Escape to the Movies: Exodus: Gods and Kings - The 11th Plague

GamemasterAnthony

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The Obscure-O-Meter just exploded at the Blackstar reference. Didn't think very many people remembered that cartoon.

Betcha Charlton Heston is looking at the fail Exodus is and is acting all smug that he starred in the better version.
 

SnakeoilSage

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Sep 20, 2011
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Ridley, you've done some good films. Biblical films have never really been among those. Stop. Making. Them.

Edit: And stop forcing Biblical symbolism into your other films.
 

Elijah Newton

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Mr. Q said:
I would say the cast for this movie is bad but I'm sure if it reaches the level of badness like Johnny Depp playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger or, I swear to God this movie is real, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the Howard Hughes film The Conqueror. But I could be wrong on that part.
Let's not forget Prince of Persia ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473075/ ) starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton. Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina got the 'ethnic' nod? which, no disrespect to their acting abilities intended, is no more accurate than whitewashing the main roles.
 

Mr. Q

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Elijah Newton said:
Mr. Q said:
I would say the cast for this movie is bad but I'm sure if it reaches the level of badness like Johnny Depp playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger or, I swear to God this movie is real, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the Howard Hughes film The Conqueror. But I could be wrong on that part.
Let's not forget Prince of Persia ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473075/ ) starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton. Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina got the 'ethnic' nod? which, no disrespect to their acting abilities intended, is no more accurate than whitewashing the main roles.
Huh. I just realized that Ben Kingsley was in Exodus plus, way back in his career, he scored an Oscar for portraying Gandhi.
 

Trishbot

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Seriously, Hollywood. You need a charismatic, ethnic actor? One who can charm your pants off, do great action scenes, and do solid emotional scenes?

Go get Oded Fehr.


Still can't believe Disney didn't use him in the Prince of Persia movie...
 

Elijah Newton

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Mr. Q said:
Elijah Newton said:
Mr. Q said:
I would say the cast for this movie is bad but I'm sure if it reaches the level of badness like Johnny Depp playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger or, I swear to God this movie is real, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the Howard Hughes film The Conqueror. But I could be wrong on that part.
Let's not forget Prince of Persia ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473075/ ) starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton. Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina got the 'ethnic' nod? which, no disrespect to their acting abilities intended, is no more accurate than whitewashing the main roles.
Huh. I just realized that Ben Kingsley was in Exodus plus, way back in his career, he scored an Oscar for portraying Gandhi.
Yup. Though I'm less inclined to cite the latter for miscasting as Sir Kingsley's grandfather was Indian, coming to Britain by way of Zanzibar.

Trishbot said:
Seriously, Hollywood. You need a charismatic, ethnic actor? One who can charm your pants off, do great action scenes, and do solid emotional scenes?

Go get Oded Fehr.
Still can't believe Disney didn't use him in the Prince of Persia movie...
Sh!t yeah. The only rationale I can come up with is he wasn't interested or they didn't want it to be confused with The Mummy. But yeah, when I heard the initial announcement I figured he had the role.
 

Nixou

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aaaw come on, I like the "rivals have matching swords" thing.
If executed well it can make for some decent theming.

Yeah, It would have been decent, and thematically fit if Moses ditched his sword for his staff, or even better gave his sword to Ramses as a gesture of goodwill, a "I never wanted to challenge your throne, I don't want to threaten you a blade in hand"

***

Wouldn't this be a Jewish film?

Christianity is an upstart jewish sect to begin with.

***

Is it that hard to find a Jewish actor in Hollywood?

Frankly, knowing how Hollywood functions, if they went for a Jewish actor, they'd end up picking an ashkenazi whose genealogical tree contains more viking than hebrew ancestors, which would do nothing to fix the movie's whitewashing problem.

***

John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the Howard Hughes film The Conqueror. But I could be wrong on that part.

Well, given how much Temujin fucked around, there's a non negligible chance that Wayne was one of his descendants anyway.

***

Second thing Jewish is a religion not a race just like you get white and black Christians and Muslims. Israel was mostly populated by white European when it was founded it's only after it's first war that more middle eastern Jews became the dominant ethnicity.

