"Gods of Egypt" - Review (UPDATED 2/27/2016)

A Giant Demon Butthole is About to Eat Gerard Butler Standing on a Heaven Tower Oh Nooooooooooooooo

Um.

Wow.

Uh.

How did this go so wrong?

(Warning. A long and rambling angry rant is incoming. Prepare for the hammer to be brought down.)

I would like to issue a formal apology to How to Be Single to start off. I accused you of being unfocused, not entertaining, and a bad representation of women. All right, you still are, but Gods of Egypt has you beat. The white washing that everyone on the internet freaked out about a few months ago is the least of this movie's problems. This is a bad movie. In fact, this is a very bad movie.

Before my rant begins, I would also like to say that I am usually not so hyperbolic in my reviews. But as I began to think back on this movie, the wrong buttons were pushed. I saw one "so bad it's just bad" (as opposed to "so bad that it's amazing") movie too far. I come here as a simple film blogger with not much of a following with a terrible vengeance. But I am such a mess right now because I had so much fun laughing at everything and all of its unintentional ineptness and offensiveness.

Normally I would do a plot synopsis here, but I am afraid that a coherent paragraph devoted to this is not possible. I guess all I can say about this movie's "plot" is describe some of the things that you will see in it because a there is not a coherent story to connect these elements. It is like they are all just thrown into the movie without even thinking of how they fit. Some of the things that you will see in this stinky piece of Hollywood trash are: gold rubbery Iron Man bird monster people, acting class dropouts, lots of Gerard Butler skin bronzer, robot body parts, a Geoffrey Rush living in space above a flat Earth firing laser bolts at a giant intergalactic butt hole, a really tall Heaven tower, zero plot development, sudden plot revelations, Jamie Lannister, hundreds of clones of a single black man, and not a single Egyptian. I took a friend tonight to see this so we can have a few laughs at its expense The Room style but all that escaped from our lips was insane laughter, which I am ashamed of because of all the things that anger me about it as well. I have a feeling that this will have The Room affect on me, another movie that baffled me the first time that is now a serious part of my life. Seriously, I can watch The Room several hundred more times and always find a new wonderfully terrible thing to cackle like a madman at. This thing is a uninspired mess with medieval sensibilities, but it was quite the experience. Hopefully it becomes a living room classic later, but right now I am absolutely floored and disturbed by what I saw.

Yes, the lack of any actual Egyptian actors in the cast is a problem, but it is only the first problem. 

The second biggest problem that I noticed is the extremely trashy representation of women that would make Michael Bay blush. The women in this have zero to do except stand around with outrageous cleavage and comment on how the big stupid men are fighting each other. However, only the two main women in the movie get this honor. The rest of the women get to stand in the background and be ugly. I have a challenge for anyone brave enough to sit through this slog: in the opening scene where the king's coronation is taking place and there is a crowd of tiny mortal people watching, notice how the two main mortal characters are standing right in front of this crowd of thousands of people. Remember the crazy boob-y dress that the love interest is wearing? It will be hard to miss her in the crowd. You will see her immediately. Now notice everyone else in the crowd. Is there a single other woman who looks this way? If you can find a single other woman, or man for that manner who is given the honor of having the "honor" of having a distinguishable identifiable trait, like having your boobs hanging out for example, I will give you ten bucks. Yep. My entire blog ad revenue in its lifetime. It is yours. In all honesty, it is actually kind of hilarious how they sexualize the love interest in this movie and how noticeable it is in that scene. There is not a single other person that looks like she does. It is almost like the movie is holding up a sign saying "I don't care about the women in my movie at all" and waving it in our face. This is the latest in a trend of "women are sex objects" that most recently poked up its deformed head in Adam Sandler's Pixels where the warrior video game woman was given to the screamy pervy Josh Gad as a literal trophy. This trend needs to stop. 

The worst example of this trend present in Gods of Egypt is the customary completely clothed PG-13 sex scene that takes place after Gerard Butler takes over the world and steals Jamie Lannister's goddess girlfriend. Even the other woman in this movie, who just so happens to be this "powerful goddess" is reduced to just being the dummy dude's sex object. He forces himself onto her even though she is his prisoner and has no choice. She either sucks it up (literally most likely) or she is dead. It is eroticized rape. No way around it. It is sort of despicable. But like The Room's rampant sexism and super creepy sex scenes (with incredibly creepy behind the scenes history), I cannot take any of it seriously because of how insane and unknowing it is. So instead of being a terrible thing, it became absolutely hilarious in the most maddening of ways.

On top of all of this, the effects have that flimsy and stupid quality to them where there is nothing to base them on, like mo-cap, to give it any kind of weight. So whenever someone transforms into a shiny gold bouncy Power Ranger with wings, it becomes an absolute tragedy of epic silliness. It is absurd how crazy this looks. Add some terrible porno level acting from everyone, ESPECIALLY Brenton Thwaits (My lord he was awful. The opening scene with boob girl and him with the dress is hysterical.) and this becomes a disaster of epic proportions. Do not even get me started on the giant demon butthole from space that comes down upon Egypt with the pace of a snail as all the other silly muscle men fight each other. It is insane. This thing is a mess.

Guys. I originally wrote a longer review of this where I got extremely angry and cursed the name of Hollywood and I posted it. So if you saw that review, I apologize for the whiplash of all of a sudden seeing me being softer on it afterward. The only way I can explain this is by blaming the movie and the whirlwind that it is. Seriously. This thing confuses me so much. This thing is a monster and it is scarier than any monster actually in the movie. There will be so many things to revisit later that baffle me (the black man who can clone himself and has a robot brain??) and I really hope it grows on me. I need another Birdemic or The Apple in my life.

Grade: F. (Entertainment value: A+)