Ridley Scott's "Exodus" - Part 1

Asr said:
The complete lack of storytelling didn't explain anything or anyone's motives, which wasn't really a problem for me since I'm familiar with the story as a Christian, but non-religious people would undoubtedly be lost. Also has to be by far the worst directing from Ridley Scott ever, barely anything made sense in the movie.
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I'm not trying to break anyone's balls here, but when, for example, Mozes OUT OF NOWHERE ordered the Hebrews to slaughter the lambs and mark the doors with their blood I thought "Well... that's the kind of weird **** that happens in the Bible". I didn't think much of those moments for that reason.
Killing all those Egyptian children? WHAT? If it was a non-biblical story audiences would think "This God-guy... kind of an *******. Why did he have to do that?"

Anyway, I finally saw this today and I actually really liked it. The visuals are AMAZING as well as the performances. Sigourney Weaver was kind of there, though. Useless to cast her in that role. One other problem is that the cuts Scott had to make were really obvious. Mozes meets a girl and literally one minute later they're getting married.
 
Exodus just says that the Pharaoh's Army drowned. It doesn't mention the fate of the Pharaoh himself.
 
Unfortunately for me this was another Kingdom of Heaven...epically-mounted but narratively disjointed and fragmented.

What's up with the lambs and marking the doors with blood? Why does Ramses throw in the towel and then next scene he's all gung-ho charging after Moses?

I'm asking rhetorically, just pointing out that missing scenes are obvious, along with it being obvious that someone of Sigourney Weaver's name recognition wouldn't get cast in literally like a 2 minute role. Aaron Paul had nothing to do either. Moses and Zipporah meet, have one conversation, and boom, they're married.

I didn't think either Bale or Edgerton were that great either.

I liked the plagues, the first-born sons scene (as creepy as I find it that some people actually consider this morally acceptable), and the Red Sea crossing was pretty exciting.

Killing all those Egyptian children? WHAT? If it was a non-biblical story audiences would think "This God-guy... kind of an *******. Why did he have to do that?"
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Pretty much what I think about that whole part of the story anyway.
 
Loki882 said:
I don't recall the Bible ever explicitly saying that Pharaoh drowned. And neither the DeMille film nor the Prince of Egypt had him die either. He survives in both versions. And the problem with specifically identifying him as Ramses II (historians are somewhat divided over who the Biblical Pharaoh might have been, with Ramses being one possibility) is that Ramses DIDN'T drown. The guy lived to be in his 90's for goodness sake.
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Ramses didn't die in this movie either...
 
I did think that scene was well-done, with the shadow crawling over everything, the sleeping children's breath cutting off, the torches blowing out, and then Ramses' wife waking up and hearing Ramses' screaming. Ramses was actually pretty sympathetic there for a few minutes, IMO.
 
Schlosser85 said:
I did think that scene was well-done, with the shadow crawling over everything, the sleeping children's breath cutting off, the torches blowing out, and then Ramses' wife waking up and hearing Ramses' screaming. Ramses was actually pretty sympathetic there for a few minutes, IMO.
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Yeah it was a great scene.

The kid who played God's messenger (or was he God? I don't know) was surprisingly good.
 
The crocodile scene was awesome. Just make that 2 hours long.
 
It was so hard to find a screening for this. :funny: My theater reduced it to like only 5 shows throughout the day and they were all inconvenient times. Anyway, I finally caught it and it was OK. It's definitely not a Gladiator or KOH but I don't think it deserves the 27% RT score either. I'd give it a 7/10 and most of my issues were with the script more than anything. And yes, majority of the actors were severely wasted.
 
2015 will be the battle of the Extended Editions
 
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I really enjoyed the movie. The only complaint I have is the variety of accents among the actors. It was like they couldn't settle on one accent and everyone just did their own. It's a minor complaint though. Overall, I had a good time watching the movie. It was definitely more entertaining than Noah.
 
