It’s been established that I’m not a fan of films that seek to build a fantastical history completely devoid of people of color. When I first heard about the 99.9 percent white casting for the big-budget mega-film Gods of Egypt, I, like many other people of color, had many questions:
Why?
What year is it again?
What’s their sunscreen budget?
Dear God, why?
But after watching the finished product, I can now breathe a sigh of relief.
Y’all, I’m not even mad.
I never thought I’d be saying this, but the whitewashing of this film is the LEAST offensive thing about Gods of Egypt.
Yes, you replaced the gods of one of the most ancient and influential cultures in African (and, by extension, human) history with spray-tanned white people, but did you have to give them all British accents?
Yes, you reduced the beautifully complex myths of Egyptian history to random, convoluted soap operas framed in Whiteness—but did you really have to make the hero announce the moral to the story with: “I guess the moral to the story is”? (By the way, the moral of the story is this: “Being nice to people is better than being mean,” or something like that.)
Yes, you spent $140 million to perpetuate the myth that everything great in history has been created by white people and only white people—but did your special effects have to be so damn cheesy?
Yes, these are roles based in African history that could have gone to actual African people, but couldn’t you have at least hired one black woman to pick out halfway decent wigs for the characters?
When the audience laughed with surprise and embarrassment at Gerard Butler’s Scottish accent of the gods, I was not mad. When the audience groaned at the tired one-liners better suited for a daytime TV show than a big-budget film, I was not mad. As we all collectively scratched our heads trying to figure out where the plot of the movie had gone, I was not mad. As the great Egyptian gods bled gold paint, reminding you more of an accident in a craft studio than badass mythological carnage, I was not mad. When the one black character in the film had his brain plucked out of his head by the movie’s villain, thereby ending his association with this monstrosity, I was not mad.
I’m not mad.
I’m not mad, because nobody will see this horrible film, and those who do will pay not only with their money, but with the longest two hours of their life. I’m not mad, because if this trash is the best that White Supremacy has to offer, its days are numbered. I’m not mad, because if there’s one thing people of color don’t need to be associated with, it’s this white nonsense. I’m not mad, because I’m far too busy laughing at every person who signed on to this piece of crap.
Let this be a lesson to the film industry: When you steal black culture, remove its history, exploit its beauty, silence its people, and rewrite its narrative—this is what you get. You get a bloated, cheesy, lifeless, boring waste of two hours and $140 million. 
