Sure enough, Scott did not make the film as Christians expected, and he portrayed God as a vindictive teenager rather than an old man with a beard. He made Moses a schizophrenic, not a prophet. He presented the ten plagues as a series of causal natural disasters, rather than God's punishment on the Egyptians. He presents the retreat of the Red Sea as a natural phenomenon, not a miracle. He also expressed God's promulgation of the Ten Commandments as Moses' rule over the Hebrews. This is a sci-fi film director's atheistic interpretation of Old Testament mythology. Accordingly, we have reason to believe that Ridley Scott was an atheist, or at least a skeptic. Of course, his interpretation is not new. Biblical archaeology and biblical studies have yielded enough similar findings. From this perspective, Scott did not introduce the Bible into popular culture, but introduced the scientific interpretation of the Bible into popular culture, which would inevitably hurt the feelings of some brothers and sisters in Christ.
In the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, God brought down ten plagues on Egypt: the plague of waters that turned into blood, the plague of frogs, the plague of lice, the plague of flies, the plague of animals, the plague of boils, the plague of hail, the plague of locusts, and the plague of darkness. disaster, the eldest son was killed. These disasters will undoubtedly provide enough of the big scenes for the movie to bring a lot of jobs to the post-stage stunt company. Judging from the feedback after the film was released, the audience was still very satisfied with the stunt scenes of the Ten Disasters.
From villains threatening small towns in westerns, cities and planets in doomsday movies, and the galaxy in Marvel blockbusters, popcorn movies are always getting bigger and bigger on the screen. As for the so-called big scene, the essence is to kill people, and it is best to die. The problem is that we have become numb to this kind of scene, and even if the universe is destroyed, it will be difficult to touch the audience. In "Pharaoh and the Gods", the crocodile attacked the fishing boat, the Nile River turned into a river of blood, all the fish in the river died, the frogs covered the mountains and the fields, the locusts covered the sky, and the night fell during the day... We can see that these scenes took a lot of time. Money, but only a few minutes of amazement in exchange. No matter how many digital frogs, flies, and locusts the director made, or how many Egyptians and Hebrews died, no matter how they struggled with disaster or cried hysterically, they were not human beings to the audience at the end of the day. , but some color blocks on the screen, how can you expect people to be moved by some color blocks?
A baby's visual development takes a long process, from birth to eight or nine years old. Visually developing babies like to see moving objects, bright colors, and familiar faces. Movie blockbusters use fast editing, vigorous exercise, and a lot of explosions to awaken our subconscious memory of visual development, making us think: "Well, it's good to be alive." The problem is that many directors often forget that, in addition to movement and color blocks, we Also like to see acquaintances. The former gives people visual stimulation, the latter makes people emotional. There is no "acquaintance", and the big scenes that flash back and forth on the screen are no different from the colorful windmills whirling in front of the baby's eyes.
Only "acquaintances" can mobilize the audience's emotions, because we are all "private". In order to illustrate this point, I often give an example in my screenwriting class: a newspaper reported that a car accident occurred on a country road in Tanzania, and a Tanzanian farmer was killed. How would you feel when you read the news? I've told this example many times at different schools, and at each school, the students responded surprisingly consistently: It's none of my business. Apparently, behind the words "None of my business" is anger at this fictitious news: what has the death of a Tanzanian farmer to do with me? I don't know him, and it would be a waste of my life for me to read such news. Some Heart of Mary readers might say that everyone in this world is part of another, so there should be compassion and everyone should care about what happened to that Tanzanian farmer. In the face of this high profile, we will not change anything other than calling it right to our face and scolding our mother behind our backs.
In the Beijing subway, people often hawk a tabloid called "Legal Star" with sensational headlines, such as "Andy Lau was shot to death", "Jackie Chan was killed by his mistress", and "Faye Wong committed suicide by jumping off a building." This newspaper costs two yuan a piece, and some high-profile newspapers are given away for free, unless you are short of some waste paper to fill the courier box. It can be seen that the people who compile these fake news understand the psychology of readers very well.
In fact, what people sell is not news, but stories. Except for the rough printing, the content is not fundamentally different from the content of ordinary film and television dramas. It is just that people give the protagonist a name that readers are familiar with. This is an opportunistic "creation" method. The author does not need to create characters or explain the history of the characters, and the reader will automatically substitute his familiar stars into those bizarre stories. In the final analysis, the star's name is just a code name. Replace them with "Zhang San was shot to death", "Li Si was killed by his mistress", and "Wang Hua committed suicide by jumping off a building". The story is also true, but readers can't be bothered. Bought it.
Let a writer write about the car accident of the Tanzanian farmer, and make it a moving force. It often takes a lot of pen and ink, various descriptions, and various events to turn the farmer from a stranger into a mature person. This process is called characterization.
In terms of characterization, "Pharaoh and the Gods" provides some negative examples for analysis. The tenth plague was the mysterious death of all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, and the beloved son of Pharaoh was not spared. In order to express the pain and anger of Pharaoh, the director used the following scenes: his wife cried out, waking up the sleeping Pharaoh, Pharaoh rushed into his son's bedroom and saw his dead son; Pharaoh held his son's body and cursed Moses And the God of the Hebrews, he finally agreed to let the Hebrews go; Pharaoh put his mummified son in the coffin, kissed him on the forehead, and said something sensational: You sleep so peacefully because You know that you are loved; Pharaoh, engulfed in hatred, finally decides to take revenge, and orders a large army to hunt down the Hebrews.
In the above scene, the director can't wait to jump out of the screen and shout: "Audience, the son of Pharaoh is dead, you see how sad and angry he is, come on, come on, let's be moved and angry together." But I am I couldn't be moved, and the reason was as above: I didn't know Pharaoh's son, so I couldn't resonate with Pharaoh's feelings. To make me feel sad and angry with Pharaoh, the method is very simple, not to show Pharaoh's love for his son, but to show his loveliness. And in the whole film, what is the role of Pharaoh's son? Let me think about it, I can't remember, it seems that I have been sleeping! A character who has been sleeping is not a character, but a mass of color. If I write about this child, I will write about him as a bear child who refuses to sleep. Pharaoh coaxed him to fall asleep, but the bear boy refused to sleep, and this scene was repeated at least three times. On the day of Passover, the bear child went to bed on time, but never woke up again.
Expanding from the modeling of the son of the pharaoh, a good way to express the ten disasters is not to show the MVs that are blended with stunt scenes and grand music, but to lay a branch line and portray some suffering Egyptian civilians. If I had to write it, I would write about a commoner family, a hardworking, kind family that was good friends with Moses and the other Hebrews, which, nevertheless, suffered from the ten plagues.
All that said, all in all, I mean, Ridley Scott should have asked me to be a screenwriter.
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