The film features various deities, including Ra (Geoffrey Rush), who battles the shadow beast Apophis from a space-faring solar barge, and Hathor (Élodie Yung), the goddess of love. Critical Reception & Controversy
The film was nominated for several Razzie Awards, winning "Worst Director" for Alex Proyas and "Worst Supporting Actor" for both Butler and Coster-Waldau (tied). It was also nominated for "Worst Picture." Gods.of.egypt.2016
Let us not pretend: the film is visually grotesque in its excess. Every surface is polished gold. The costumes look like World of Warcraft armor designed by a luxury perfume commercial. The scale is ludicrous—doorways fifty meters high for beings who are only ten feet tall. The whitewashing (Gerard Butler as Set? Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Horus?) is an embarrassing erasure. The film features various deities, including Ra (Geoffrey
A breakdown of compared to actual Egyptian myths. Every surface is polished gold
This is strangely orthodox. In the Osiris myth, the god-king is murdered, dismembered, and requires his wife Isis and son Horus to avenge him. Egyptian gods are not the transcendent, omniscient God of Abraham. They are powerful but limited beings subject to fate, magic, and even death. Gods of Egypt amplifies this: Set, the usurper, is not a demon of pure evil but a resentful younger brother who feels overlooked. His motive—grief over Osiris’s favoritism—is almost Shakespearean, though delivered with the emotional nuance of a wrestling promo. The film’s divine drama is one of a dysfunctional royal family, not a cosmic battle of good and evil.
Given the brutal reviews, why would anyone seek out today? The answer lies in its earnest insanity.
In an era of safe, quippy, post- Avengers blockbusters, Gods of Egypt is gloriously, unapologetically weird. It is a film where Chadwick Boseman wears an ibis mask and talks about physics; where Gerard Butler literally has a line: "You dare steal from a god?!"; where the final battle involves two giant, animatronic-helmeted men wrestling on a floating platform.