GODS OF EGYPT (2016) *

Are there two Alex Proyas or something?  One who makes dark and broody movies like The Crow and Dark City, and another who makes head-scratching disasters like Knowing and this unmitigated turd?  It’s hard to believe the guy who made atmospheric and creepy Dark City made this shiny, noisy, lousy, CGI-laden abomination.

Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is about to be crowned God of Egypt when his two-faced brother Set (Gerard Butler) shows up to challenge him to the throne.  They then turn into shiny monsters that look like end-level bosses in a Sega Saturn game and do battle.  Set takes his brother’s eyes and Horus leaves in disgrace.  A young thief (Brenton Twaites) tries to steal them from Set’s palace to return Horus’ power in exchange for bringing his true love (Courtney Eaton) back to life.  

The rampant overuse of cheesy CGI almost singlehandedly sinks the whole deal. We’re talking Greenscreen City. From the thousands of CGI extras stumbling around a phony backdrop that looks like cut scenes from a video game to the wonky monsters that look like they came out of an Asylum movie, the effects in Gods of Egypt are a fucking joke.  Whenever the actors run (or more accurately pretend to run) against the obvious greenscreen, it never once feels like they’re in any real danger.  

Sure, the monster effects are too clean and/or gaudy, but the script is even worse.  It feels like it was written and rewritten again and again till the whole thing reached the point of incoherence.  Our hero tries to save girlfriend.  Then he learns he can’t save her.  Well, maybe we can save her.  It’s like it’s making up its own rules as it goes along.  Whenever things get too stupid, Proyas will cut to something even stupider (like a flying chariot driven by a giant fly) in a futile effort to distract you from the overwritten script. 

Proyas throws us from one shitty CGI battle sequence to the next so fast that you become almost instantly numb to it all.  I mean I wanted to like it.  I can’t tell you how much it pains me to say that a movie containing women riding giant fire-breathing snakes is terrible, but here we are.

Butler skates by unscathed, mostly by acting as if he’s still in 300.  Twaites and Coster-Waldau get lost in all the ones and zeroes though.  Even the usually charismatic Chadwick Boseman becomes engulfed in all the CGI lunacy.  

AKA:  Kings of Egypt.