“Inaccurate, long and a complete narrative mess.”
CONTAINS SPOILERS It’s films like this that make me wonder whether Ridley Scott has really forgotten how to create a strong narrative in his movies. After the longwinded and rather tedious Hannibal and Robin Hood, my faith in him is about as little as the faith that Moses has in Exodus: Gods and Kings. After Darren Aronofski’s Noah receiving such positive reviews from critics, but negative feedback from the Christian community, you could say that there is a definite hunger for some strong Biblical epics in Hollywood – particularly from Christians who want the accuracy to be top-notch. Exodus: Gods and Kings’ trailer did not disappoint, and it’s guaranteed to make a large sum of money, but it was by no means destined to be a great film. Right at the start, we are thrown into a battle sequence in which there is little to no explanation or context of what is really going on. As much as the battle is well choreographed, it appears to exist for no reason. I condemn the films’ lack of character development, as much I will condemn it’s poor narrative structure. We are meant to be following Moses, but the film makes it so difficult to follow what is actually going on with him as a character. The politics of Pharaoh running the Empire are none to few from far between.
The worst place an audience member can be when watching a film, is finding themselves not caring for any of the characters – this was exactly my position. The way the narrative jumped to stupid and unexplained conclusions, or how each character seemed to do things in way that appeared to have no relative to the story made me stop caring, completely. Moses is meant to be the man of great faith in God – but in this film, he has no faith. I realise that as a Christian, I am biased – but nevertheless the Biblical inaccuracies are too many to count. One of the things that I was very nervous about before seeing the film, was the issue of God looking like the bad guy in the film – when of course he is not. In Exodus: Gods and Kings, God is the bad guy, no question. The film only tries to analyse the short Exodus story of Moses releasing God’s people from the grasp of Pharaoh and doesn’t take into account God’s great, merciful and loving plan in the long run.
The Burning Bush sequence is one of my favourite passages of scripture, but in the film was portrayed as Moses getting stuck in quicksand and having a child (meant to be God’s messenger) speak to him about what was to come. This is straight after Moses marrying Zipporah so quickly that we have no time to get a grasp on either character. Moses then leaves his wife and son to go back to Egypt – the greatest problem that I have with this, is that in the Bible, Moses takes Zipporah and his son with him. God wouldn’t have a man marry his wife, have a child and then disappear for years at a time – it goes completely against the character of God.
1 Corinthians 7:5 says
‘Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.’
It is important for a husband and wife to stay together – God wouldn’t separate them like this.
The plagues hurt God’s people as well as the Egyptians (what?!), the blood is caused by crocodile and alligator carnage and there is no parting of the red sea. I will conclude by saying that the death of the first born was well-judged and the choreography had it’s moments of being rather strong. But it doesn’t match up to the stupidly written narrative and glaring errors that smack you in the face throughout the film’s long and baggy duration. Exodus: Gods and Kings has received negative reaction, this time from critics and Christians alike – I can see why.
★★
Hudson-Cook 