In the year 2026, it’s extremely easy to divide people. The mere mention of politics can strain longstanding relationships, and social media can spread hate faster than ever. Because of the 24-hour news cycle and the omnipresence of technology, it seems as though it’s always been like this — but it hasn’t. These problems have exploded over the past decade. I only need to point to one man to illustrate this point: director Alex Proyas, who released his movie Gods of Egypt exactly 10 years ago, and managed to unite everyone in saying what a heaping piece of shit this movie is.
The $140 million action-fantasy Gods of Egypt was meant to be a special-effects-heavy sword-and-sandals spectacle like 300 and Clash of the Titans. It takes place in ancient Egypt, in a reality where the gods lived among humanity. The movie begins with the planned coronation of Horus, god of the air (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) as king of Egypt. But Horus’ jealous uncle Set, god of the desert (Gerard Butler), interrupts the ceremony, kills Horus’ father Osiris, god of the afterlife (Bryan Brown), and steals Horus’ eyes.
A year later, with Egyptians living under Set’s oppressive rule, a thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) and his girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton) steal one of Horus’ eyes from Set’s vault, but Zaya is killed in the process. From there, Horus and Bek team up to get Horus’ other eye back, with the god offering to resurrect Zaya in exchange for Bek’s help. Along the way, they have to face all kinds of monsters and other Egyptian gods to achieve those goals, and to restore Egypt to its former glory, from before Set took over.
Notice anything wrong with all this yet? If you look at pictures of the actors named above, you might catch on to the big scandal that dogged Gods of Egypt during its release: Nearly all of them are white. Three of the leads are Australian, one is Danish, and one is Scottish. The only person of color in the primary cast is Chadwick Boseman, who plays Thoth, god of wisdom.
Criticism over the film’s casting began in late 2015, and it became such a talking point on social media that Proyas and Lionsgate issued joint apologies three months before the movie came out. According to an Associated Press report, “While some praised the preemptive mea culpa… others were more skeptical, concluding that it’s simply meant to shut down any further backlash.”
That piece also quotes professor Todd Boyd, chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture at the University of Southern California, as saying, “The apology is an attempt to have it both ways. They want the cast that they selected and they don’t want people to hold it against them that it’s a white cast.” Regardless, the apologies didn’t change the discourse: Gods of Egypt‘s nearly all-white cast remained an issue up until the release, and well afterward.
But Gods of Egypt wasn’t just culturally insensitive, it was also bad and dumb. So said everybody.
Lauren Humphries-Brooks of We Got This Covered called it “a big, shiny disaster of a film.” Screen Rant’s Sandy Schaefer said, “Gods of Egypt is a cheesy and visually unimpressive fantasy adventure that’s too dull to make for fun campy entertainment.” Peter Suderman of Vox said, “It is bad in practically every way it could be bad, from concept to execution, from imagery to acting. It is a movie with essentially no redeeming qualities — the epitome of everything wrong with big-budget moviemaking today.”
Funniest of all, Peter Travers from Rolling Stone wrote, “What raises Gods of Egypt above all other historically botched FX epics is the stupefying schlock of its visual effects, from Ra’s shoddy starship to the digital monsters that take shape like something out of Video Aps for Dummies. Come back, Clash of the Titans, all is forgiven.”
On Twitter, the public reaction was even worse. As comics writer Gail Simone put it, “I had a choice of going to see Gods of Egypt or drinking a cup of warm leprosy. I stand by my decision and I’m no longer thirsty.”
The movie’s setting and subject matter also caused academics interested in ancient Egypt to chime in, particularly regarding the whitewashing aspect. Beth Ann Judas of the Biblical Archaeological Society wrote, “Proyas blatantly ignored the fact that Egypt is actually located in Africa with regard to his casting decisions.” More recently, in a video ranking seemingly inspired by 2022’s Moon Knight, Egyptologist Anthony Browder criticized the film for reinforcing ideas about Black racial inferiority by casting white men as nearly all the major characters.
Even Chadwick Boseman was critical at the time. When GQ asked him about the controversy, he replied, “When I originally was approached with the script, I thought this [critique] might come up, I really did. And I’m thankful that it did, because actually, I agree with it. That’s why I wanted to do it, so you would see someone of African descent playing Thoth, the father of mathematics, astronomy, the god of wisdom. […] But yeah — people don’t make $140 million movies starring black and brown people.”
The critiques bothered no one more than director Alex Proyas, who took to Facebook to rage at critics after his movie flopped on its opening weekend. At the time, he wrote, “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. Good reviews often come many years after the movie has opened. I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way — always have. This time of course they have bigger axes to grind — they can rip into my movie while trying to make their mainly pale asses look so politically correct by screaming ‘white-wash!!!’ like the deranged idiots they all are.”
It’s been a decade since Proyas wrote that statement, and his prediction of good reviews for Gods of Egypt “many years after the movie has opened” still hasn’t come to fruition. Most people have likely forgotten the movie at this point. If it’s remembered for anything, it’s for representing a major turning point in how the public reacts to culturally insensitive casting choices, a drumbeat which has continued since, most recently with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.
I, however, would like to propose a more positive legacy for the film. After all, the fact that Gods of Egypt objectively sucked might be the last time pretty much everyone agreed on something. And while Proyas hasn’t directed a film since Gods of Egypt, he does have a movie currently in production, which just so happens to be a science-fiction musical. This genre pairing makes me genuinely optimistic. In these divisive times, maybe what we all need is another Alex Proyas movie.