'Exodus' Exclusive Clip: Christian Bale Goes Old Testament on Pharoah
Watch Christian Bale’s Moses Get Old Testament on an Egyptian Ruler in this Exclusive Clip from ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’
Christian Bale is done playing Batman, but you can recognize a little bit of Bruce Wayne in his Moses.
The Oscar-winning actor stars as the Old Testament Jewish leader in the upcoming Exodus: Gods and Kings, a retelling of The Ten Commandments via our master of modern epics, Ridley Scott. Buried underneath all that guyliner is Joel Edgerton, as Egyptian leader Rameses (though IMDb has it spelled Rhamses).
In the scene above, we see an argument over Moses’s sister, which gets fiery enough to kick the Hebrew leader into action-hero mode, if only for a moment. It’s a contemporary imagining of old Bible stories, which meant that Scott had to pay respect to the traditional view while finding a way to deepen the ancient characters.
"But in this one the characters are conventionally historic. There have always been discussions about Moses,” Scott told Empire magazine last month. “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 centralized on the characterization. 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.”
Bale also did his research, diving into the first five books of the Bible, the Koran, and several other historical biographies. He learned a lot that surprised him, the actor told the Wall Street Journal.
“I had no idea about Moses,” he said. “He is mercurial, troubled.”
As you can see, Bale’s Moses is emotionally torn, put in position where he must choose between two worlds, and decide between duty and safety.
Exodus: Gods and Kings hits theaters on December 12.
