Christian Bale is on hand at press event to discuss Ridley Scott’s Biblical epic.
20th Century Fox invited a select number of press to its Los Angeles headquarters on Tuesday evening (September 30) for the first public screening of footage from Exodus: Gods and Kings, the new Biblical epic from director Ridley Scott that stars Christian Bale as Moses.
Bale was at the event for a Q&A session following the showing of approximately 25 minutes or so of scenes from the film, which chronicles how Moses was raised as part of the Egyptian royal family before discovering his true Hebrew heritage and leading his people out of Egypt and slavery. The film also stars Joel Edgerton as Ramses II, John Turturro as Seti I, Ben Kingsley as Nun -- the Jewish elder who reveals Moses’ true background to him -- Aaron Paul as Joshua and Sigourney Weaver as Tuya.
“Epic” is the perfect word for the scenes that were shown, each of which was briefly introduced by producer Jenno Topping. Yes, you could argue that this is a remake of The Ten Commandments, but it’s done in the typically massive and visually stunning style that is Scott’s trademark, and dipped in immersive 3D (which the director fell in love with on Prometheus) for good measure.
The first scene established Moses and Ramses being raised as brothers by Seti and going into spectacular battle together, with Moses saving Ramses’ life and proving his loyalty -- a loyalty tested later when Nun tells Moses that his true people are in fact the slaves and not the masters.
The movie then becomes what Topping called a story of an “identity crisis,” with Moses torn between the life he has known and the people he is eventually obligated to lead -- resulting in the well-known war of nerves between him and his adopted brother.
That clash of wills comes to a head in the scenes of four of the 10 plagues visited by God upon Egypt, including the Nile turning to blood and a truly eerie sequence in which a literal sea of frogs infests the Egyptians’ homes.
The footage led directly into the premiere of the first trailer (see below), which offers glimpses of the burning bush and Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt through the parted and raging Red Sea -- although the splitting of the waters themselves remained unseen for now.
In his 15-minute Q&A session, Bale admitted to knowing little about Moses before taking the role but said he delved right into intensive reading and research, devouring books like Jonathan Kersch’s Moses: A Life and Louis Ginzberg’s The Legends of the Jews, not to mention the complete Torah and Quran. His conclusion? Moses was a “very troubled and tumultuous man.”
On the lighter side, Bale also revealed that he rewatched Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part 1 just to keep himself from getting too heavy-handed in the role. He also joked that thanks to his early role in the glam rock film Velvet Goldmine, he was “already quite good at putting on guyliner” for his scenes as an Egyptian prince.
Saying that you “can’t out-Heston Charlton Heston” -- whose portrayal of Moses in The Ten Commandments is iconic -- Bale also explained that he abandoned his usual habit of staying in character even when the cameras weren’t rolling: “I found that the character was so consuming and exhausting I was actually more myself (between takes) than anything I'd ever done, because I couldn't sustain the intensity of that sort of character. It just was too much.”
Exodus: Gods and Kings has attracted controversy already for casting white actors in the major roles and African actors as slaves and poorer members of Egyptian society, but it remains to be seen whether that becomes a glaring flaw once the entire movie is unveiled. From what was shown at Fox, it’s clear that Scott (who shot the film in just 74 days with six native 3D cameras rolling at all times) was aiming for the kind of gigantic historical/faith-based spectacle that we haven’t seen since Heston donned the robes back in 1956 -- and he may have succeeded.
Exodus: Gods and Kings is out in theaters December 12.
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