A Fox production released in winter of 2014, "Exodus: Gods and Kings" ended up underperforming at the box office. Spearheaded by director Ridley Scott, the film was not without its fair amount of controversies, including the majorly white-washed cast, and deviations from the religious narrative that it was loosely adapting. Retelling the Biblical story of Moses, and the Hebrew people's escape from slavery under the Egyptians. Director Scott has proved himself one of the masters of genre and period filmmaking, able to whip up a lavish production in a quick amount of time. What seemed to be lacking here was any clear vision in terms of the approach the script wanted to take--the film doesn't allow the epic narrative of the Biblical tale to play on its own mythic terms, instead trying to bring a darker, revisionist take that would seek to find "natural causes" for the plagues and miracles--but one that in the end was too dour to please religious audiences, while at the same time mostly causing groans from those that might have wished a pure drama with any resemblance to actual history. Critics were not kind, and in the end, the film is a punishingly bleak experience without much heart or hope, though one boasting Scott's trademark visual flair.
For this adventure, Scott enlisted Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias, best known for his decades-long collaborations with director Pedro Almodóvar. Known mostly for scores for dark comedies and dramas, this was one of Iglesias's biggest Hollywood productions, and his first score for an adventure epic. The composer delivers with a rousing orchestral score, with a number of themes developed throughout, including some fun Middle-Eastern flair. Director Scott is notoriously known for heavy editing of his film soundtracks, often throwing out original cues in favor of temp tracks at the last minute, or moving and cutting bits of music out of order from where the original composer intended. The Scott curse seemingly struck again here, and composers Harry Gregson-Williams and Federico Jusid were both brought in to assist with composing additional music, especially for a number of large action sequences. In the end, despite whatever drama there might have been in the editing room, the end result is an appropriately epic score, fitting of the tale's ambition.
The Sony Classical score album features a generous run time, close to eighty minutes, though the full score totals about two hours. I usually devote projects to film I love... this is not one of them. In fact, this film actively pissed me off. But the music is worth revisiting for its own sake. The film's marketing strangely chose to take things in a very modern direction, with the title design especially anachronistic. In the end, there were enough fun pieces of art to play with, and with the album cover's design being quite weak, I figured I'd tackle some alternates, in the end providing a total of six, all using official marketing artwork.
I ended up tweaking the title logo just a bit, after first finding a similar font, then editing it to match the original. The spacing of the subtitle is now more pleasant to my eyes, though it does nothing to fix its Apple-store aesthetics.
Cover 1 didn't require much editing, just raise and lower the saturation in some parts of the image.
Cover 2 is the alternate on the official album, the full width of the original poster (though I enlarged Moses just a bit, as he was very small at full width). Tweaked the colors quite a bit, in the end, I think this still pops, but feels more naturalistic than the album.
For Cover 3, I took the wider wallpaper variant of the poster (with a smaller Moses compared to the background). I then cut him out, and slid either side of the background closer to center, to tighten the composition, and better frame the elements behind him. A few color tweaks, as per usual.
Cover 4. Not too painful.
Cover 5 uses the home video box cover for inspiration, but I cut out Moses and pasted him over the wider theatrical poster version of the Red Sea tsunami to have a wider crop. I applied some filters and tweaked colors a bit, though the end result is not particularly inspiring.
Cover 6 uses one of the solo character posters, using the distinctive silver and gold color scheme. I overlayed the poster and a wider wallpaper version, edited to match, and called it a day.
Hope you enjoy, and let me know if you have any favorites!
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