12. The Prince of Egypt
This film is a masterpiece and everyone knows it. You know it. I know it. Whether I personally like it more or less than some of the other films on this list is irrelevant because I feel it needs to be stated up front that as far as competently made works of art, it’s hard to reach the level this film is at.
The visuals and colors of this film when it needs to sell you on the emotions it’s trying to covey are all gorgeous and during sequences like “The Plagues” generate some of the most pulse pounding inertia from me despite watching the film laying down. Hell, when the plagues were happening I had to sit up due to how emotionally rocked I was. I’ve had that song on my phone for ages but seeing it in the film proper just skyrocketed things to another level. It may be the best piece of animation put to film. I don’t know.
The thing about this film that really needs to be celebrated is how they just went for it.
They said they were going to adapt the story of Moses from Exodus and they did it without holding much back. There are scenes of slaves being whipped in this film and you can see the lashes on their backs. There’s scenes of children dying and the thing that kicks off the plot is the mass genocide of innocent babies. Why this is done is barely even really elaborated on by the madman who initiated it. The excuse of “sometimes sacrifices need to be made” and “they were just slaves” is enough for him so why would he offer anything else? As if there even was an excuse for doing something so heinous.
Then, of course, there was the river of blood scene. It looked like something I’d see in a video game at the height of the climax. Just being surrounded by a river of actual blood with the sunset in the background only heightening how scary everything was affected me greatly. One of the scenes I did recall scaring me as a child was the scene of the ghostly white thing killing all the first borns. Nevermind the fact that imagining myself scrambling to put lamb’s blood over my door and wondering if I did it right was anxiety inducing but the fact that I AM the first born son in my family made it all the more horrific.
The stuff that Moses (Val Kilmer) does in this film to ensure the freedom of his people is the kind of stuff you’d usually see villains from a film do but you find it hard to fault him for taking things as far as he has to. Otherwise you’d be condemning the man for trying to stop a pharaoh from engaging in mass genocide and slavery.
The wrinkle in this is, of course, the fact that Ramses (Ralph Fiennes), the man in charge of this new era of slaughter and sadness, is his brother. The relationship between these two is the heart of the film for me and it’s so effective in the way it gets across how different they are yet how similar.
Moses could have ended up like Ramses. You see it when he calls his sister “slave” and promises that she’ll be punished for insinuating that they’re family, before he learns the truth. To have Ramses greet Moses back with open arms and a hug while in the same breath pardoning him for killing a man really sets the stage for how open affection towards family doesn’t mean affection towards your fellow man. It’s genuine love but it’s love built on familial connection. Ramses’ lack of general empathy for those beneath him was bequeathed to him by his monstrous father who, no doubt, is dancing a jig in Hell with Satan or something. Or maybe he’s just being tortured. I dunno.
I’m not really a religious guy. I was when I was a kid which made this movie far more effective than it is now that I’m an adult but looking at it as a work of art makes it hard to deny the strength of its construction.
I would say that I did notice that the pacing was a little faster than I expected. I was surprised when I saw the runtime as I recall a lot happening in this film and wondered if they’d be able to efficiently get everything they needed to in there. They did manage it but there were a few spots where I said “Wow, this just sort of happened immediately eh?”.
The film does take its time to breathe in a lot of spots too, though. Also, since it’s a musical it can get away with that a lot more. The point of musicals is to tell stories at a faster pace. It sells the emotion through song so that you don’t need to be sold the emotion through a long set-up and a deep dive into the atmosphere and a back and forth conversation. Again though, this film has both of those things and it balances them well enough.
I don’t know if it’s my personal favorite but there’s very little to complain about. It IS one of the greatest animated films of all time. It just is. I figured that the only way any other film could go above this one would likely just come down to personal enjoyment. There are films I’ve placed above this one that I do think are better, honestly, but the next few are where they are just because I personally like them more.
Instead of asking “Is this film better than The Prince of Egypt” I was asking “Would I prefer to watch this film over The Prince of Egypt” to compromise. I’ll go more into detail about that in a bit but just know I’m as surprised as you are that it’s only number 12 and that I enjoyed 11 other movies more.
Be still your beating hearts, for I have sinned. Probably. I dunno. It’s still really goddamn high up.
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4 months, 3 weeks ago
17 Apr 2025 01:43 CEST
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