In an interview with Empire about the recently released first trailer for his EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, director Ridley Scott said his upcoming film is his biggest project to date, although he didn't approach it as his biggest. Scott also says it was a bit of a challenge using a historic character like Moses for his new movie.
Well, in terms of the metaphorical aspects, yes. Even budgetarily it's probably the biggest, yeah. But I didn't approach it as my biggest. I never do that. I always approach it from the point of view of the characters, of the story. I never realised Gladiator was going to be quite as large in terms of its scope and yet it was a very small, personal story. A revenge. A simple revenge into which we had jigsawed some characters. But in this one the characters are conventionally historic. There have always been discussions about Moses. Was he in fact one of the princes of Egypt? I've accepted the conventional story on the origin of Moses. As I do more and more movies I get more and more centralised on the characterisation. This is a challenge because you are dealing with a very, very delicate subject. It's like politics – you don't necessarily want to talk about it because it's very personal.
Ridley Scott went on to talk about the many effects used to create some of the epic scenes in EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, and says what was shown from his film in the trailer is just the tip of the iceberg.
I've held back a bit – wait till you see the movie. You must never oversell yourself. You've got to wait till you're three weeks out, then you go for it. This is a big movie. 1300 effects shots is a lot. Not compared to something like Star Wars, sure, but we're not 'effecty' in that sense of the word. One of the things that has come off really well is the reality of the characters. You wouldn't call it an effects film even though in many ways a lot of what was needed is extraordinary. There were things I couldn't build. But in today's world the effects are so good that it looks real, effectively…You've just got to have a vision of what you want to do. After that I really get into digitally drawing until I get the picture right. Literally physically drawing digital animation until it becomes real. The hardest thing to do on this movie for me would be the crocodiles. They have to be absolutely real. That sequence is one of the first things up in the movie and I'll be flat, I'll be dead in the water, if they don't come off.
Speaking of epic scenes, Scott also talked about the last scene from the trailer of what appears to be the parting of the Red Sea.
That sequence probably took more time than any other on this movie. We were mucking around on this beach, 11 miles of it, for days. It had mountain ranges behind it. That was the trickiest thing. I had to prepare plates on the assumption of the sea going back and then returning. As for the riderless horse, that was me, just mucking about. I wanted the horse because I want to show early on how big the wave is. It's riderless because it has escaped and run off. I'm sure many animals escaped. And I wanted to show the wave but also not really show it… The white horse is tiny, and I wanted to show it galloping to what you think is sky… Then you realise, oh my God, it's moving… That’s not sky! That worked, didn't it?
Finally, Ridley Scott explained the (boring) reason why the title of his movie was changed to EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS:
Honestly, to be truthful, we'd have liked to just call this Exodus, but that was owned and nobody would give it up, so I had to use Gods And Kings. But I don't mind Gods And Kings, because in effect that's what we're dealing with: a society who at one stage believed in the idea of over a thousand gods, which is of course hard to believe.
The Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton flick has the potential to be a huge hit when it's released this winter, and while I've always been a huge Bale fan, I think Edgerton will be the one everyone will be talking about after checking out EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS. You can hardly tell it's him playing Rhamses in the trailer, and it'll be interesting to see his take on the character compared to Yul Brynner's version in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS will be in theaters on December 12, 2014.