New Policy. Though The Film Experience invariably prefers teasers to full trailers on account of our spoiler aversion our Yes No Maybe So is one of our most popular features. So herewith we shall always do Yes No Maybe Sos on only the teaser for films we very much want to see and don't want spoiled and we'll just skip the trailers altogether (I am so grateful I did with Snowpiercer). Other films, we'll wait on the full trailer to do our full duty... especially those movies that were spoiled centuries ago like Exodus: Gods and Kings.
FYI for those of you who haven't read it, the Bible is full of spoilers. It's practically a reality TV show it's so fond of telling you what's coming up next and then what just happened recapping. [More...]
Guyliner. Will Exodus make it cool again?
All that said, I can't let the hybrid teaser/trailer traiser for Ridley Scott's Ten Commandments: Now With Colon Subtitles go by without at least a few words commentary. So without ado those few words as well as my favorite beat within the trailer's obsession with building their own Beauty vs. Beast style poll of Moses vs. Ramses: Which actor is hotter with guyliner?
Ridley Scott loves his epics and that's evident in so many frames of this traiser. The shot of the parting of the Red Sea alone seems like it would be catnip to big budget directors of today that wanted to udpate the original.
In fact, Ridley is such a solid director of supersized pageantry (the art direction background helps) that he's a natural descendant of Cecil B. DeMille (if not, unfortunately, Cecil B Demented). I guess we shouldn't mind that he felt the need to remake The Ten Commandments which obviously didn't need to be remade because it is one of the all time great pageant camp fests. That said I so wish he'd turn his inner maniacal P.T. Barnum onto worthier and less dusty circuses like the aliens franchise (I liked Prometheus. #sorryboutit) since that one only dates back to 1979 and not 1600-1200ish B.C.E.
Anyway, the opening dialogue isn't exactly poetry...
You say that you didn't cause all this. You say this is not your fault. So let's just see who is more effective at killing: you or me.
(Followed by shots of Moses & Ramses as playful sword-crossing friends during their youth)
Translation: 'My dick is bigger than your dick and we haven't compared them in ages.'
I love* it when big spectacle movies with a shit ton of things going on like The Ten Commandments (which manages to work in melodrama, soapy romance, theatrical spirituality, and burning bushes of both literal and figurative variety (Anne Baxter, Holla!) are reduced to generic macho throwdowns.
Speaking of which here comes my favorite moment in the traiser: COCK-BLOCKING!
What truly makes the scene and gives me hope for an unintentional camp fest par excellence is the dead serious eyelined reaction shots... ohnoyoubetterdont
LOL. Sigweavie be like "fools. my dick is bigger than yours... combined"
I'm all for headdresses but in truth I'd rather have Sigourney Weaver in alien-fighting skivvies again if Ridley Scott's just going to do throwbacks from now on.
(Exodus: Gods and Kings opens in December, presumably in the hopes of finally winning Ridley Scott his long overdue Oscar. I'm no great fan of Gladiator, one of the most overrated modern Best Picture winners but the man who gave us Bladerunner, Alien, and Thelma & Louise -- three of the greatest films of the past half century should not go to the grave without at least an Honorary, you know?)
* I do not love it.