Two years after Ridley Scott and Exodus got dragged behind the outrage truck for whitewashing ancient Egypt by casting predominately white actors to play Egyptian characters, director Alex Proyas is courting the same controversy with Gods of Egypt, a movie also set in ancient Egypt and starring a bunch of white people. In a literally unprecedented move, however, Proyas actually APOLOGIZED for his casting choices, saying, “The process of casting a movie has many complicated variables, but it is clear that our casting choices should have been more diverse.” Distributor Lionsgate got in on the apology action, adding, “…we failed to live up to our own standards of sensitivity and diversity, for which we sincerely apologize.”
Hopefully this really will bring about more authentic, and therefore more diverse, casting in future. It’s certainly a welcome response to this same argument we keep having with Hollywood, where we insist there are people who are not white in the world, and they ignore us. But we also need to have the other recurring conversation, where we beg Hollywood, for all that is holy, please, please stop making such sh*t movies, and the only response we get is a fart noise.
Lionsgate apologized for the casting of Gods of Egypt, but can they also apologize for greenlighting it? A new trailer has been released and it looks RANCID. It looks just like that godawful Henry Cavill movie about Theseus, but at least that movie had shirtless Peak Cavill to recommend it. Gods of Egypt has Gerry “Spittle” Butler and Jaime Lannister in a bird suit. It’s being buried in the February boneyard as all maggot-infested turds should be, but even more damning, this movie is written by the same writing team who brought us such sh*t volcanoes as Dracula Untold and The Last Witch Hunter. Have mercy, Lionsgate. Won’t you think of the children?
