With Son of God and Noah behind us, it seemed like our requisite number of annual Hollywood Bible-themed epics had passed, but lo and behold, along comes Exodus: Gods and Kings.
I'm wowed by the spectacle (looks like what Noah wanted to be) - but I'm skeptical about the storytelling. On the other hand, I'm a long-time Christian Bale fan, and I've enjoyed Joel Edgerton as well. My favorite adaptation of the Moses story will probably always be The Prince of Egypt, frankly. Yes, the animated musical. Incidentally, Prince also has my favorite on-screen representation of God as well, so take that, insipid hippie protagonist of Son of God.
Hannah Long
Sure, it's Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton, but Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins couldn't save Noah. I love how even just in a minute and a half it's already obvious that the movie's central focus will be a completely ginned up conflict that had nothing to do with the actual story. Like warmed-over Ben Hur. Yawn. Been there, seen the chariot race, can we do something different now?
ReplyDeleteI thought Noah was a thoroughly mixed-bag - but interesting...partly because of all the taboos it broke. Russell Crowe didn't impress me, but I liked Hopkins.
DeleteAs for Exodus...you mean the Rameses-Moses? That's exactly what happened in Prince of Egypt, and it really worked. (Though I could see the Ben-Hur similarity). But Exodus does look a lot like it could be a Prince of Egypt remake, which is a shame. It's a movie that would look great in live-action, but it's nothing without the music.
I haven't seen either of those movies yet, unfortunately. Funnily enough, when I started the video the first thing that came up (unbeknownst to me) was a trailer for Hercules--I thought it was the Exodus trailer at first, and I was thinking, "What?? DWAYNE JOHNSON SURELY is not playing Moses!!! ...Oh. Different trailer. Makes sense now." I had a good laugh at myself. The Exodus trailer looks really good! I'm excited about it. Perhaps I can whiddle my parents into letting us go see it when it comes out...looks promising. And awesome. I'd love to get into the film industry, and make movies that show truly strong stories from the Bible. I'm always mulling over them, trying to understand how the different characters thought, felt, believed--how they could do certain things, and still, like in David's case, still be said of that he "was a man after God's own heart". Hmm. I want to make movies that show a story as sharp as a doubled-edged sword.
ReplyDeleteYeah - I enjoy seeing well-made biblical films, but I generally don't seek them out. For one thing, the material has been done so many times that it feels tired, for another (actually the same thing), they're almost always very predictable. Noah, at least, wasn't that.
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