Exodus: Gods and Kings tells the story of Moses (Christian Bale) and his relationship with his “brother” Ramses (Joel Edgerton), and how prophesy and destiny tears this friendship apart.

The film opens in 1300 BCE, and for the past 400 years the Egyptians have enslaved the Hebrews, forcing them to build their palaces, tombs and statues. Moses and Ramses, son of the Pharaoh, have been like brothers all their lives, but when Moses saves Ramses life during a battle, Ramses fears that it may be the fulfillment of a prophesy—meaning that Moses will become the next leader instead of him. Meanwhile, Moses learns the truth about his nationality—that he was a Hebrew baby who escaped the mass execution because the Pharaoh’s sister’s handmaiden secretly raised him as her own. When this news reaches Ramses, he cannot bring himself to kill his brother, but instead exiles him.

Several years later Moses has a vision of a burning bush, and a messenger of God tells him it is his duty to free his enslaved people. So Moses returns to his old home to request that Ramses set his people free, or else face the wrath of God.

In general, this film looks amazing. The sets are beautifully detailed and the CG graphics look natural and seamless. I never would have know that most of it wasn’t real had I not listened to the audio commentary. There is a huge battle scene in the first half-hour of the film that looks spectacular. And it is this reason why director/producer Ridley Scott has been in this business for so long.

However, while this film excels in the visual department, I found it somewhat lacking in substance and story. I wanted this movie to be a lot better than it was—especially given its amazing but underutilized cast. The film felt too long, but at the same time it did not do enough to explain who many of the characters were. It’s like the writers assumed you were already familiar enough with the story that know who they are. It was never clear to me that Tuya (Sigourney Weaver) was Ramses mother until I watched the deleted scenes, and I didn’t realize that Aaron Paul was Joshua until I listened to the audio commentary. I suspected both were important characters given the actors who played them, even though their actual roles were extremely short, but it was strange to go through the whole movie never knowing who they were.

I also found some aspects of the film to be inconsistent and a big departure from the usual telling of this story. In this adaptation, Moses is a soldier in Pharaoh’s army, so when he returns to free his people, he trains the Hebrews like soldiers, teaching them to shoot arrows and wield weapons. However, after the training montage, this is never really revisited. In fact, Moses becomes more of a passive participant in the whole showdown with Ramses.

This passive participation is one of the big things that bothered me in how the plagues were done. While the scenes themselves look quite remarkable and at times horrifying, it is the writing that I had issues with. In this adaptation Moses is just a third party participant, watching from the sidelines. In fact, Moses’ vision of God tells him “for now you can watch” regarding the plagues. This doesn’t fit with the military leader they have established in this film. It also doesn’t fit with every other version of the story I have seen or heard, where Moses is an active participant, constantly meeting with Ramses to see if he is going to give in, and raising his hands to bring forth the next plague.

The parting of the Red Sea is another place where the writers have once again put Moses in this passive role—he arrives and the tide goes out while he sleeps. There is no raising of hands to cause the sea to part. It was also missing that visual spectacle of walls of water I have seen in other adaptations—here it just takes the form of waves. It almost felt a bit anticlimactic.

Problems with the story aside, the Blu-ray presentation itself is spectacular—a visual and aural delight. The film is at least worth checking out once just for this presentation. However, it may be better to rent it first as the amount of bonus features included on this release are very minimal, and only consist of a trivia track, an audio commentary track and 14 minutes of deleted scenes. The Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release is a far better deal as it also includes a 3D Blu-ray of the film, the option to watch the deleted scenes in 3D, and an additional Blu-ray disc containing several hours of behind-the-scenes bonus material.

What’s Included:

Film: (2:30:20)

Blu-ray:
• 1080p / Widescreen 2.40:1
• Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, English Commentary

Digital Copy (Redemption Deadline 3/17/2018):

• Digital HD Copy redeemable via iTunes, Flixster (UltraViolet), Google Play or Vudu (UltraViolet)

Extras:

• The Exodus Historical Guide
  When this trivia track is activated, historical and background information about the characters, cultures and biblical stories depicted in the movie appears along the bottom of the screen throughout the film.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (14:57)
  A collection of 9 deleted/extended scenes, a few of which contain incomplete visual effects. Overall, there is some good material here that helps to explain things better. Even though the film is already a bit too long, it would have been nice to offer a way to watch an extended version with these scenes intact as I think they really could have helped the film. Play All or select from “Tuya Confronts Ramses”, Moses Waits For the Viceroy”, “Moses Sees The Burning Bodies”, “Ramses Makes Moses Chief Advisor”, “Zipporah and Gershom Discuss God’s Mountain”, “Snake Hunt and Aftermath”, “Moses Touches His Sword To The Nile”, “First Boil on Nefertari”, and “Bad Behavior”.
• Commentary by Director/Producer Ridley Scott and Co-Screenwriter Jeffrey Caine (2:30:20)
  This audio commentary track alternates between Director/Producer Ridley Scott and Co-screenwriter Jeffrey Caine, who seem to have recorded their commentaries separately. Scott provides a lot of behind-the-scenes production and editing information while Caine talks a lot about the story choices and influences. The switching back and forth can be a bit jarring at times (not sure why they didn’t just put two separate commentary tracks), but overall there’s quite a bit of interesting information in these commentaries.

Final Thoughts:

Exodus: Gods and Kings is a visually-stunning telling of the classic Biblical story of Moses, Ramses and The Exodus, but some of the story-telling choices are a bit confusing and inconsistent, the film is too long, and the talented supporting cast is somewhat underutilized. The standard Blu-ray release contains only minimal bonus features, and so fans of the film are better off picking up the Deluxe Edition which also contains the 3D version of the film and several more hours of behind-the-scenes bonus material. That said the film is worth checking out at least once for its visual appeal.