At last, I can finally stop rotating the same three or four pictures of Christian Bale as Moses at the top of my Exodus: Gods and Kings posts!
Entertainment Weekly posted a “first look” at Ridley Scott’s movie today, including five new photos and a handful of interview snippets. The Italian website Cinemamente also posted a couple of behind-the-scenes shots that I had never seen before, including the picture above.
On top of all that, the movie’s first trailer, which was recently shown to exhibitors in Europe, was approved by the film classification boards in at least two Canadian provinces last week. The Alberta website gives the trailer a PG rating and says it runs 90 seconds, while the British Columbia website says it runs 96 seconds, but in any case, it sounds like we’ll all get to see the trailer for ourselves fairly soon.
More pictures and interview snippets below the jump, including Sigourney Weaver as an Egyptian queen, Aaron Paul as Joshua and Ben Kingsley as Joshua’s father.
First, the Entertainment Weekly profile. It covers some things that have been mentioned here before — such as Paul’s bad reaction to the smell of camel poop — but it also makes a few new points and confirms a few others, such as:
- The movie took only 74 days to film, at least in principal photography. “I still privately don’t know how we did it, but we did,” says Scott. “I haven’t had that much fun in a while.”
- Joel Edgerton, who plays the Pharaoh Ramses, recalls how Scott would whip up instant sketches to give the actors a sense of how the greenscreen backgrounds will be filled in: “It would be a quick, one-minute sketch, but you’d suddenly see what’s out there.”
- Moses and Ramses will start out as friends and allies, the way they did in The Prince of Egypt, and not as rivals, the way they did in The Ten Commandments. Says Edgerton: “There’s a deep connection between the two of us. It becomes a really complicated relationship that starts with a lot of love and companionship and ends with destruction.”
- The movie “delves into rather dark subject matter,” according to the EW reporter, who quotes Bale to the effect that “There’s nothing mild about the Exodus or Moses.” This fits with what Bale said last year about the “shocking” content of the Bible — and presumably of the film as well.
- Bale says Moses is “one of the most fascinating characters that I’ve ever studied. I think Achilles is described as the most passionate man alive but I think Moses would give him a very good run for his money.”
Next, the photos.
Note how, in this first picture, Moses is once again riding a horse — and not just for transportation this time, but for battle. This, as far as I know, is not an accurate depiction of how the Egyptians used horses at this point in their history.
The second picture shows Aaron Paul as Joshua and Ben Kingsley — who previously played Moses himself in a 1995 miniseries — as Joshua’s father Nun.
The third picture shows Edgerton as Ramses:
The fourth picture shows Scott directing Weaver, who previously worked with him on Alien and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (in which she played the Queen of Spain):
The fifth and final picture from Entertainment Weekly seems to show the whole Egyptian royal family, including John Turturro as Ramses’ father Seti, at a point in the story when Moses and Ramses are still good friends:
Finally, here is the second behind-the-scenes shot from Cinemamente:
Update: It turns out People magazine has some exclusive photos of its own today, too — all of which, like the accompanying article, focus primarily on Edgerton.
The article emphasizes several times that the film will be “massive”, “grand” and various other kinds of big, but it also emphasizes several times that the characters will be “realistic”, “human”, “deeply emotional” and so on. We’ll see soon enough.
July 2 update: It turns out the “print” version of the Entertainment Weekly article used a different photo of Joel Edgerton’s Pharaoh. Here it is:
Update: And the pictures keep on coming! The French website Cinemur has three all-new photos, plus a slightly bigger version of one of the EW pictures.
The most interesting photo, to me, shows Moses talking to Nun, which makes me wonder if Nun — a character about whom the Bible says almost nothing — will have the “mentor” role that is usually associated with Moses’ father-in-law Jethro:
Then there is this picture of the (historically inaccurate!) Egyptian cavalry:
Plus there is this ominous shot of Ramses and Moses:
Finally, here is an alternate version of the “royal family” photo from Entertainment Weekly, with a bit more “information” at the top of the frame:
July 8 update: The Playlist now has a taller version of one of the EW photos:
August 2 update: I have now posted logo-free versions of most (but not quite all) of the People and Entertainment Weekly photos at this blog post.
I also somehow missed two pictures that were posted by Empire magazine on July 9. The first shows Ramses with Tuya and other Egyptian women:
And the second is yet another shot of Moses and Ramses walking away from Seti and the rest of the royal family, on their way to battle the Hittites:
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