The first half of the movie follows the formula of a typical Hollywood blockbuster, with an impressive and basically pointless battle scene that sets up the main plot line. The year Moses was born, Egypt's pharaoh ordered the death of all Jewish baby boys, reacting to a seer's prediction that a new leader of the Hebrews would be born. Fearing for his life, Moses's parents stuck him in a basket and sent him down the Nile, where he was discovered by Bithia, one of the pharaoh's daughters. She raised him as a prince of Egypt alongside Ramses, the pharaoh's son and heir.

A couple decades later, the pharaoh's seer makes another prediction, that a new, great leader will be saved in battle. Shortly thereafter, Moses saves Ramses from death. Even though this bodes well for Ramses, he is suspicious of Moses's motives.

Soon, the pharaoh dies and Ramses takes the throne; Moses becomes his adviser. On a routine visit to one of Egypt's quarries—which are run on the labor of Jewish slaves—he meets the elders of the Hebrews, who eventually reveal his Jewish heritage. A pair of spies overhear this exchange and reveal it to one of the pharaoh's bureaucrats, who reveals it to Ramses. In what appears to be a rage, he banishes Moses to the desert. (This is not how this all went down in the Bible. In the book of Exodus, Moses killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave and buried the body. When his actions were discovered, "Moses became frightened and ... fled from before Pharaoh." See? Not a badass.)

This is a revealing moment in the movie's plot: Although he feels he has to punish Moses, Ramses hides a sword in Moses's pack before he's sent out into the desert so that he can defend himself. Throughout the movie, Ramses proves himself a less-than-perfect ruler for a number of reasons: He's incompetent, he's vain, he makes abominable chewing noises. But cruel, he is not. Evil, he is not. He's a petty failure, one who has the misfortune of helming an empire at the exact moment in history when God decides to issue a smackdown on the Egyptian people.

Ah, yes, God. In another of the movie's absurdities, God is played by an exceptionally creepy small child, one whose skin tone is disturbingly gray and who dresses like a Buddhist monk. He appears occasionally to encourage and taunt Moses, and, eventually, to bring down a series of plagues on the ancient city of Memphis. As the God of the Bible says in the book of Exodus, "I heard the moans of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians are holding in bondage, and I remembered my covenant."

Despite his slightly bizarre casting choice, Scott deserves credit for making God a serious character in his retelling of the book of Exodus. God is all-powerful, and vengeful, just as he is in the Bible. "For now, you can watch," child-God says to Moses in Exodus before the plagues begin. "Now, you will see what I will do to Pharaoh," God says to Moses in the Bible.