It's less successful than Noah which shocks me. This looked a lot more mainstream friendly.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to the DC. Is the blu-ray coming out at Easter time?
 
MrMaooz said:
It's less successful than Noah which shocks me. This looked a lot more mainstream friendly.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to the DC. Is the blu-ray coming out at Easter time?
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There is a blu-ray scheduled to come out on March 17. No confirmation about whether it will be the theatrical cut only. My guess is that we will get a bare bones theatrical cut blu-ray in March and later in the year or next year we will get the full extended cut. Thats how they released KOH. Hope Im wrong tho. I wanna see the full cut asap!
 
I think that Noah was a more ambitious movie that took chances. And maybe some people were just flat-out curious to see what the deal was because it looked so different.
 
The oddest part for me about this movie is their choice to cast white actors in leading roles but they have actors of color as extras...I'm usually not that interested in discussing racial issues in movies because they're usually storms in a tea cup but I find it odd that they'd go to the effort of getting extras that look geographically appropriate but then cast the leads with Hollywood's usuals. It's kind of admitting that nobody was going to give a f*** about this movie unless big (generally caucasian) names were attached. That should be a red flag. But that seems like it's the least of this movie's issues.
 
I don't usually get worked up about the whole "whitewashing" debate, but the fact that Exodus has this racial hierarchy where all the lead roles go to white people and then African and Middle Eastern actors get the bit parts as servants and stuff only amplifies the problem, IMO. It makes it look worse than if the entire cast was white.
 
Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing after reading some more posts in this thread. If they wanted to go with the logic that the only way to get their market (predominantly caucasian, I'm assuming) interested in this movie was to have a white cast I'd say that seems understandable. But instead they give the high profile roles to white actors with bit parts being played by the correct historical ethnicity, which shows that they were aware of the racial component but ignored it. They were basically going "We know Egyptians and Jews didn't look like this, but you won't take this **** seriously unless somebody you've seen before delivers these lines, so **** it!".

The more ridiculous part is that there are actually some great actors out there with the right look, surely Dev Patel or Riz Ahmed strike a good combination between looking the part and having some broader appeal? I dunno, the whole casting thing seems like the twilight zone to me, absolutely ridiculous. So if they make a movie about Shaka Zulu or Ghengis Khan will they be played by Bradley Cooper but with black/mongolian extras respectively? :huh:

I think getting worked up about race issues in Hollywood movies when race is arbitrary for the story is unproductive, but when race or geography (and in that case race indirectly) are historical and known variables it makes zero sense to cast actors that aren't congruent with the historical facts.
 
Well Hollywood once had the brilliant idea to cast John freaking Wayne to play Genghis Khan, and it was hilariously awful. This is The Last Airbender all over again. You have a tribe that's clearly modeled off of Inuits/Eskimos, and all of the extras look racially/ethnically appropriate. And yet the three actually important characters (the two leads and their grandma) are all pasty White. And then the other main player, who's based off of Tibetan Buddhist monks, is also White. This is a habit in Hollywood that needs to stop. Either go all in one way, or the other. Trying to half-ass it is the worst thing that you could possibly do.
 
That's more than slightly problematic. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation for me. Are people actually generally intolerant and un-accepting of racially diverse casts so film makers cast white leads, or does Hollywood historically prefer white leads and audiences aren't being exposed to anything different so their points of reference don't grow?

As an audience member I would find it quite patronizing if something I patently know is historically inaccurate is presented to me with a tone of "We know you'd only take this seriously if the nice people in the movie looked like you :up:". But then again, maybe the average audience member is a repressed and bigoted putz.
 
It's a vicious circle really. Will audiences flock to a mega budget movie if it doesn't have any big household names as stars? Will the studios at least try to make a mega budget film with ethnic actors/actresses in lead roles?

The audiences are to blame just as much as the studios in my view.
 
Schlosser85 said:
This movie has more problems than just deleted scenes.
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My only real issues (the ones that ruined the film for me) with the film were character and plot related. All of which can be fixed with a longer cut.
 
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