Gods of Egypt was a tough sell from the start. The casting of Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, two very white European actors, as ancient Egyptian gods led to accusations of whitewashing, leading director Alex Proyas to apologize for the decisions made in filming before it was even released. While that kind of pre-release controversy, it would be hard for any film to fully recover. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t very good (despite Geoffrey Rush fighting a space slug), and is currently sitting at a dismal 13% on Rotten Tomatoes. To add insult to injury, audiences seem to have rejected the film as well, as it has only made $38.2 million total internationally (only $14 million nationally) on a $140 million budget.
Well, Proyas decided that the best way to handle this defeat was not to quietly retreat and lick his wounds. Instead, he chose a firebrand approach, writing an angry Facebook post (never a wise idea) calling critics “deranged idiots,” among other things:
NOTHING CONFIRMS RAMPANT STUPIDITY FASTER…
Than reading reviews of my own movies. I usually try to avoid the experience – but this one takes the cake. Often, to my great amusement, a critic will mention my past films in glowing terms, when at the time those same films were savaged, as if to highlight the critic’s flawed belief of my descent into mediocrity. You see, my dear fellow FBookers, I have rarely gotten great reviews… on any of my movies, apart from those by reviewers who think for themselves and make up their own opinions. Sadly those type of reviewers are nearly all dead. Good reviews often come many years after the movie has opened. I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way – always have. This time of course they have bigger axes to grind – they can rip into my movie while trying to make their mainly pale asses look so politically correct by screaming “white-wash!!!” like the deranged idiots they all are. They fail to understand, or chose to pretend to not understand what this movie is, so as to serve some bizarre consensus of opinion which has nothing to do with the movie at all. That’s ok, this modern age of texting will probably make them go the way of the dinosaur or the newspaper shortly – don’t movie-goers text their friends with what they thought of a movie?
Perhaps if audiences hadn’t shut out the movie as well, his argument would hold a bit more weight, but sadly, they weren’t on board either. Proyas goes on, at length, praising the late Roger Ebert for being a true lover of film, and calling the rest of movie critics “a pack of diseased vultures pecking at the bones of a dying caracass, trying to peck to the rhythm of consensus.” Strong words from a man who tried to convince us that Nicolas Cage could pass as an M.I.T. professor.
(Via Alex Proyas on Facebook)
