Prince of Egypt is one of the most beautiful animated films made in lo, this long while. Also: in it, North Africans look like, well, NORTH AFRICANS. Seriously… this should not be hard.

BUT ALSO, even more than being not-whitewashed, Prince of Egypt has variety amongst the characters.  Ramses and his mother and father don’t look like Moses and his mother and siblings, who in turn don’t look like Tzipporah and her family.  And then even amongst the Hebrews there is racial diversity; if you look into the crowds there are people of all different ethnicities, ages, body types.

Setting all that aside, even, from what I’ve seen from the trailers of E:G&K, it glories in violence.  The direction, the promotions of the movie obviously could not be more delighted at the prospect of depicting slavery, cruelty, and most of all mass slaughter in a way that is calculated to sell popcorn (see: Moses in armor).  But one of the things I love about Price of Egypt and have loved about it since I was a kid is that the film has an ABHORRENCE of violence.  It spends far more time than it “needs” to showing the innocent who suffer on both sides during the plagues; it is a film that is appalled by the reality of slavery and the slaughter of the Hebrew infants, but also by the slaughter of the final plague.  E:G&K looks like nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse for chases, for fights, for a big CGI budget.  Even if it weren’t for the whitewashing - WHICH REMAINS THE WORST THING ABOUT IT, DON’T GET ME WRONG - I’m not really on board with the story Ridley Scott seems interested in telling here.

I was never going to watch Exodus but guess what ? Now I’m so going to watch the Prince of Egypt, thank you

I bet you anything Exodus will not have a scene depicting Moses sinking to his knees and sobbing after the killing of the Egyptian firstborns, something he wanted with all his heart not to have to happen. Just a hunch.