Reel Entropy

Costing $100 million and relegated to a mid-August release, Ben-Hur is another in a rash of summer movies that were doomed not by viewers or even critics, but by their own studios. It joins the likes of Ghostbusters ($144 million budget) and Legend of Tarzan ($180 million), movies that should have been just fine with the money they made, but cost way too much. Photos courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Rhiannon Saegert
@missmusetta

Ben-Hur is a frustrating sit. It didn’t have to be, but the movie makes an infuriating habit of taking whatever interesting ideas it has and running them directly into the ground like an unconvincing CGI chariot.

The movie follows Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a Jerusalem nobleman, and his adopted Roman brother, Messala Severus (Toby Kebbell). Haunted by his low state and taunted by his grandfather’s role in betraying Caesar, Severus joins the legion and, three years later, returns as a hero to quell a city that has grown restless under Roman rule. When one of the Jewish radicals makes an attempt on Pontius Pilate (Pilou Asbæk), Severus is forced to scapegoat his adoptive family. The women are executed and Ben-Hur is sent to die as a galley slave. Five years after that, he escapes, and seeks vengeance on Severus the only way he can — the chariot races.

At first, the film seems to be making a genuine effort to update the story and make a true, big-budget epic that belongs in 2016. 

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