The Prince of Egypt, a 1998 American animated musical drama, stands as a landmark achievement in animation. Directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells, with a script by Philip LaZebnik, the film is an adaptation of the Book of Exodus, recounting the life of Moses from prince of Egypt to the prophet who leads the Hebrews out of slavery.
Featuring songs by Stephen Schwartz and a score by Hans Zimmer, the film marked DreamWorks Animation's first traditionally animated feature, animated entirely in-house at DWA Glendale after Amblimation's closure in 1997.
The Genesis of an Animated Epic
DreamWorks co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg had long envisioned an animated adaptation of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, an idea he pursued after leaving Disney and establishing DreamWorks Pictures in 1994. To bring this vision to life, DreamWorks assembled a crew of 350 artists from 34 countries, many of whom had previously worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation and Amblimation.
Premiere and Reception
The Prince of Egypt premiered in Los Angeles on December 16, 1998, and was released theatrically on December 18, followed by a home video release on September 14, 1999. The film garnered positive reviews, with critics praising its visuals, songs, score, and voice acting.
Grossing $218 million worldwide, it became the most successful non-Disney animated feature at the time. The song "When You Believe," performed by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, achieved commercial success and won Best Original Song at the 71st Academy Awards. This made The Prince of Egypt the first non-Disney or Pixar animated film, and the first DreamWorks Animation film, to win an Academy Award.
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Storyline Highlights
The film opens in Ancient Egypt, where the enslaved Hebrew people pray for deliverance. Pharaoh Seti, fearing a Hebrew rebellion due to their growing numbers, orders the infanticide of newborn Hebrew boys. Yocheved saves her son Moses by placing him in a basket on the Nile River. He is found and adopted by Queen Tuya, who names him Moses.
Years later, Moses and his adoptive brother Rameses are reprimanded for accidentally destroying a temple. After Moses suggests Rameses be given the opportunity to prove his responsibility, Seti names Rameses prince regent. Moses later encounters the now-adult Miriam and Aaron, who reveal his Hebrew heritage, leading him to discover Seti's genocide.
Driven by this revelation, Moses accidentally kills an Egyptian slave driver while trying to protect an elderly Hebrew slave and flees to Midian, where he becomes a shepherd, marries Tzipporah, and encounters God through a burning bush. God commands him to return to Egypt and free the Hebrews.
Returning to Egypt, Moses confronts Rameses, now Pharaoh, and demonstrates God's power by turning his staff into a snake. After Rameses refuses to release the Hebrews, God inflicts ten plagues upon Egypt. The final plague kills all the firstborn sons of Egypt, leading Rameses to finally let the Hebrews go.
Moses, Miriam, Aaron, and Tzipporah lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, but Rameses pursues them. At the Red Sea, Moses parts the waters, allowing the Hebrews to cross, while the sea closes over the Egyptian army, drowning them.
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Michelle Pfeiffer as Tzipporah
In The Prince of Egypt, Tzipporah is depicted as independent, kind, determined, and brave. Initially hostile after being captured, she evolves into a loyal and loving wife to Moses, forming a close bond with his sister Miriam.
Tzipporah is first presented as a "desert flower" to Rameses, who then jokingly gives her to Moses. She resists being given to anyone and eventually escapes, with Moses's help. Later, she meets Moses again in Midian, where their relationship evolves into love and marriage.
Tzipporah accompanies Moses to Egypt, standing by his side as he confronts Rameses and performs miracles. She defends Moses against accusations from his brother Aaron and supports him throughout their journey to lead the Hebrews to freedom. Her final line in the film, "Look. Look at your people, Moses. They are free," encapsulates the culmination of their struggle.
The Prince of Egypt (1998) | Behind the Scenes
The Voice Cast
The film features an all-star voice cast:
- Val Kilmer as Moses
- Ralph Fiennes as Rameses
- Michelle Pfeiffer as Tzipporah
- Sandra Bullock as Miriam
- Jeff Goldblum as Aaron
- Danny Glover as Jethro
- Patrick Stewart as Pharaoh Seti I
- Helen Mirren as Queen Tuya
- Steve Martin as Hotep
- Martin Short as Huy
- Ofra Haza as Yocheved
Director Brenda Chapman briefly voices Miriam when she sings the lullaby to Moses. The vocals had been recorded for a scratch audio track, which was intended to be replaced later by Dworsky.
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Production Insights
Former Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg had always wanted to produce a film adaptation of the life of Moses. The idea for The Prince of Egypt was discussed at the formation of DreamWorks Pictures on October 12, 1994, when Katzenberg's partners, Amblin Entertainment founder Steven Spielberg, and music producer David Geffen, were meeting in Spielberg's living room.
The Prince of Egypt was "written" throughout the story process. Beginning with a starting outline, story supervisors Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook led a team of fourteen storyboard artists and writers as they sketched out the entire film-sequence by sequence. Once the storyboards were approved, they were put into the Avid Media Composer digital editing system by editor Nick Fletcher to create a "story reel" or animatic.
For the film, the actors recorded individually in a studio under guidance by one of the three directors. The voice tracks were to become the primary aspect as to which the animators built their performances.
Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, Katzenberg decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, and Arab American leaders to help his film be more accurate and faithful to the original story.
Character designers Carter Goodrich, Carlos Grangel and Nico Marlet worked on setting the design and overall look of the characters. Drawing on various inspirations for the widely known characters, the team of character designers worked on designs that had a more realistic feel than the usual animated characters up to that time. Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments.
The backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts.
The animation team for The Prince of Egypt, including 350 artists from 34 different nations, was primarily recruited both from Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had fallen under Katzenberg's auspices while at the Walt Disney Company, and from Amblimation, a defunct division of Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. As at Disney's, character animators were grouped into teams by character: for example, Kristof Serrand, as the supervising animator of Older Moses, set the acting style of the character and assigned scenes to his team.
Consideration was given to depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians properly. The filmmakers initially worked out of Amblin Entertainment's main offices on the Universal Studios Lot, but quickly outgrew them.
There are 1,192 scenes in the film, and 1,180 contain work done by the special effects department, which animates everything in an animated scene which is not a character: blowing wind, dust, rainwater, shadows, etc.
The task of creating God's voice was given to Lon Bender and the team working with the film's music composer, Hans Zimmer. According to Bender: "The challenge with that voice was to try to evolve it into something that had not been heard before. We did a lot of research into the voices that had been used for past Hollywood movies as well as for radio shows, and we were trying to create something that had never been previously heard not only from a casting standpoint but from a voice manipulation standpoint as well".
Musical Score and Soundtrack
Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz began working on writing songs for the film from the beginning of its production. As the story evolved, he continued to write songs that would serve both to entertain and help move the story along. Composer Hans Zimmer arranged and produced the songs and then eventually wrote the film's score.
DreamWorks Records released three soundtrack albums simultaneously for The Prince of Egypt, each of them aimed towards a different target audience. While the other two accompanying records, the country-themed "Nashville" soundtrack and the gospel-based "Inspirational" soundtrack, functioned as film tributes, the official The Prince of Egypt soundtrack contained the actual songs from the film. This album combines elements from the score composed by Hans Zimmer and film songs by Stephen Schwartz. The songs were either voiced over by professional singers, such as Salisbury Cathedral Choir, or sung by the film's voice actors, such as Michelle Pfeiffer and Ofra Haza.
Release and Home Media
The accompanying marketing campaign was aimed to appeal to adults, who at the time were perceived as being averse to animated films.
The Prince of Egypt was released on DVD, VHS, and LaserDisc in the United States on September 14, 1999. It was released worldwide over a two-month period, the fastest global rollout for a home media release at the time.
The ownership of the film was assumed by DreamWorks Animation (DWA) when that company split from DreamWorks Pictures in 2004; as of July 2018, the rights to the film are now owned by Universal Pictures via its parent company NBCUniversal's acquisition of DWA.
Critical Acclaim and Legacy
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 92 reviews and an average rating of 7.1/10.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film in his review saying that "The Prince of Egypt is one of the best-looking animated films ever made. It employs computer-generated animation as an aid to traditional techniques, rather than as a substitute for them, and we sense the touch of human artists in the vision behind the Egyptian monuments, the lonely desert vistas, the thrill of the chariot race, the personalities of the characters.
Since its release, the film continues to receive acclaim from critics and audiences alike. When the film reached its 20th anniversary, SyFy made a retrospective review of The Prince of Egypt, calling it the greatest animated film of all time, predominantly due to its voice cast, animation, characters, cinematography, and most importantly, its musical score. Lisa Laman of Collider wrote that it "stands out" among the other films in DreamWorks Animation's catalog for its dark but inspirational and uplifting tone when compared to the studio's later titles. Laman further noted that the film is "content to let these kinds of dark moments simmer. Julia Polster of The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote that the film showcases "complex emotions and history in ways even children can appreciate" and positively compared its handling of the portrayal of Jews under oppression to Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List (1993) and the stage musicals Fiddler on the Roof and Parade.
Anniversary Celebrations
In July 2023, to celebrate the film's 25-year anniversary, many crew members who worked on the film, including directors Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner and Simon Wells, songwriter Stephen Schwartz, and cast members Amick Byram and Eden Riegel, reunited by participating in a 3-hour livestream on YouTube on The Tammy Tuckey Show.
Controversies and Censorship
The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in the Maldives stated that "all prophets and messengers of God are revered in Islam, and therefore cannot be portrayed". Following this ruling, the censor board banned the film in January 1999. In the same month, the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia banned the film "so as not to offend the country's majority Muslim population".
Spin-offs and Adaptations
In November 2000, DreamWorks Animation released Joseph: King of Dreams, a direct-to-video spin-off prequel based on the story of Joseph from the Book of Genesis.
A stage musical adaptation debuted at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, California on October 14, 2017. The show had an international premiere on April 6, 2018, in Denmark at the Fredericia Teater.
Additional Production Notes
During the production of The Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks had hoped that the film would be a box office success, so they had been pressuring employees to work on the film, but if they were unable to work on the film, they were then forced to work on Shrek, which was expected to flop.
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