Gods of Egypt: Gerard Butler and Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau star in heavily CGI'd trailer

The film has previously been accused of 'whitewashing' Egypt

Shot from Gods of Egypt's trailer (Lionsgate)

The official trailer for Gods of Egypt has arrived, giving us a first glimpse at the absolutely ridiculous CGI-filled film starring Gerard Butler and Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

Without giving the whole movie away - which this trailer seemingly does - Gods of Egypt sees the God of violence, disorder and storms, Set (Butler), become king of the Egyptian empire.

Mortal man Bek (Brenton Thwaites) then makes it his mission to ‘save the world and rescue his true love’, managing to get the God Horus (Coster-Waldau) on side to help.

Warning: the following trailer contains a huge amount of CGI that may or may not make it unbearable to watch.

Starring alongside the three male leads in this clichéd tale is Elodie Young as the Egyptian Goddess Hathor, who is the personification of feminine love and motherhood. Chadwick Boseman also appears as another deity, Throth.

Little else is known about the film except it had a $140 million budget and is directed by Alex Proyas (I, Robot). Oh, and it has already caused controversy for reportedly “whitewashing” the whole of Egypt, much the same way Exodus: Gods And Kings did.

As you may have noticed, not a single non-white person features predominantly in the trailer except Boseman who appears for two seconds (at the 30-second mark) crouched behind a chair in fear of the two Gods fighting it out.

There has been much media debate over the controversial subject, with Forbes pretty much hitting the nail on the head in a blog post by Scott Mendelson.

He wrote: “The film is yet another movie based in an African continent filled with Australian, Swedish, English, and French actors playing would-be Egyptian humans and gods.

“More than just being “problematic,” the implication remains that white actors, even generic white actors with zero box office draw, are preferable in terms of domestic and overseas box office than culturally-specific (minority) actors who actually look like the people they are supposed to be playing.”

He goes on to say how none of the actors - except perhaps Butler to some extent - are huge box-office powerhouses, implying the studio felt the need to hire white actors for it to appeal to the masses.

Mendelson continued: “As we’ve seen with Exodus and Pan, whitewashing or racebending doesn’t really help [at the box office]”.

Boseman's casting was previously criticised for apparently playing into the “magical negro” stereotype, his character being the God of wisdom.

Who knows, Gods of Egypt could prove us all wrong. It reaches cinemas 8 April 2016 in the UK, while it will be in US cinemas 26 February.