Poor Alex Proyas. He really hasn't been having any luck lately.
The $140 million Gods Of Egypt is now officially a box-office flop, having been fairly well trounced by Deadpool on its third week of release. Rotten Tomatoes, meanwhile, has Gods Of Egypt currently at 12% and the film's white-washing of Egyptian mythology has also been heavily criticised.
So, how does director Alex Proyas deal with all of this? Go on a rant about how terrible film critics are on Facebook. Good job, Alex. Nice work. You can check out his Facebook page here where he calls those who didn't like the film "sad SJWs" and "constipated critics", which is just lovely. However, Proyas' rant against film critics caught our eye because, well, see for yourself. We've reprinted the entire rant from Facebook, complete with all misspellings and ellipses.
Take a look.
NOTHING CONFIRMS RAMPANT STUPIDITY FASTER... Than reading reviews of my own movies. I usually try to avoid the experience - but this one takes the cake. Often, to my great amusement, a critic will mention my past films in glowing terms, when at the time those same films were savaged, as if to highlight the critic's flawed belief of my descent into mediocrity. You see, my dear fellow FBookers, I have rarely gotten great reviews… on any of my movies, apart from those by reviewers who think for themselves and make up their own opinions. Sadly those type of reviewers are nearly all dead. Good reviews often come many years after the movie has opened.
I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way - always have. This time of course they have bigger axes to grind - they can rip into my movie while trying to make their mainly pale asses look so politically correct by screaming "white-wash!!!” like the deranged idiots they all are. They fail to understand, or chose to pretend to not understand what this movie is, so as to serve some bizarre consensus of opinion which has nothing to do with the movie at all. That’s ok, this modern age of texting will probably make them go the way of the dinosaur or the newspaper shortly - don't movie-goers text their friends with what they thought of a movie?
Seems most critics spend their time trying to work out what most people will want to hear. How do you do that? Why these days it is so easy... just surf the net to read other reviews or what bloggers are saying - no matter how misguided an opinion of a movie might be before it actually comes out. Lock a critic in a room with a movie no one has even seen and they will not know what to make of it. Because contrary to what a critic should probably be they have no personal taste or opinion, because they are basing their views on the status quo. None of them are brave enough to say “well I like it” if it goes against consensus. Therefore they are less than worthless.
Now that anyone can post their opinion about anything from a movie to a pair of shoes to a hamburger, what value do they have - nothing. Roger Ebert wasn’t bad. He was a true film lover at least, a failed film-maker, which gave him a great deal of insight. His passion for film was contagious and he shared this with his fans. He loved films and his contribution to cinema as a result was positive. Now we have a pack of diseased vultures pecking at the bones of a dying carcass. Trying to peck to the rhythm of the consensus. I applaud any film-goer who values their own opinion enough to not base it on what the pack-mentality say is good or bad.
See, here's the problem with all of this. Proyas, you could argue, is making some interesting points about film criticism and how there can be a consensus opinion formed before people get to see it. However, the fact that he's not even acknowledging the fact that there are serious problems with the casting of Gods Of Egypt means he's lost any kind of credibility.
Not only that, going on a huge rant when his film is tanking at the box-office doesn't really ring of a clear-headed, logical statement. This just smacks of reading bad reviews, getting angry about how people are calling you out on something he should have known better of and then ranting about it on Facebook.
Incidentally, Gods Of Egypt has been pushed back to a summer release here in Ireland so we'll just have to wait to see exactly how bad it is.
Via Facebook