So this film came out recently called Gods of Egypt. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Probably not though, because it absolutely tanked at the box office during its opening weekend. In light of this, the film’s director Alex Proyas has lashed out at reviewers. Because obviously, he couldn’t just have made a shit film.
Gods of Egypt currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 12 percent, and scraped in just $14 million at the box office, despite its $140 million budget. The fantasy flick stars Gerard Butler as an Egyptian God, because reasons.
Indeed, the film’s “white-washing” (putting Caucasian actors in Egyptian roles) certainly rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way, but the film turned out to be wank in spite of that. It’s kind of inspiring in a way.
If you want to read Proyas’ entire tantrum, you can check it out here – but if you’re just after the highlights I’ve got you covered.
Proyas Began:
NOTHING CONFIRMS RAMPANT STUPIDITY FASTER…Than reading reviews of my own movies. I usually try to avoid the experience – but this one takes the cake. Often, to my great amusement, a critic will mention my past films in glowing terms, when at the time those same films were savaged, as if to highlight the critic’s flawed belief of my descent into mediocrity. You see, my dear fellow FBookers, I have rarely gotten great reviews… on any of my movies, apart from those by reviewers who think for themselves and make up their own opinions. Sadly those type of reviewers are nearly all dead.
Having presumably confirmed his own rampant stupidity, Proyas goes on to lament the loss of “proper critics”, whatever that means. He claims that critics no longer have their own opinions, and that anyone can easily post their thoughts on a film these days over Facebook/Twitter/Blogs etc.
I kind of see what he’s getting at there, but not sure if that makes too much of a difference in the case of Gods of Egypt, since everyone thought it was shit. He also seems to have convinced himself that there weren’t many good reviews because the people who liked it feared some kind of backlash.
Still, he leaves us on a happy note:
Now we have a pack of diseased vultures pecking at the bones of a dying carcass. Trying to peck to the rhythm of the consensus. I applaud any film-goer who values their own opinion enough to not base it on what the pack-mentality say is good or bad.
In defense of the pack-mentality, trips to the cinema are pretty expensive these days. If 90% of the people I ask tell me not to bother spending my money on a film because it’s crap, I’ll probably listen to the majority.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.