DreamWorks Takes a Gamble with History's First Superhero:
“The Prince of Egypt” Sets New Standards in Animation and Family Entertainment

Movies in the 80’s and 90’s have not prepared us for the introduction of Moses in DreamWorks’s fantastic new animated accomplishment The Prince of Egypt.  In the last two decades, audiences have become accustomed to heroes of great strength, striking personalities, and only the most basic even ambiguous virtues. We’ve come to rally around characters who rebel against authority, champion the will, and to rarely ever question whether or not they are required to be responsible to anything or anyone.  (Can anyone say Titanic?)  If these heroes ever did aspire to fight for a cause, it was with vigilante justice, pistols blazing, and fists flying, or else enough “selflessness” to get them into bed with the heroine.

Introducing Moses.  Again.  Whoa--what kind of a hero is this?

When word got out that The Prince of Egypt was in the works and headed for theaters, many believers justifiably resorted to pessimism; Hollywood was going to ruin one of history’s most admirable figures.  But thanks to the courage of Jeffrey Katzenberg and his brave filmmakers at DreamWorks, Hollywood actually did pretty well.  Prince’s Moses remains enough like the Biblical figure to, hopefully, start a trend.  Here is a man who does not fight for what his heart truly desires so much as he fights for a baffling but altogether loving God that cares about the downtrodden, that is truly awe-inspiring and even frightening, that requires sacrifice rather than charisma in his leaders.

Is it the perfect family film, the greatest animated masterpiece of all time?

No.

Is it worth seeing?

Oh, yes.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Moses is as important a big-screen hero as any animated hero we’ve been given is.   While not quite as human as the Moses of the Bible, this Moses (voiced by Val Kilmer) demonstrates qualities missing from so many current Hollywood heroes.  He doesn’t trust himself.  He loses his temper.  He is afraid.  He crumbles under pressure.  But he believes, fundamentally, that he is not really the hero at all…he’s a tool of the greatest hero of all, the Lord his God.

(Kilmer is an interesting choice for Moses… he’s got a strong voice for speeches and brings subtle nuances to his more intimate asides as he questions himself and his nation.  Later, when Moses meets God at the Burning Bush, it is Kilmer’s voice that speaks for God as well, and while it is a sadly forgettable portrayal, it’s not as bad as some electronic voice-distortion effect that would be the studio’s biggest temptation.)

There’s a lot of story packed into these 90 minutes.  Moses goes from a baby in a basket to being the second son of Pharaoh in less than ten big-screen minutes.  Through an impressive amount of detailed information delivered with riveting music, eye-popping animated effects, some creative twists on the traditional story, and the introduction of strong personalities, we come to marvel at the achievements of Pharaoh’s Egypt.  We feel the heat of the sun reflecting off the glorious sphinx; we feel the whips striking the backs of the Hebrew slaves; we sense the history and culture in this people that have carved out a rich existence in the desert.  And we place our hopes early on in the secret of Moses’s true identity as he unwittingly takes on the manner and ways of the Egyptians’ beautiful and prideful lifestyle.

The backbone of this version of the story is the relationship between brothers Moses and Rameses, the sons of Pharaoh.  Rameses is burdened by the responsibility of leadership, of being heir to the throne.  Moses truly cares about his brother, defends him before Pharaoh, and then runs off to act like a Disney hero--reckless, full of practical jokes and jovial good times.  It’s what happens next that distinguishes the two characters as unconventional hero and villain.

A distinguishing mark of the film is its insistence to portray villains honestly.  The focus is on the moral responsibility of people like you and me.  The film asks, “What will you become, audience--Moses, or Rameses?" Villains are not just foreign bad guys who frighten and cannot be understood, like Disney’s Jafar in Aladdin, or Hopper in A Bug’s Life. In a scene unparalleled in modern animation for its dazzling design, Moses discovers the reality of the Egyptians’s cruelty toward the Hebrews.  He sees what he might become.  The hieroglyphics on a chamber wall come alive and portray the killing of the Hebrew firstborn.  It’s spectacular and horrifying.  The audience is led through a three-dimensional space, watching history reenacted by two-dimensional carvings on the stone walls as they slide around the walls, pillars, and ceiling.  Avoiding a sequence that depended on realism, the simple illustrations move silently and boldly, and the power of what they do NOT show us is chilling.  When Moses is sickened by what he reads there, so are we.

Thus the transformation of Moses’s self-awareness is effective even at a gut level, and we understand why he walks out into the desert wanting to distance himself from this criminal nation he has been so happy to call his own.

When he comes to live among the Hebrews, we are treated to real characters, not a bunch of generic low-lifes.  Jethro (Danny Glover) is a welcome warm-hearted presence that reminds me of the large-hearted Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark, clapping people on the back and filling the air with his booming laughter.  Also worthy of notice are the strong characterizations of Aaron (Jeff Goldblum) and Miriam (Sandra Bullock).

We come to care about the Hebrews, but it is here that The Prince of Egypt, in its hurry to get to the end before kids start getting restless, loses its grasp of Moses as an engaging and believable character and resorts to the showmanship of its special effects.  One can hardly blame the filmmakers; they’re dealing with a generation of young people who, after an hour, are going to leave if they don’t see shocking entertainment.  This is a paraphrase for families with young children.  The story cheats all over the place, everywhere it can without stepping on toes and compromising the general “integrity” of the story.

