Last night, critics, bloggers, and industry folk were treated to a special screening of 3D footage from Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings (in theaters December 12). From the select scenes shown, there's one major takeaway: this is as Hollywood as you can get with Moses' story.
From the casting of heavyweight A-list actors to the overwhelming CGI—the Red Sea battle in particular will not bode well for anyone who's terrified of drowning—Exodus is everything you'd expect from a movie being touted as a holiday blockbuster. (Sidenote: For those curious about its comparison to Noah, this film seems to stick to the legend as it's told and doesn't take as many creative liberties, nor is it heavy-handed or loaded with a social message.)
Controversy aside, namely the casting of white actors Joel Edgerton (as Ramses), Sigourney Weaver (as Tuya), John Turturro (as Seti), and Christian Bale (as Moses), among others, to play the film's leading Africans, the footage shown last night was simply meant to impress viewers with its scale. Among the scenes shown, four out of the 10 plagues mentioned in Moses' legend were shown. These include the turning of water into blood, the frogs, the flies, and the locusts, all depicted in a way where you can almost hear the buzzing around you, feel the crawling on your skin, and smell the death of the scene. It's Ridley Scott at his Ridley Scott-iest—he makes sure every humdrum scene that closes with a period in the Bible end in an exclamation point on screen.
To address what was just shown, Christian Bale made an appearance for a short conversation with Fandango's Dave Karger. In the excerpts below, Bale, who admitted that Alien is his favorite Ridley Scott movie, discusses getting into character, out-Heston-ing Charles Heston, and the pressure of fronting a massive film.
On getting ready to play Moses:
I read the Torah, the Pentateuch, the stories that people recommended, one of them I enjoyed a great deal called Moses: A Life...and the Quran as well. Not all in one go. The big [discovery] for me, other than realizing I had no idea about the character of Moses at all and just how complex of a character he was, was the nature of God. That he equally was very peculiar... [Also] really fascinating to me is that there’s actually no mention of the afterlife. Especially in Egypt where there’s obsession with death, I was very surprised by that as well… There’s also no mention of the devil. God is described as the god of good and evil.
The very first film I rented immediately after a meeting with Ridley was [Monty Python's] Life of Brian. Anything where you’re approaching it from a very earnest point of view can unintentionally become Life of Brian. It was a guiding light for me… Immediately after that I rented Mel Brooks’ History of the World. You have to get it out of your system, and you have to understand what we can unintentionally make funny, and you have to have humor. As earnest and as heavy as this, you have to have an element of comedy at your everyday life during filming because otherwise it just becomes too exhausting.
On how Exodus differs from The Ten Commandments:
The main difference I looked at, and you know you can’t out-Heston Charles Heston, in my reading of the five books was this was an incredible weight [Moses] was lifting on his shoulders. This should be something where you see a man really straining, and that is of his nature, he really fought against being chosen...We felt that with the Ten Commandments it was sort of really uplifting; he was a Moses that felt like he was flying almost, that he was going to levitate through the scenes. We felt like ours should be a Moses just desperately trying to move forward because of the enormous pressure this is on him.
On filming Exodus right after American Hustle:
When I first got back from Boston, I went back to see Ridley and my head was absolutely shaved to my scalp and I still had all that girth. He really tried to not show a look of absolute horror at who he cast, but the nicest thing he could say was, “Oh, your hair’s pretty short.” I was thankful that I was in these loose-fitting clothes. I was desperately trying to lose weight throughout.
On fronting a massive production:
It is [daunting] because I’m a real prat, so you go, “Wow, look at that, that’s a kilometer long, that’s amazing. Look at all the people, what are they waiting for? Ohhh.” [Laughs.] So you act it as though you can handle all this. To me that’s not an unhealthy thing. The day that I looked at something that size and thought I should probably be in the middle of that, I’d probably just hate myself.
Tara Aquino is the Pop Culture editor. She tweets here.
