Posted on 12/12/2014 8:13:26 PM PST by lifeofgrace
When I was thirteen, I played a whole lot of Dungeons & Dragons. I was even the Dungeon Master for a while. I designed my own campaigns, with characters and towns mapped out. Old school. None of this video game online stuff. Sitting around a table with a bunch of nerds in a basement, with the Dungeon Master guide, combat tables, and a jar of 6-, 12-, and 20-sided dice (don’t judge me, you did stuff you don't talk about, too).
This is Exodus: Gods and Kings.
I can imagine Ridley Scott and his writing team of Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, and Steven Zaillian in Scott’s basement rolling dice, with Scott as Dungeon Master. In their defense, making a movie based on the Biblical story of Exodus is no easy task. You could end up with a two and a half hour Sunday school lesson, or a live-action version of Price of Egypt; you could get all religious and blow $140 million on a bomb that nobody but Evangelicals would go see; or you could go the way of Darren Aronofsky and make a classic blunder by making a Biblically-themed movie without really basing it on the Bible.
To Scott’s credit, he did none of these things. Exodus: Gods and Kings is solidly based on the titular book of the Bible, but only as the Dungeon Master’s guide. The characters are pure D&D (or World of Warcraft, if you simply must live in the computer world).
If you’ve never experienced D&D or role-play games, just play along with me here.
Moses is a level 20 fighter/magic-user. Strength 18 double-zero, Intelligence 18, Charisma 18, Wisdom 10. He’s a bad hombre. He is even better than Rameses, a level 19 fighter with Strength matching Moses, but Intelligence a meager 15 and Charisma of 12. You get the idea.
A mild warning: if you keep reading, there may be some light spoilers, nothing too bad. I really can’t spoil it too much, because, well, the Israelites leave Egypt and cross the Red Sea. There, I’ve given you the ending. You may as well keep reading.
This is not your Bible-story Moses. It’s Moses meets Rambo 3, complete with Mujahideen, Arabian horses, Stinger missiles and Soviet Mi-24 choppers. Okay, no missiles or choppers, but it’s not a huge leap to imagine them. Instead of Christian Bale, I think Sly Stallone would have made a great Moses in this film.
The movie itself is what we called a Hack and Slash. Killing, blood, more killing, more blood, and lots of it. Oh, yeah, and then there’s God. God is the twelve year-old rolling the dice. Seriously, he’s twelve. And he may even be a figment of Rambo’s Moses’ imagination. We’re never really sure. The only person who actually sees God is Moses; to others he’s just having conversations with himself.
And God is about as mature as a twelve year-old. Petulant. Sarcastic. He’s the kind of God you’d imagine if you were an atheist reading the Old Testament. An atheist like Ridley Scott. Don’t get me wrong, Scott wasn’t trying to disrespect or mock God. This is really the God he sees. A God who isn’t satisfied just hurting the Egyptians, but wanting them to drop to their knees and beg him to stop. A terrible, tantrum-throwing, narcissistic, selfish God.
In this Exodus, God is not holy. He doesn’t command Moses to “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place thou standest is holy ground” like God did in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. He doesn’t command Moses to do anything. He rather persuades Moses, because he needs him to fight for the Hebrews. This Moses doesn’t carry a staff, but a sword.
Moses doesn’t deal with Rameses as much as become a freedom fighter (really, it’s Rambo III), teaching the Hebrews to fight with weapons and tactics that won’t be developed for at least a thousand years. I won’t even get into that, but having the Stingers and Mi-24’s wouldn’t have spoiled the historical accuracy any worse than Scott already did. Moses proceeds to unionize the Hebrews (apparently, the strongest young men have plenty of spare time for this; only the old men appear to be working as slaves) and negotiate for fair wages, better working conditions, and paid vacation for the Israelite slaves. He never utters “let my people go”.
Rameses responds like any despotic ruler, but the weird part is that I sympathized more with him than with Moses and the Mujahideen Hebrew freedom-fighters. I wonder if that’s intentional. The most intensely emotional scene in the movie is when God brings the final plague, killing the Egyptian firstborn. I almost shed tears (honestly) for Rameses and the rest of the Egyptians’ loss.
Here the movie is (unintentionally?) accurate. In Jewish tradition, during the Passover, Jews empty some wine out of their cups when reciting the ten plagues God visited on the Egyptians, because a full cup symbolizes complete joy, and God took no joy in bringing plagues on the Egyptians. Scott’s God seems to enjoy it, however, telling Moses to simply sit back and watch as the plagues come, one after the other. Instead of Moses coming before Pharaoh after each plague to ask for the Israelites’ freedom, we see the Egyptian Neil deGrasse Tyson stand up and attempt to explain the plagues, scientifically. It’s comic relief between the flies and boils and vermin and hail.
