So Moses saved the Hebrew people from the Egyptians, but who will save Ridley Scott´s Moses from the critics? Scott´s movie Exodus: Gods and Kings seems to be in trouble and there are a lot of reasons as to why that is. The first reason that comes to mind is the inevitable comparison with DeMille´s 10 Commandments 1956 movie. Unfortunately, many of us who watched the 1956 movie cannot help the comparison and, unfortunately, Scott does not have Charlton Heston to save him or his movie.
What we liked about the movie
It would be unfair to say that Scott´s Exodus: Gods and Kings is in trouble because he did everything wrong.
He certainly mastered the visual effects and came up with very interesting battles. Also, Christian Bale did a magnificent job interpreting Moses and a solid enough career to pull off such a complex and demanding role. However, Bale´s comments on the movie certainly did not help an already angry audience when he called Moses a "schizophrenic man and the most barbaric person he ever read about" (Has he forgotten about Heath Ledger´s Joker?). There is simply no way to speak of Biblical characters, for better or worse, and get away with it. People tend to be very sensitive about this subjects.
What we did not like about the movie
We cannot say he didn't do his homework for he clearly studied the Biblical texts thoroughly but he decided to change so many things that Scott managed to get many people angry and/or disappointed.
That is what caused Exodus: Gods and Kings to be in trouble. First, he takes one of the most famous, favorite scenes of the 1956 movie "Ten Commandments" and he wildly changes it from a divine intervention to a natural phenomena (boy did that get people angry!), even though he really had some reasonable arguments going on as to why he decided to change it.
He was also wildly criticized for hiring only white people to interpret roles that geographically corresponds to Eastern/North Africa, to what he answered that he only did so because of economic reasons. Other comments included being "wildly inaccurate", although we agree with Ridley Scott on this one, people should not expect to learn history from a movie. However, he clearly understand why it would bother Christians and Catholics (and perhaps even Egyptians) to make an inaccurate movie involving their beliefs.
