When it hits theaters this weekend, the gonzo fantasy epic Gods of Egypt may have built up the most hype for being the latest Hollywood blockbuster to whitewash history. Like Exodus: Gods and Kings a couple years back, it cast predominantly white actors as ancient Egyptians, which has caused a bit of ruckus. In addition to that, however, it also looks totally bonkers, and just when you didn’t think it could look any crazier, here comes a new clip, one that features spaceships and Geoffrey Rush bursting into flames. That’s not something you see everyday.
Yeah, that’s, a spaceship, which is something I have to admit that, when I sat down to watch this clip, I did not expect to see. And beyond that, I was not expecting to see Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush burst into flames and get into a sword fight with Gerard Butler. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly glad to have witnessed such mayhem, but it was certainly not what I initially imagined. And holy crap, Gods of Egypt looks gleefully ridiculous.
This is also a bit of something different than what we knew of Gods of Egypt and ups the lunacy factor a few degrees. We’ve seen gods and monsters and multiple copies of Chadwick Boseman all running around doing errands or whatever; that all looked plenty strange on its own, but when you throw this new footage into the mix, things are just getting silly now. And I love it.
The plot of Gods of Egypt revolves around Bek, a mortal man played by The Giver star Brenton Thwaites. He has to save the world from dark forces and rescue his true love in the process, so, you know, no stakes or anything like that. He’ll have to face off with the evil Set (Gerard Butler), the god of darkness who has taken over the throne of Egypt, and to even the odds a bit, Bek enlists the help of the powerful, but banished Horus (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau wearing an eye patch). Along their way they must battle all kinds of nefarious creatures and soldiers, and cross the heavens, earth, and the underworld. Sounds like quite an undertaking.
We haven’t seen it, so we don’t know if it is going to be good or bad, but regardless, Gods of Egypt certainly promises to be a full scale spectacle to behold. Hell, it very well may be worth seeing just for this spaceship sequence alone, and that’s only one small piece of a 127-minute movie, imagine what they’re hiding. We’ll get to see the madness for ourselves when Gods of Egypt opens everywhere this weekend.
