Thoughts on: Exodus


Exodus is the perfect example of a 5/10 movie. Nothing was particularly wrong with it, and nothing was particularly amazing about it. The main roadblock Ridley Scott and his writers had to overcome was the basic narrative – it’s literally a movie about a tonne of “God cards” being played. Similar to the plot device of deus ex machina (where a situation is magically saved by an unexpected/unlikely intervention of some kind), Exodus suffers from the main characters being powerless to affect almost anything at all throughout the movie. All the audience and the characters can do is watch as God brings down horrific events onto innocent people, one after the other. There’s no real struggle for the characters to undergo, or for the audience to invest in.

This isn’t an unsolvable roadblock though, as Darren Aronofsky showed us with Noah*. The story of Noah is very similar in that it’s mostly about an unstoppable, horrific act of God (though admittedly not as bad as the story of Exodus, which has many such events all one after the other), but Aronofsky successfully made it a human story about Noah’s struggles, and the conflict it caused amongst his family. It’s a pity that Ridley Scott wasn’t able to achieve the same thing, especially since it seemed like he was on exactly the right track to start with! For the first 20 or so minutes of the movie, we see enjoyable banter between Moses and his friend, Prince Ramses. This could have been a great ongoing relationship throughout the movie, but instead we only see them on screen at the same time for a scarce few minutes once Ramses banishes Moses. What’s worse is that we don’t even get a resolution to their story – we leave both of them on separate sides of the Red Sea, never having engaged in conflict of any kind. 
Instead, the only personal story we get is of Moses with his family, who he promptly leaves behind a third of the way through the movie, only to have a superficial reunion near the end. These wasted opportunities are a real shame.

That said, the story is well told for what it is, the small amount of combat we get is solid, and the CGI is as exceptional as we expect from movies these days. Christian Bale does a great job, as does the rest of the cast. There’s nothing really to hate, but there’s also nothing to really love. Oh well.

5/10


* I didn't end up reviewing Noah, but the short version is that I loved it: 9/10. It was a fresh interpretation of the story, explored great themes, and was packaged in a lovely aesthetic. A surprisingly dark movie.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some D&D 5th Edition House-rules

General A larger number of sources of advantage or disadvantage  beats a lesser number of sources of the opposite kind. That is, each source of either advantage or disadvantage can negate one source of the other, instead of all sources. For example, gaining advantage from 2 sources can not only negate 1 source of disadvantage, but you then still gain advantage on top of that. Not only does this raise the skill ceiling of combat, but it addresses the problem of more than one source of advantage being useless, despite it being easy to get from multiple sources. The ease with which players can gain advantage from class features etc also discourages them from trying to find it by fictionally positioning their characters in an advantageous position. Note that this doesn't mean you can get "double advantage" or anything like that! You either have advantage, disadvantage, or neither. Combat If you reach 0 HP  and are downed, you gain a level of exhaustion. This prevent
Read more

Variant Rule for D&D 5e: Inspiration

The 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is, for many people, the best edition of D&D to date. Similar to previous editions, the various systems that make up the rules are separate enough that creating house rules is fairly painless, with the possibility for unforeseen ramifications kept to a minimum. The Dungeon Master's Guide is, in many ways, an enormous collection of house rules, ready to be used or ignored to meet the needs of each play group. These house rules go by the name of "Variant Rules" in the DMG. While a great system, 5e is not without its shortcomings. One common complaint is that despite Inspiration being a good mechanic, the rules for actually gaining Inspiration are far too vague for players to feel that they can reliably recoup it once they spend it. This leads to players simply sitting on their Inspiration until they're at risk of death, and the rules for gaining Inspiration slowly fade into the background, forgotten. And lets be honest
Read more

Adventures in Sweden

Image
Source: Google As my plane descended into Swedish territory, I couldn't have asked for better timing. Dawn had barely arrived, fog surrounding the thousands of islands littering the "coastline". It was difficult to tell where the sea stopped and rivers began, but one thing was for certain – the Swedes don’t lack trees. Dense forest stretched as far as I could see – which is quite a substantial distance when you're several kilometers off the ground. As the plane headed inland, quaint green fields started to break up the mass of trees. Classic bright red barns with pointed roofs suddenly called into question my assumption that they only existed in fairy tales. Clearly, my plane had been diverted to Narnia sometime in the night. Source: Google Source: Google As a bullet train (boasting 100% renewable energy, like there was any doubt) shot me from the airport towards Stockholm, Narnia slowly gave way to a modern cityscape. But not entirely modern – my p
Read more