Sunday, March 20, 2016

Lord of Light, the missed opportunity in Gods of Egypt


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.

No comments:

Post a Comment