The Hebrews in this movies are unlovable, one-dimensional characters. Their suffering is not visceral, and the Egyptians’ oppression of them just doesn’t seem believable. It’s obvious to me that Scott and his writing team don’t have a lot of sympathy for them. They are either cowering in fear, or blindly following Moses’ commands.
Nothing God does in this film is unquestionably God’s work, with one important exception. The slaying of the Egyptian firstborn was God with no other explanation. God is a child-killer. Everything else has a potential natural explanation. This will satisfy atheists who see God that way, and people of faith can have their way too, by attributing everything else to God on their own.
The Bible says that Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). Scott’s Moses isn’t that man; arguably he might become that man by the end of the movie. Scott’s God is neither just not loving (if He’s real at all).
This is how you make a movie where everyone knows the story, and everyone expects something different. Make it so everyone can see it their own way, and come away with what they were expecting. If you expect God to do miracles, He does. If you expect God to be imaginary, he is. If you expect great special effects, there they are. If you expect good acting, it’s not terrible. If you expect an action flick, you get one.
There’s one spoiler coming up next, so stop here if you don’t want to know.
At the end of the movie, Moses climbs Mount Horeb to get the ten commandments. On the way up, he meets God who looks down on the Israelites building their golden calf. God half-smiles and shakes his head in a tisk-tisk, then accompanies Moses to the top of the mountain, where Moses carves the law into the tablets. God tells Moses to put down the hammer if he doesn’t agree with the laws.
That’s how it is with Gods and Kings. You get to carve your own impression, and if you don’t like what you see, pretend you’re watching a role-play game or a Rambo movie, and simply enjoy the effects and the action.
Christian Bale thinks Moses was a “schizophrenic.”
No need to waste time and money on this one.
And apparently the movie fabricates the parting of the Red Sea as some sort of naturalistic phenomenon. Just an earthquake or whatever.
Good luck with your stupid movie.
Is MOSES in this movie about 80 years old?
oh, dear.
I caught just a bit of one of the TV programs dedicated to Hollywood gossip etc. and they said Blacks are angry because the Egyptians are not being portrayed by Negroes.
Of course that is so stupid as to be ridiculous.
BTW, Ramses the Great had red wavy hair and a fair complexion.
The truth often offends.
Christian Baal...
Ridley Scott is such a douchebag. This Arab-lover created Kingdom of Heaven to spread Islamophilic lies about the Crusades and it sounds like he is doing the same thing here. I won’t see it, and I hope other FReepers won’t either.
I don’t object to those who say it was actually the “Sea of Reeds” and the wind could have parted the water to where it was shallow enough to cross. Even if that’s what happened, it still happened at the hand of God. It also proves it DID happen and it was no accident.
The country has completely abandoned religion, particularly Christianity, and yet turns to the Bible for fodder to make movies out of. The only result can be Noah or Moses as Marvel Comic book heros with super powers and interventions by the Greek “gods” of Asgaard or where ever. There’s no understanding or acceptance of the possibility of God existing or mattering. They can only use the Bible to ridicule God and history in order to justify the glorious “now” (Obamaland). Good luck with that.
The word of God tells us the Red Sea was parted. Any “proof” given by men is vastly inferior to this.
Any attempt—as with this movie—to replace God’s word with the inventions of men is blasphemy and I want no part in blasphemy.
Guess you haven’t seen it? I saw it yesterday and found it entertaining. Just an updated version of The 10 Commandments. Some folks may like it some not.
“I saw it yesterday and found it entertaining.”
When did the Bible become ‘entertaining?’
The Bible is the Word. The Word is Jesus. Jesus suffered and died for the world.
The Bible is not ‘entertaining.’ We delight in the Word - but all should glorify God.
Sure it is entertaining. There are many accounts in the Bible of God saving His people and punishing the wicked. You seem like another of the Freepers who thread-crap at every opportunity.
Wanting to do a movie about people from thousands of years ago is fine. But don’t hijack a book from the Bible by replacing it with atheistic content.
Which means you did not see the movie. You are going by a small time blogger from Warner Robins Georgia that has a handful of followers. When you do go see then I will take you seriously. Read Erick Ericssons Red State article about it.
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