effects were B-grade at best. $1.50 theater or wait until it's on cable some lazy Saturday afternoon.

[Malakili]

Every time I see the trailer / an ad for this it looks like a cheap Syfy channel Sunday afternoon original. Is it me or does the CGI look just terrible and fakey fake? Maybe it's supposed to be cartoony? I dunno.  I just watched Jurassic Park on blu ray yesterday and the CGI in that fucking movie from 1993 holds up better than this shit.

[Merusk]

The cgi and some of the sets were terrible. I cringed at one point because a Nile marsh and cave looked like someone with a camcorder was filming in Disney World. In other spots it was decent but not fantastic.

Unevenly bad is the best description of the whole movie. It's bad but doesn't go off into godawful. The good never rises above mediocre except in the spots I mentioned in my first post.

[Ginaz]

Wife wanted to see this instead of waiting until 9:45 for the next showing of "Race."

Costume design was amazing. The mortal love interest is incredibly hot. Gerard Butler chews scenery like no other. The direction, creature design, and writing and effects were B-grade at best. $1.50 theater or wait until it's on cable some lazy Saturday afternoon.

She was one of Immortan Joe's wives in Mad Max: Fury Road.

[Setanta]

From what I'm reading, it got slaughtered by Deadpool which is in its 3rd week. That's got be embarrassing given the differences in budget.

[Abagadro]

I have a feeling this movie was made for the foreign box office.

[jgsugden]

I imagine this movie would be pretty great on the big screen if you'RE too high to follow a story. Like a Transformers movie, it is spectacle fair.

[Merusk]

I have a feeling this movie was made for the foreign box office.

You're probably right. It did follow one version of the Osiris/ Horus/ Set myth pretty well though. At least as well as the original Clash of the Titans did Perseus if you ignore the Metal animal God transformation.

[UnSub]

Poor, poor Alex Proyas. What happened to you?

[Venkman]

This is one of those head-scratching movies. The first time I saw the trailer I thought "ok maybe as an origin story to Hawkman". But otherwise this looked like one of those quickly forgetable things that have no reason to exist. I can't even figure out why Butler or Rush even did it. I'd be very curious to understand the decision making process behind it. "Need something for February when nobody's paying attention"?

There was no reason for this movie to exist, no reason for it to have the budget it got, and no value* to it except for what I figure some people maybe hope will become some future "it was so bad it was good" cult favorites.

But that can't work with such heavy CGI. Bad CGI just gets worse with time, going from crap to unwatchable.

* Ok, it employed a few thousand people for awhile, so there's that. But are we so starved for movies to be worked on?

[Merusk]

I always remind myself something the MST3K crew once said when discussing the difficulty of getting new releases for DVD issuance of the show.

"Nobody sets out to make a bad movie."

Nearest I can figure is the budget got eaten somewhere else on this, or the original effects crew got replaced. There's some good effects just not the transforms. It's just a bizarre movie and I'd love to know more of the production story to know why it went so badly wrong.

I mean the story isn't even D&D movie levels of bad. It was cheesy but not unsalvagebly so, but the effects, editing and cinematography just made it so bad.

[HaemishM]

So glad to see this had an opening domestic weekend of $14 million (worldwide $38 million) on a $140 million budget. Meanwhile Deadpool, a movie full of "stupid" gags and raunchy humor and violence has now made over $600 million worldwide in just 3 weeks.

[Mandella]

I always remind myself something the MST3K crew once said when discussing the difficulty of getting new releases for DVD issuance of the show.

"Nobody sets out to make a bad movie."

Nearest I can figure is the budget got eaten somewhere else on this, or the original effects crew got replaced. There's some good effects just not the transforms. It's just a bizarre movie and I'd love to know more of the production story to know why it went so badly wrong.

I mean the story isn't even D&D movie levels of bad. It was cheesy but not unsalvagebly so, but the effects, editing and cinematography just made it so bad.

I remember there were books (well, at least one) written on why Heaven's Gate was such a disaster. While this one is not on par with Cimino's "Imma gonna break the studio" project, I am looking forward to the inevitable dissections of what really went wrong.

[Furiously]

Likely the same places John Carter went wrong.