The Prince of Egypt (1998)

[K1stpierre]

Discuss

[CoolioD1]

better than any of the disney animations from the back half of the 90s imo. always dug this. amazing animation.

[vc2002]

IMO one of the greatest animation films of all time.

[narniadis]

As part of Dreamworks finding their Identity it was a great fim, much better than Antz.

 

B+

[4815162342]

Great movie

[ShouldIBeHere]

Good movie with a great score (some of the songs could be longer, though).

 

B-

[FrozenUnicorn]

Amazing movie, definitely an A.  The music's great, I love the portrayals, the animation is great (ESPECIALLY the Red Sea and the Burning Bush).

[Rsyu]

I watched this again recently for the first time since I was a kid and it still had that same magic and charm that possessed me back then. For me The prince of Egypt rivals the best that disney or pixar has to offer. A heartfelt story with great visuals and the music is on another level. When you believe touched me in a similar way that let it go did when I first heard it which is the highest praise I can give. A+ rating from me!

[friendofnarnia]

Great movie. Excellent score.

[Plain Old Tele]

It's solid enough, but a bit by-the-numbers. Good soundtrack though.

[grim22]

It's solid enough, but a bit by-the-numbers. Good soundtrack though.

 

Just realized by seeing this thread that Moses was voiced by Val Kilmer who was coming off Batman and now Moses will be played by Christian Bale who is coming off Batman.

[cannastop]

This movie proved that 2D animation was doomed. If this couldn't have gotten to $200m dom or even $150m dom, nothing could.

 

Great movie, too.

[cookie]

From an animation history perspective, The Prince of Egypt is something of a minor miracle, given the circumstances it was born into — It was a time where traditional animation began facing difficulties as the new era of CG animation had just dawned; even a 2D animation titan like Disney was becoming more and more cautious, and every other animation studio in the business were desperately copying Disney in order to evade financial starvation — even if the most successful of them like Anastasia turned a modest profit at best.

 

It's especially impressive because Dreamworks Animation was from its inception a very cynical venture; Jeffrey Katzenberg, a man few would deny had an ego the size of a mountain, had been fired from Disney four years prior, and together with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen had founded Dreamworks SKG, with Katzenberg taking the reigns of its animation house. Katzenberg seemed set to spite Disney at every turn, and the studio's first major feature Antz, which had bowed just months prior to Egypt, was pretty clearly trying to outdo A Bug's Life. Regardless of how one sees Antz as a film in of itself, it was a prelude to the cynicism and strive for in-the-moment relevance — future legacy be damned — that would define Dreamworks throughout a lot of the 2000s.

 

Prince of Egypt is the opposite of Antz in almost every way. First of all, it's an adaptation of a timeless story — one that admittedly had been done close to death even in the 1990s, but never in animated form on that scale — and second, it showcases such care for its characters, themes, visual artistry and music that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's one of the Disney Renaissance staples. What separates Egypt from those films however is its boldness, taking artistic and creative risks no other major studio animated film would do at the time,

 

The closest comparison to what its competitor was doing would be a mix of The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame — much like Lion King, Prince of Egypt tells its operatic story on a ginormous scale both in tone and visuals; and much like Hunchback, when Prince Of Egypt is at its stride it pulls no punches, delivering its best scenes with so much rich texture, so much grace and yet so much chaotic audacity.

 

Even if the cast is stuffed to the brim with celebrity voices like any Dreamworks production, they rarely feel out of place. Val Kilmer as Moses may be an eyebrow-raising choice on paper, but it works thanks to the the film's decision to portray Moses as a reluctant prophet, comfortable with living the rest of his days as an Egyptian prince and later a shepherd in exile until divine fate — in the latter case literally — forced him to abandon both, and Kilmer is both soft spoken and commanding when he needs to be. The true scene-stealer, however, is Ralph Fiennes as Rameses, depicting an opposing force to Moses that is both vulnerable and threatening, facing a conflict between the love for his brother and the burden of his legacy preventing him from doing what his brother asks of him. Taken entirely on his own, Rameses is up there with Hunchback's Judge Claude Frollo as one of mainstream animation's most unique and complex antagonists.

