MOVIE REVIEW:

Exodus: Gods and Kings

The other day, the wife and I saw the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings.

Not very many people were in the theater room for that showing, probably due in part to the snowy and cold weather outside.

My overall reaction to the movie was generally positive, and I would recommend the reader seeing it, if possible - but that recommendation is tongue-in-cheek, or conditional.

Perhaps you have heard it said: "The book is better than the movie."

No, and yes - both regarding and concerning that movie.

Anytime a movie is done with an obvious Biblical theme, it is worth considering.....but as with all recent movies concerning Jewish and Christian history, there is a lot of questionable revisionism -- things left out (or omitted, contrary to accurate and reliable Biblical Text), things added (compared to the precise Biblical Text), and things altered or changed (in contrast to the exact Biblical Text).

This movie was no exception, concerning quite a number of aspects.

It is not stated in Scripture that there were sudden and surprise attacks by JAWS-like vicious crocodiles chomping on Egyptian fishing boats and Egyptian fishermen floundering around in the Nile, and jawing bloody fish they had caught, causing the water of the Nile to turn bloody red.

Also, traditional conception of the parting of the Red Sea (by a Scripturally-mentioned "strong east wind") allowing the Hebrews to cross on no more than wet sand (and perhaps even wind-blown dry ground, according to the Text?) was literally done in the old Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments.... whereas in Exodus: Gods and Kings, the children of Israel started walking into water of the relatively-windless Red Sea draining off somewhere for some non-specified cause with them wading into hip-deep water to begin with.

At least, in the movie, after the Hebrews made it to the other shore of the Red Sea is when was seen the huge tsunami-like tidal-wave equivalent like a high wall come at Pharaoh's Egyptian army, then engulf and drown them (reminiscent of what we saw in the movie The Ten Commandments and the environmentalist film The Day After).

The Biblical Text states that "the finger of God" wrote the Ten Commandments on mountain-side stone, and in The Ten Commandments there was a dramatic illustration of brilliant fingers of lightning from Heaven etching out the words of the Ten Commandments and then cutting out two tablets of stone for Moses to carry. In pathetic contrast portrayed in Exodus: Gods and Kings, Moses himself slowly chiseled out the words on two tablets of stone, while The Kid nearby watched and commented to him.

The "Kid?"

Yes, throughout the movie, the body-form of a toddler-aged boy (thankfully not a girl) reminiscent of the asian kid in the movie Airbender, spoke as YHWH, the LORD, to Moses. In the scene of The Burning Bush, the Voice of GOD did not come from the Bush, but instead from the benign-looking-but-authoritative Boy supposedly representing GOD near The Bush.

To some potential movie viewers, such relegating of YHWH to a toddler boy would seem not merely ludicrous but even blasphemous.

I personally considered it rather embarrassing and disappointing that the Triune God, or YHWH, was not portrayed with an adult deep-bass voice as He was in the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments in which the invisible-sourced Voice of God was not at all associated with any human form -- especially not that of a toddler-aged boy.

Interesting enough, some "reform jews" who are quite fuzzy in their perception and mis-perception of God more or less do consider providential circumstance survival of their blood-descendancy tribal heritage and religion merely done by perpetuation of such in and through their offspring children.

That does, of course, beat committing abortion homicide resulting in extinction, to be sure.

Not only that, but having the kid speak as God in the Exodus: Gods and Kings movie did have a messianic import to it, reminding us of THE actual Son of God (in human form, of course, who was Jesus - but quite a bit older than the toddler boy) who really did speak as God to some extent according to The New Testament of The Holy Bible -- although He differentiated Himself now and then in a Trinitarian sense by His own words of occasionally referring to His "Father in Heaven."

Portrayal of the sequential plagues against Egypt and Pharaoh's household was done quite spectacularly and logically in Exodus: Gods and Kings. The crocodile attacks made the water bloody, which caused river frogs to escape to safety onto dry land, which frogs died, which brought flies on decaying frog flesh, and flies brought contaminated-contact-disease boils, and so forth.

Missing was the presence in person of Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, giving exact predictions of what plagues would come, as also missing was God's word informing Moses of the specifics of each plague to come.

Perhaps with the intention of not being accused of causing "boredom," much of the adiaphoric dialogue within the movie has absolutely no basis in The Text of The Holy Bible, and is of a questionable agnostic and strangely-confrontational viciously-caustic nature.

It was interesting in the movie to see the change in Moses from his being a YHWH-ignorant-then-impiously-questioning Egyptian prince with a sympathetic heart to the oppressed slaves he saw, to becoming convinced by some old guy in the slave camp the Biblically-recorded facts of the true Hebrew family roots of Moses, and Moses' consequential acceptance of a call from Toddler-Boy-YHWH to be the "general" to lead the Hebrews out of Egyptian-slavery bondage.

Did Jethro's daughter, who became the wife of Moses in the desert, really have tattoos on her forehead (according to the Biblical Text)?

The actor who played antagonist Ramses II did a fine job (just as well as Yul Brenner did in The Ten Commandments), as did the actor who played Moses (who, by the way, sort of somewhat looked like Charlton Heston).

Concerning any pornography, yours truly merely noticed a preponderance of mopheaded loose-long-haired women in the movie, but other than that there was no obvious other-body-parts female nudity. Even a couple of times when the wife of Moses was alone with him in what could have continued into an erotic sex scene, with Zipporah telling her husband Moses to "Proceed," some uncovering of her shawl occurred but stopped short of what more could have been shown, by a completely black screen leading into the next non-sexual action episode. Clearly, the movie had no worse rating than a mere PG (certainly not even PG-13).

See the movie, but take it with a proverbial "grain of salt." Do not consider everything seen in it as "gospel truth." Read the actual Exodus Text in The Bible before seeing the film, then after seeing the film, read that actual Biblical Text again to compare what in the movie was added, what was subtracted or omitted, what was changed, and more...for the sake of preserving and respecting bonafide and authentic Biblical history as written in the real Holy Bible, and not imagining false concepts against either the Lord or His chosen people.