Ridley Scott’s Exodus can be viewed from three perspectives: historical, theological, and artistic. The last one is the most important.
Historically, Exodus is a disaster film in terms of reliability from the first frames to the last. The murals are not painted as if Egyptian civilization had already disappeared. In the twelfth century BC, pyramids are still built for some reason and placed in cities, as if the Egyptians did not share the land of the dead and the land of the living. The architecture of the Pharaoh's residence is like a temple. Instead of building his new capital, Pir Ramses (the house of Ramses), he rebuilt Pythom (Pir Atum, the temple city of Amun) before his father died. In the courtyard is the Bronze Age, and the beard of the Sphinx seems to have already gone to the British Museum. And the mummification took one day. However, the most egregious failure to fall into history: the absence in Egypt of religion, court and especially class hierarchy. The religion of the Egyptians permeated everything. The pharaoh’s doctors were to lay not leeches, but amulets and mutter magic formulas. And Moses, for his disobedience to the gods, would be exiled to a quarry, not wondering what his origin was there. But the creators did not stick to the village not to the city in Ancient Egypt Etruscan practice of divination on the insides of animals. There is a vacuum in the royal family. The network has no numerous relatives, Ramses has relatives and cousins. He is the son of Pharaoh, and he is the brother of Pharaoh. It didn't work that way. The pharaoh, the incarnation of the Choir, no one respects him, they contradict him, they shout at him, they break into him. It's a sacred figure. If Moses had dared to offend Pharaoh, he would have been cut and burned, and the ashes would have been thrown on the road where horses would have been driven, and the name would not have been mentioned. What a knife to the throat. By the way, for the unauthorized return from exile, death was presumed on the spot.
Everything is so bad, because, preparing for the shooting, the creators of the theme did not explore and worked on common ideas. In the commentary on the film, Scott and Cooper seriously discuss the hopelessly outdated ideas of Grafton Smith (1871-1937) a century ago. The film was based on the idea that Egypt’s economy was based on slaves. In fact, Egypt lived off the productivity of the soil along the banks of the Nile and the tribute collected from Nubia and Asian vassals.
From a theological point of view, the film is untenable because it deviates from the traditional reading of the Bible. Many people were confused by God as a boy. But here critics complaining of deviations from the original source, themselves stumbled. Scott and Cooper note that in the original source Moses does not speak to God, but to the messenger of God. They thought it would be nice to show the messenger as a boy who speaks adult. It will be obvious that this is not a simple boy. Judging by the reaction to the film, it did not work.
Finally, the artistic side. In Exodus, Scott goes on to develop the theme of tyrannical mediocrity in power against the genius hero he touched upon in 1492. (By the way, the scene with the hand on the table is borrowed from 1492.) In Scott’s words, “This is a story about a liberating hero, about the defeat of an oppressor, about faith, doubt, sacrifice... entertainment with respect for believers.” But when viewed, it doesn’t seem like it’s some kind of western about noble heroes confronting the corrupt mayor of a town somewhere in Kansas. Not surprisingly, Scott himself compares Exodus to a Western. It just looks crazy on screen. Christian Bale makes it clear in facial expressions and words that he is the coolest in the Ancient Near East. He's doing well, he's loved by the army, even Seti loves him more than he loves his heir. One of the most successful pharaohs in the New Kingdom was mediocre.
So here we have a western in ancient Egypt with an interpretation of the Exodus in the spirit of eighteenth-century rationalism and with an understanding of the role of the hero in history in the tradition of Thomas Carlyle. Is there any ideological or aesthetic value in such a work?