 

While some religious purists may take issue with the film portraying a stripped down version of the Book of Exodus, the film's choice to focus on the relationship between the two brothers not only helps it stand apart from other adaptations, but also greatly enhances it. It's a film whose tragedy works so well because you know it's inevitable, there is no magical fix that is going to make it okay for either side. Even when Moses ultimately wins at the end, having freed his people from enslavement, his last line in the film is him quietly lamenting the loss of what he once had, and the last we see of Rameses he is screaming out Moses's name, not in rage but in absolute despair.

 

All this is accompanied by animation that, while at times gives its human characters some odd proportions and whose use of CG has dated considerably, is simply breathtaking and would make even the boldest at Disney turn their heads and gawk at it. Moments like the the burning bush, the entirety of the song "The Plagues", Rameses mourning his first born son while finally giving Moses what he demanded of him — even if it destroyed Moses inside to do it — and the film's climax where Moses parts the Red Sea are just a few examples of how animation can tell a story in the way a live-action film never could. Coupled with some surprisingly good songs and perhaps Hans Zimmer's most underappreciated orchestral score — his work on the Lion King is rightly held up as one of his greatest, but I rarely if ever hear anyone reference Prince of Egypt and tracks like "The Burnish Bush" — The Prince of Egypt is a visual and auditory wonder, the like of which we don't see often both in animation and live-action.

 

All of that is not to say The Prince of Egypt is perfect, but its shortcomings are thankfully relatively minor. Like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it seems like appealing to a younger audience was an afterthought, but unlike Hunchback which forcefully shoved comedy relief and juvenile gags where they didn't belong — to the point you could tell from the quality of the animation what was part of the original vision and what was put in there because of studio notes — Prince of Egypt keeps the comedic elements to a minimum, mostly in the first act. Some might argue that makes them stick out all the more because they occur so rarely, but they're mostly inoffensive when they occur so it's easy to forgive them.

 

Perhaps why The Prince of Egypt is not held up as a classic on the level of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, or even later works like Hunchback, Mulan and Tarzan, is Dreamworks's willingness to just bury it and forget about it. Part of that is likely because the studio's later 2D animated efforts like The Road to El Dorado and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas were commercial failures, and while the former has gained a strong cult following neither have convinced Dreamworks — or really any other major animated studio for that matter — to give 2D animation another shot in recent years. Outside of spin-offs of television series like The Simpsons Movie, The Princess and the Frog is all we've received from traditional Hollywood feature animation in fifteen years, and that was close to ten years ago.

 

The Prince of Egypt, while the studio's most commercially successful film until 2000's Chicken Run and later Shrek, sort of faded into relative obscurity when CG animation became the dominant force and the face of Dreamworks became Shrek and its style of pop culture humor, but has seen a resurgence in later years. It, along with series like Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon, are proof that Dreamworks is capable of so much more than what it has become, and every time mediocre and cynical cash-ins like Shark Tale or The Boss Baby are released instead you wonder if the studio hasn't figured out that long term prosperity comes from timeless and inventive storytelling instead of chasing what's even mildly trendy for short term gain.

 

Granted, Dreamworks being an independent studio for most of its life made that basically a necessity — and the depressing thought is that they might've crossed a threshold where audiences will never trust them like they trust WDAS/Pixar regardless of how many great and inventive films they then suddenly put out, because people can only be burned so many times.

 

Nevertheless, The Prince of Egypt is an amazing film and should be held up as among the best of its era, up there with the Renaissance classics. It's a film even people not devoted to the belief or any belief should watch, because it's simply a beautifully told story and some of the finest animated work to come out of its decade.

Edited August 7, 2019 by cookie

[cannastop]

3 hours ago, cookie said:

From an animation history perspective, The Prince of Egypt is something of a minor miracle, given the circumstances it was born into — It was a time where traditional animation began facing difficulties as the new era of CG animation had just dawned; even a 2D animation titan like Disney was becoming more and more cautious, and every other animation studio in the business were desperately copying Disney in order to evade financial starvation — even if the most successful of them like Anastasia turned a modest profit at best.

 

On the contrary, Prince of Egypt is exactly the movie you would expect in this circumstance.

[Torontofan]

I think this film is greatly appreciated now as you really never get movies like this.

A person of faith can appreciate this film as its a spectacular retelling of the book of exodus.

A person who wants a film about beautiful animation and a great story can watch this.

 

Its one of the few films made about a religious topic that generates great praise from the religious and non religious.

 

Great scenes are the burning bush a scene that just makes you inspired.

 

Also the scene of the killing of the first born. Truly scary scene that is quite horrifying and well shot.