Lord of Light, the missed opportunity in Gods of Egypt

So evidently some people watch this clip and think that Ra is piloting a space ship. (It might be chairot-ish/boat-ish thing, maybe?)

But for me, it just reinforced what I was thinking already. That all of that money and effort could have given us a Lord of Light movie.

Roger Zelazny’s third book and a Hugo winner, the twisty tale covers the downfall of tyrants who used mind transfer techn and religion to rule a planet. As a bit of trivia, this is the SF book documented in Ben Affleck’s Argo as the book-to-movie project that the CIA used for their cover in the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

Adopting Hinduism for both its use of reincarnation and a caste system, the original colony ship crew judge who is worthy of a better body and who is to be punished by living like a literal animal. Posing as gods, the crew’s definition of karma is a bit more self-serving. The native aliens are called “demons.”

But several lesser “gods,” the colonist own children, have had enough and bring the last rebel back from his prison in the ionosphere . But how does one being, even an immortal one, fight a religion with very real gods.

Ironically, I think the special effects budget might have actually been smaller than GoE. If I remember right, the colony ship in Light landed a long time ago and there’s no need for a space scene.

So as you shake your head of the whitewashing over Gods of Egypt, lift your hand and pull Lord of Light off the shelf and have a good read.