Or, as Sami Michael once said (I'm paraphrasing): "after the european settlers kicked a million Palestinian Arabs out, they needed underpaid workers to build the actual infrastructures of their state, so they brought in Arabs like me"


many Jews today look more European than anything else, because [heavily abridged history] they were largely forced out of their native Middle East by the Roman Diaspora

By the time Titus besieged Jerusalem, over 80% of Jews already lived outside of Palestine: they were not forced out: most of them took advantage of the greek-then-roman hegemon and spread throughout the mediterranean world.
 

ckam

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Oct 8, 2008
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P-89 Scorpion said:
Why wouldn't a film made by a primarily white nation for a white audience cast a white cast? (USA the least white country out of USA, Canada, Europe and Australia is still 72% white) when Nigerian and Indian film producers do Shakespearean film adaptions they use black and Asian casts because that's who their audience is.
The difference is probably that the USA is a multiracial country comprised of many different cultures while the other two nations you mentioned are effectively not.

Well, Hong Kong actually does the multiracial casting game well enough. Caucasians and Asians play large roles in their films/shows.
 

Darth_Payn

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GamemasterAnthony said:
The Obscure-O-Meter just exploded at the Blackstar reference. Didn't think very many people remembered that cartoon.

Betcha Charlton Heston is looking at the fail Exodus is and is acting all smug that he starred in the better version.
The general consensus here is that Dreamworks' "The Prince of Egypt" is the superior version.

OT: Bob spent half the video's runtime complaining about the ethnicity of the cast instead of their performances. But was this whole review a build up to that pun at the end? Ha ha, wordplay! Well played, Bob.
But it is disappointing to see what's been happening with Ridley Scott lately. Maybe I'll find some answers to that in today's Intermission column...
 

ryukage_sama

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That's just unfortunate. I've been looking for more Ridley Scott cinema to love, but its just not happening. I suppose this film fares even worse when compared against Aronofsky's inventive telling of Noah.

This does make me want to watch Prince of Egypt again.
 

DTWolfwood

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Oct 20, 2009
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Still want to see this movie for the VFX and SFX. Was not expecting this movie to be of anything high minded or serious to begin with.

I just love see huge armies of people on screen at the same time. lol
 

Ihateregistering1

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legend forge said:
P-89 Scorpion said:
Why wouldn't a film made by a primarily white nation for a white audience cast a white cast? (USA the least white country out of USA, Canada, Europe and Australia is still 72% white) when Nigerian and Indian film producers do Shakespearean film adaptions they use black and Asian casts because that's who their audience is.



Second thing Jewish is a religion not a race just like you get white and black Christians and Muslims. Israel was mostly populated by white European when it was founded it's only after it's first war that more middle eastern Jews became the dominant ethnicity.
Judaism is a religion, but there is such a thing as "ethnic Judaism". The religion and ethnicity are tied closely together, but not so close as to avoid distinction. Israel was not "first populated by white Europeans", It was conquered by them. Ever hear of Mesopotamia? Learn yourself some history.

And a movie being aimed at a "primarily white nation" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is no excuse to ignore the mistakes of the past. Remember how upset people got at how white Alladin looked while Jafar was practically a caricature of Evil Arabs? There is no reason to whitewash events that are supposed to have taken place in real history (even if there is no evidence it really happened). I'm not going to say that every character must remain the same race in all incarnations, but to lazily swap out one entire group for another in the name of ease and appealing to some idiotic notion of a "white nation" is not the best way to do things.
Except Bob himself notes: "...even though we don't actually know what period of Egyptian history the events of the Book of Exodus are supposed to have taken place in and thus don't fully know what the ethnic appearance of ancient Hebrews actually was." So you really can't argue for historical authenticity.

But regardless of 'authenticity' or not, the movie didn't take a dime of my money, so they can cast whoever the hell they want to be whomever the hell they want. If Bollywood wants to make a movie about the signing of the declaration of independence and the Revolutionary War with an entirely Indian cast, and then release it worldwide, they can knock themselves out, no one is forcing me (or anyone else) to watch it.
 

Rellik San

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I don't see the issue with the supposed "white washing" yes Christian Bale doesn't look like our preconceived notions of what someone from that time looks like, but surely this should be a case of best man for the job, whatever you think of Bale, he got through the casting process was obviously what the production want.

Best person for the job, pretty sure that's what true equality is about. Not to mention the difficulties in securing funding, because lets be honest, how many Arabic actors have the cultural caché that would be required to secure funding for a project like this? It's a reality of the business, is it a reality that sucks? Abso-fucking-lutely it is. This isn't an issue of Scott's casting being on the nose of a hot button issue, instead of demonising him, perhaps we should turn our attentions to the studios that created that atmosphere or y'know... maybe actually turn up to movies with relatively unknown Arabic actors to show the movie industry we are interested in seeing movies starring them.

