Exodus: Gods and Kings: And A Greater Commentary On Whitewashing

 Exodus: Gods and Kings and Whitewashing in Hollywood

For anyone who's reading this article, this is not going to be a review of Exodus: Gods and Kings. I haven't watched the movie and, judging from the trailer and people who have watched the movie, I don't plan to. This is instead about the whitewashing controversy of the film. Cheers.

Prologue: Exodus: Gods and Kings: Whitewashing

I remember reading about this movie quite a while back; I was browsing through Wikipedia on Ridley Scott's page because I was curious about his filmography. I, of course, went through his classic movies' pages (e.g. Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator) and I also saw some of his not-so-classic movies' pages (e.g. Someone to Watch Over Me, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, The Counselor). I was reading through them and when I got to Exodus, I saw the casting subsection and I was intrigued with what I was reading. Of the 7 main cast members, only 1 is a person of color (Ben Kingsley). And even then, Kingsley's not Middle Eastern, he's half-Indian (but I guess it's better than having all 7 cast members be white).

Ridley Scott And His Response

To say I was irked by Ridley Scott's (or Sir Ridley Scott, as I should say) statement about the casting is sort-of an understatement. Being someone who is a person of color, I often see and hear about struggles of people of color (especially with foreign sounding names) to make a career for themselves in Hollywood; in fact, it's so common for many to just change their name to sound more American or English. Take for example, Ben Kingsley, who's birth name was Krishna Pandit Bhanji.

And even though he's more known for his strong female characters, he has given substantial roles to people of color in his films. Did you know that Yaphet Kotto was cast in Alien partly to add diversity to the cast? You have Edward James Olmos in Blade Runner who, though it wasn't a major role, definitely helped progress his career. Apparently, he's even cast Tahar Rahim and Youssef Kerkour in the upcoming Napoleon movie. So, I guess he's sort-of learned his lesson from Exodus: Gods and Kings. Sort-of. But I guess when your $140 million film makes a measly $268 million, you might want to consider casting "Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such" and maybe not tell anyone who's calling the film out on whitewashing to just "get a life".

But, what did I expect? I mean, Ridley Scott is no stranger to making ridiculous statements. He's been making ridiculous statements as far back as 1992. When his film 1492: A Conquest of Paradise flopped at the box-office, he said this about American audiences: "They don't hear shit unless it's from Texas or America, right?" So, he basically blamed the film flopping not on the fact that it garnered unfavorable reviews or that the studio bungled the release in America but on Americans not understanding foreign accents??

But by far, saying "I can't mount a film on this budget...and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such...I'm just not going to get financed." and on top of that, telling anyone who protested the whitewashing to "get a life" is, by far, his most ridiculous statement and his most racially ignorant. You know what, this is such a wrong statement that I feel like dedicating the rest of this article to how wrong it is. So, why don't we do that right now?

All The Ways In Which What Ridley Scott's Statement Is Wrong

#1. Yes, You Can

It's not like there aren't any talented or even popular Middle-Eastern actors. You've got Rami Malek, Omar Sharif, Tahar Rahim, Demian Bichir, Salma Hayek, Tony Shahloub, etc, etc. Now, aside from Malek and Sharif, all the other actors are not Egyptian. And from there you could argue that I didn't actually pull up enough ethnically-accurate names and that I'm just falling into the same trap as Sir Ridley Scott. I understand. However, can we at least all agree that it's better than just casting actors who are obviously European?

#2. Even If He Wanted To Keep The Cast, He Really Didn't Utilize It Enough

Now, though I have not watched this movie, I have watched the trailer for this movie. The reason that Sir Ridley Scott had to cast Christian Bale and everyone else was for monetary-related reasons, right? Yet, in the trailer for this movie, the movie is marketed not on Christian Bale, but on Ridley Scott! That's right: the trailer literally says: From The Director Of Gladiator! I mean, sure you see Christian Bale's face sprinkled throughout the trailer, but are we really going to consider that propping the film on his likeness?

And even on the theatrical release poster (which is nice looking, I'll admit), nowhere does Christian Bale or Joel Edgerton or John Turturro's name appear, it instead uses the words: From The Director Of Gladiator! At least if Sir Ridley Scott has plastered the name and likeness of all these actors everywhere and the film made money as a result, then I would have less to complain about, but the problem is, basically none of that happened! The only facial likeness I've consistently seen anywhere when searching this movie up is that of Christian Bale's and/or maybe Joel Edgerton's and the film was a box-office disappointment.

As I've said before, the film grossed only $268.2 million on a purported $140-200 million budget, which might sound like a decent profit but that's not including marketing expenses, which we'll assume for the sake of argument, is $100 million. Best-case scenario: this film makes a measly $28.2 million profit. Take into account the Hollywood accounting and that comes out to practically nil.

Of course, it doesn't help that the film got disappointing reviews (a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes from 210 reviews, with an average rating of 5.00/10 and a 52/100 on Metacritic from 42 reviewers). And it wasn't a remake, reboot or sequel, so that doesn't help too much, combined with the unfavorable reviews. Also, the fact that it was banned in Egypt and the UAE doesn't really help either, but that almost seems like something that was going to inevitably happen. 

In closing...

And to note, I am not in any way sending hate towards these actors or even Sir Ridley Scott for that matter. Personally, when I saw the trailer, I thought the special effects were actually quite masterfully done and it seemed like Christian Bale was giving it his all. All these actors are immensely talented and Ridley Scott...he created Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and The Martian. He is a legend, no doubt. And of course, as I've said, he hasn't seemed to get himself mired in a whitewashing controversy recently, so he's probably learned from his mistakes. So, you might think, what is there to complain about?

Well, though he might have improved on his mistakes, many other directors have not. Whitewashing is still a very prevalent issue and unfortunately there are still wickedly talented actors of color who cannot break out in Hollywood because of their name or their appearance and that sucks. Bale actually said this about the casting problems of the film: "The change will come from independent filmmaking, but audiences have to be there. Because once that happens, financiers of bigger and bigger budget films will say, 'We can actually do business here.'" Why not start now?