It’s too bad DreamWorks had to shy away from the accurate story of Moses and Aaron.  There are rich dramatic and comic possibilities in the story of their relationship, of how Aaron spoke for Moses before Pharaoh because Moses doubted God’s ability to use him and him alone.  Imagine Aaron, who does have a couple of very funny lines, acting the statesman with Jeff Goldblum’s characteristic “I’m-making-this-up-as-I-go” stammer.  In fact, the only character in the film that is fully realized from beginning to end is Rameses.  When Moses returns to Egypt for the classic deliverance, he is lost in a bombardment of plague scenes and the climactic Red Sea miracle. The only moment in the second half of the film where Moses’s character gains back our sympathies is when he breaks down after the killing of the firstborn, his spirit crushed by the enormity of the curse.  At the end, as he brings God’s law down to the people, he has become something of a flannelgraph figure again. We do not even get to see his face, to see the weight of the new challenges ahead of him, to see the finished product…the man that the tribulations have sculpted for us.

You can feel the filmmakers straining to pack in enough silly moments to make kids laugh--a ridiculously implausible but indulgently fun chariot race; animals that stop just short of talking to achieve comedy in the midst of melodrama; and the two loony magicians that face-off with Moses and his staff.  Kids expect constant jokes from animated movies.  They don’t care about fully realized characters.  And thus, for those of us who see what the film could have been if it had refrained from condescending to spoiled cartoon brats, it’s almost tragic.

“Egypt” Triumphs by Avoiding Common Pitfalls

There are so many miracles in this marvelous movie that have nothing to do with the animation.  The animation is, of course, excellent and at times truly spectacular.  The music, with the exception of one big mistake, is suitable to the film’s epic scale and, at times, achieves operatic melodrama that actually moved me.  The soundtrack album does not truly reflect the power of the songs here (the album’s Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey duet is nowhere close to the fantastic movie rendition of “When You Believe” that includes Michelle Pfeiffer’s splendid vocals), but it does include the lush instrumentals that accompany Moses’s rise to influence.  The theme is as memorable and inspiring as Star Wars’s “Force Theme.”  “Through Heaven’s Eyes” is a powerful song that might really strike a chord in the hearts of children and grown-ups alike. Only when Steve Martin and Martin Short, as Pharaoh’s magicians, attempt to intimidate Moses with the campy, juvenile “You’re Playing with the Big Boys Now,” does the film suddenly remind us of the usual Disney tripe. Fortunately, all of these songs are devices for advancing the story, not interrupting it.

The Potential for Controversy

The point of this movie that will determine whether the world is ready to re-consider the value of the Scriptures is the episode of the Passover.  This is, after all, a family film.  Can children be safe in the reach of a story where one religion is championed over another?  Moreover, can they digest a story where children are destroyed by the wrath of God?

Audiences may truly be shocked at how far Katzenberg is willing to go to maintain the story’s integrity.  God’s wrath is portrayed as a spiraling white-fire ghost that rushes through houses resembling the death-angels that melted down the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  (Raiders, come to think of it, may have been the last film that took the wrath of God seriously in an Old Testament context.)  Children do not die screaming in pain; they fall asleep with an eerie sigh.  Many parents are not going to like it, seeing a God that murders babies.  But those with an ear to hear will hear the truth when Moses tells Rameses a message for our whole generation as we insist on sinful lives for the sake of our pride: it is not that God desires to harm us, but we bring this judgment on ourselves.  It is a strong statement, and we must applaud DreamWorks for retaining it in their telling of God’s great adventure. Even our hero Moses breaks down with grief as the frightening chorus of weeping mothers resounds in the walls of the city.  It is a great loss of valuable human life.   It is tragic.  It is true.  And Moses drives the point home when he says to Pharaoh, “You have brought this on yourself.”

When All is Said and Done…

The Prince of Egypt, however flawed in its shortcuts and compromises, manages to deliver to its audience a new kind of hero.  Thankfully, it doesn’t exaggerate Moses’s heroics to the point of forgetting about God’s part in the story.  As the music swells, the seas bluster and bar the escape of the Hebrews from the charging minions of vengeful Pharaoh, and we understand the desperate question in Moses’s eyes as he looks heavenward--from whence cometh his help?  The parting of the Red Sea is truly an innovative and immensely satisfying animated sequence.  While believers who know the book of Exodus will find a note of irony in that Katzenberg ends his tale just a hair’s breadth from the point when Moses’s people begin to complain and lose their faith, the main line of this telling has been played out--Moses has risen through faith, Rameses has fallen through pride, and God has been faithful.  There is still an echo of the Gospel. God has raised up a deliverer because He loves us.  In the end, we find, it is God that stands as the true hero, the ever-faithful deliverer, who keeps his promises, who uses the humble as his heroes, and who casts down the proud.

If you think this is the kind of thing the big screen really needs, then reward it with your dollars.  Let the moviemakers know that this is good stuff.  Lord willing, it’ll be remembered at Oscar time for a lot more than its glorious light show.

Jeffrey Overstreet writes regular reviews, news, and essays on the arts and Christian perspectives at the Green Lake Reflections web page  and in The Crossing, a magazine for Christian artists.  He has been published in Christianity and the Arts Magazine, The New Christian Herald, and AngliCan Arts Magazine, and he is a founding member of Promontory Artists Association.  You can contact Jeffrey at Promontory@aol.com .