Do these considerations stop this being a bad movie? Not in the least. But it's perhaps food for thought and enough to make you turn your ire not against the Director or Actors, but against the studios that promote this behaviour with the way they award funding.

*PS. I'm not sure if Arabic would be the politically correct term here, but it would seem to be. If I'm wrong feel free to let me know (preferably without calling me a racist).
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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Feb 20, 2011
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Nixou said:
many Jews today look more European than anything else, because [heavily abridged history] they were largely forced out of their native Middle East by the Roman Diaspora

By the time Titus besieged Jerusalem, over 80% of Jews already lived outside of Palestine: they were not forced out: most of them took advantage of the greek-then-roman hegemon and spread throughout the mediterranean world.
Really? I'm just going by what I was taught in GCSE Arab-Israeli history, but I'll defer to you. My overriding point remains the same however.
 

Nurb

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Dec 9, 2008
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I'm hearing "Too many white people" in a lot of forms of media more and more lately.
 

JimB

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Rellik San said:
Yes, Christian Bale doesn't look like our preconceived notions of what someone from that time looks like, but surely this should be a case of best man for the job. Whatever you think of Bale, he got through the casting process [and] was obviously what the production wanted.
The problem is there is a reasonable inference to be made that the list qualities looked for in a star for the film could include "is white and won't scare off anyone afraid of people who wouldn't be allowed in the Klan." In an industry where tropes like the Magical Negro and the Bechdel Test are real things, it's just kind of sad to see one of the most Anglo-Saxon men in movies today getting cast as a genetically Middle-Eastern person living in an African nation. They really couldn't have found a brown dude for the job? Yeah, okay.

Rellik San said:
This isn't an issue of Scott's casting being on the nose of a hot button issue; instead of demonising him, perhaps we should turn our attentions to the studios that created that atmosphere.
So you're saying we need to attack an "atmosphere" and "studios" but not the people who contribute to those things, as if they exist independently of the people comprising them? Why? Because Ridley Scott is so powerless he can't make a movie on his name alone and has to bow to the pressure of evil "atmospheres" and "studios" forcing him against his will to cast Batman as Moses?
 

dragonswarrior

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Feb 13, 2012
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Rellik San said:
I don't see the issue with the supposed "white washing" yes Christian Bale doesn't look like our preconceived notions of what someone from that time looks like, but surely this should be a case of best man for the job, whatever you think of Bale, he got through the casting process was obviously what the production want.

Best person for the job, pretty sure that's what true equality is about. Not to mention the difficulties in securing funding, because lets be honest, how many Arabic actors have the cultural caché that would be required to secure funding for a project like this? It's a reality of the business, is it a reality that sucks? Abso-fucking-lutely it is. This isn't an issue of Scott's casting being on the nose of a hot button issue, instead of demonising him, perhaps we should turn our attentions to the studios that created that atmosphere or y'know... maybe actually turn up to movies with relatively unknown Arabic actors to show the movie industry we are interested in seeing movies starring them.

Do these considerations stop this being a bad movie? Not in the least. But it's perhaps food for thought and enough to make you turn your ire not against the Director or Actors, but against the studios that promote this behaviour with the way they award funding.

*PS. I'm not sure if Arabic would be the politically correct term here, but it would seem to be. If I'm wrong feel free to let me know (preferably without calling me a racist).
Soooo... First of all, there are a ton of actors out there that are people of color and that are incredibly talented and could act the hell out of all those parts that didn't get those roles. Those roles went to white people. If you truly believe in "best person for the job" then we would be getting much more diverse casts in all our movies, but we don't. We get a bunch of white people. All the damn time. Whether or not they can act.

So yea. For a movie that would have been an excellent opportunity to give some wonderful talent a chance to shine in a historically accurate setting to not do so and instead only cast white people? Racist. No way around that really.

Though I do agree that we should also be seriously looking at the business aspect of things. However, I don't think it's all on the consumers at all. Films with more diverse casts frequently don't get funding in the first place, and many that do portray PoC (especially at this point in our history folks of Middle Eastern or Indian descent) as villains. However, if you look at films like Django Unchained or 12 Years a Slave... Those films did fantastically. So if you actually look at the business aspect of things, there is clearly a market that could very well be much bigger than what we are seeing for movies with more diverse casts... But those movies still aren't getting funding. Because racism.