Exodus Movie – A Review

I was trying to think of some clever way to say, Exodus: Gods And Kings is a bad movie, but it honestly isn’t worth the effort. I suppose many people have already either seen it or made the informed decision to stay away. I, on the other hand, wanted to see this one because I missed Noah. Bad as the reviews were of the latter—or controversial—I still had wanted to make my own assessment.

Exodus wasn’t even good enough to be controversial.

Some time ago, I read a good article by Brian Godawa stating that Christians were foolish to think atheists could make good movies of Bible stories. They don’t believe in the truth of the supernatural as the Bible records it, so they will always mythologize it to fit their own tastes.

The problem is that in actual practice, “non-believers” by definition do not believe in the sacred story. Therefore, they will by necessity rewrite the story through their own non-believing paradigm, whether more subtly (Exodus) or more explicitly (Noah). Most people know this as “spin.” News flash: Every storyteller spins according to their paradigm or worldview. (“Can Atheists Make Good Bible Movies?”)

Based on that post, I was ready for the strange things atheist director Ridley Scott did with the supernatural events in the Exodus story—which, if you know your Bible, is present from start to finish. Well, let’s say I was ready for everything but the . . . ah, portrayal of God.

I suppose Scott was going for the antithesis to the cliched grandfather-ish image so often associated with God. His depiction was a boy about eight years old, with a strange accent. The problem was, this god was never clear what he wanted Moses to do; he never equipped Moses with the rod of God, never had him tell Pharaoh to let His people go. Rather, in the end, Moses declares the Hebrews are his people, not god’s.

Add in the fact that a disbelieving Moses first encountered God after he’d been injured in an avalanche. Throughout, there’s the lingering suggestion that Moses was simply delusional.

But I could handle that and chalk it up to a lesson about how atheists view a Bible story filled with God’s presence and the miraculous.

This movie, however, did not succeed as a movie either. What was it, a love story? No. The romance was fleeting at best. Was it a brother versus brother story as we’re led to believe at the beginning? Well, not really. Moses did not confront Pharaoh before each plague and demand that he release the Hebrews. And there was no great conflict between the two at the end. In other words, there was no resolution to their conflict.

Was it a coming of age story? That might be the closest, but it’s a bit odd to have such a story about a forty year old man, though Moses looks much younger in the movie and only passed nine years in the wilderness after he fled Pharaoh’s palace.

That and any number of other things took some getting used to. For instance, Moses consulted a map when he led the people from Egypt—no cloud by day or pillar of fire by night to lead the movie Hebrews. And when they got to the Red Sea with no visible crossing, Moses was sure he’d made the worst mistake of his life. Of course a way opened, but not on dry land. I kept wondering when the dry land would appear. It didn’t. The sea just got shallow enough for them to wade across.

Not only did the movie lack focus, which in the real version is centered on God’s actions on behalf of His people in answer to their cries to Him for relief from the oppression under which they suffered, but Scott’s version of Exodus was paced far too slowly and dragged on far too long.

All this to say, I’m glad I only paid $2 to see the movie. It was worth that much, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone thinking about buying the DVD. Unless you simply want to see how an atheist mind handles Biblical truth, this movie really isn’t worth the time it took to watch it.