How did this happen?

What It’s About? Horus, a god in exile, and Bek, a mortal thief, embark on a quest together to recover precious treasures and rescue Egypt from the evil god Set’s reign of darkness.

STRAIGHT UP: Simply put, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. 0.5/5

What I Liked

The basic idea, maybe? – As far as I can tell, the intent here was to deliver a hyper-stylized, action-heavy re-interpretation of classical mythology, kind of like Saint Seiya. That’s cool! Unfortunately, the process of turning that inspiration into a completed film involved making every bad decision imaginable…

What I Disliked

Whitewashed casting – The fact that none of the people onscreen are even remotely believable as Egyptians might actually be among the least of this film’s problems.

The worst collective performance from a set of Hollywood actors in recent memory – No one gets a free pass here.

Brenton Thwaites as Bek – Everything that comes out of Thwaites’ mouth in this film is either an unfunny quip or obnoxious whining – and he never shuts up! I started actively rooting for his character to die.

Gerard Butler as Set – It’s possible to gauge the level of effort Butler put into any given scene by how many times he slips back into his Scottish accent. This happens a lot, and it’s noticeable. Plus, Set is just a boring generic arch-villain.

Geoffrey Rush as Fire Zordon – I mean Ra. But anyone who sees this, and remembers the old Power Rangers movie, won’t be able to avoid making the visual comparison.

Cringe-inducing dialogue – It’s hard to heap 100% of the blame on the actors when this is the kind of material they’re given. I literally cannot believe that any of this was written by professionals.

Horrendous visual effects – It would have been impossible to convince me that this movie was made in 2016 if I hadn’t seen it myself. The CGI isn’t even on par with the best the early 2000’s had to offer, and the green-screen work is hilariously obvious.

Hopeless cinematography – As the movie goes on, it’s almost possible to feel the life draining out of the camera crew and design team. Every scene is shot with the same three light sources, regardless of location or time of day; and while early scenes are at least bright and colorful, later ones are shot in a near-monochromatic orange. The big battle between Horus and Set at the end is especially a mess – it might have actually been cool, if only I could’ve seen anything!

An absolute lack of consistency – This screenplay loves to set up rules for things and then break them, sometimes in the same scene! I think the trigger for Horus’ armored “divine form” changes at least three times. One of Set’s traps has the heroes completely bound until he finishes his monologue, at which point they effortlessly break from their cage. My favorite, though – Osiris is stabbed in the gut by Set early on and apparently dies forever, but Thoth literally has his brain torn from his skull, only to somehow appear intact and smiling in the movie’s closing scene.

And much more – The above are just the lowlights, but they’re far from the full extent of everything that’s wrong with Gods of Egypt. The short version is – everything about this movie is wrong. It’s the worst possible film that could have been made with the resources on hand.

CLOSING THOUGHT: I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect this film to be good, but there is often plenty of entertainment to be found in watching bad movies, and – especially for me – in reviewing them. But Gods of Egypt isn’t just bad – it’s aggressively bad, the kind of bad that turns a humble review like this into a public service announcement. The only value this film has is as the ultimate “how did this get made” think piece. Most movies that achieve this caliber of awfulness are the product of small production teams and limited budgets. This one had $140 million and the backing of a major studio! Teams of professional editors, producers, and executives looked at this, and not one of them said “shut it down.” How? Why? The explanation might warrant its own documentary.