Stories of family and identity have been a part of global culture for thousands of years, and the diversity and nuance of these narratives has played a large role in how people understand themselves and their place in their family, community, and society. One of the earliest stories to deal with these themes is from the book of Exodus, in which the prophet Moses has to abandon and turn against his adopted family of royal Egyptians in favor of joining his native Israelites and following the orders of the Hebrew God to get the Pharaoh to set the Hebrew slaves free. The Prince of Egypt (1998) takes the themes presented in Exodus 1-15 and explores them in a way that makes the Exodus story resonate with a modern audience of many faiths. Through narrative structure, character design, and casting choices, Prince of Egypt creates a compelling film adaptation that delves into the complexities of the interpersonal relationships present in Exodus and how those relationships affect the events and the people present in the story.
            The filmmakers had to do a lot of alteration when it came to the actual narrative that drives Prince of Egypt. The text from Exodus is weighted in almost a polar opposite way to the film, with the most action happening after Moses returns to Egypt and featuring very little character development prior to that moment. Conversely, Prince of Egypt spends nearly half of the film building up to Moses’s interaction with God at the burning bush, events which only take two short chapters in Exodus. This was a very intentional move on the filmmakers’ part, because they had to build up the characters in order for them to feel like real people that the audience could sympathize with before the climax happened.
            Based on this, the film is clearly not a literal translation of Exodus. It wouldn’t work well as a narrative if it followed the text to the letter, so the text was better suited to a traditional translation that left room for the filmmakers to put their own spin on the story. In Literature Into Film, Linda Costanzo Cahir writes that a successful literature based film “must communicate definite ideas concerning the integral meaning and value of the literary text, as the filmmakers interpret it” (Cahir 99). By adding scenes and expanding upon the first two chapters of Exodus, the filmmakers are showing their deep understanding of the characters and themes of the text while also transforming the text into something new that has the ability to stand apart and have value separate from the source. There were a few things that the filmmakers had to radically alter to streamline the narrative and give it conflict and motivation to drive the narrative forward. For instance, Aaron, Moses’s brother, works alongside Moses in the text and speaks for him because Moses has a stutter. In the film, Aaron pushes back against Moses as he embodies the doubt, fear, anger, and hopelessness felt by many Israelites in regards to Moses’s presence in their lives after seeing him as an oppressor for so many years. This choice helped to solidify Moses in the film as the central character and leader for the Hebrew people, as well as to make his struggles throughout the film rest more firmly on his shoulders alone.
            The biggest narrative change between the text and film is the focus on the relationship between Moses and the Pharaoh, who in the film is made to be Moses’s adoptive brother, Ramses. The entire film rests on the relationship and conflict between Moses and Ramses, and this serves the overarching themes of family and identity throughout the film. The text never addresses the fact that Moses and the Pharaoh grew up in the same household, and it only explains Pharaoh’s constant denial of Moses’s demands to let the Hebrew people leave Egypt through God saying, “I've made [Pharaoh] stubborn, him and his servants, so that I can force him to look at these signs and so you'll be able to tell your children and grandchildren how I toyed with the Egyptians, like a cat with a mouse; you'll tell them the stories of the signs that I brought down on them, so that you'll all know that I am God” (The Message, Exodus 10:1-2). In the text, God works as a puppet master, controlling the actions of every person in order to show God’s power. This would be weak character development in a film, so the filmmakers gave Ramses and Moses clear worldly motivations for their actions.
            Early in the film, Seti, Ramses’s father and current Pharaoh, berates his son for being reckless, telling him that, “one weak link can break the chain of a mighty dynasty” (00:12:12). Later when Moses first asks Ramses, now the Pharaoh, to let the Hebrews go, an outburst from Ramses recalls the scene from before when Ramses shouts, “I will not be the weak link!” (00:58:56). This need to be seen as a strong leader of Egypt becomes Ramses’s motivation throughout the entire film to fight against Moses when they had previously had a warm and close relationship. Ramses’s stubbornness is not divinely bestowed on him, but rather an innate character trait borne out of a need to appear “good enough” in the eyes of the people around him.
            The filmmakers’ choice to expand upon the relationship between Moses and Ramses also helps to fill in the gaps that were left when they removed Moses’s resistance to God’s call because of his stutter. In the text, Moses and God spend several verses going back and forth as Moses asks God to send someone else to free the Israelites because Moses has difficulty speaking. Without that conflict, the filmmakers had to find another reason for Moses to have difficulty completing the job he was sent to do. A theme that stays consistent throughout the text and the film was the idea of doing what is right and what one is being called to do even when it is difficult, frightening, and when one resists doing it. Since Moses has such a close relationship with the man who is the film’s main antagonist, it creates a high level of internal conflict for him. The audience sees him visibly struggle to work against his brother. The moment where this becomes most apparent is after God sends the Spirit to kill all the first born sons of Egypt, including Ramses’s son. As Moses watches Ramses cover his son and cradle his dead body, he is clearly sorry for what has had to be done. He tries to amend what little of their relationship is left, but Ramses bitterly tells him to take the Hebrews and go. After he leaves, Moses sits outside in the road and cries. This scene is comprised of a few seconds of careful animation that did not have to be included in the film, but it amplifies the emotional toll that this journey has had on Moses, especially with regard to Ramses. Without this close, brotherly relationship, the entire film falls apart, and the filmmakers worked closely to build up this aspect of the narrative in order to drive the themes of the film.
 
Works Cited
Cahir, Linda Costanzo. Literature Into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches. McFarland, 2006.

Peterson, Eugene H. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. NavPress, 2002.

The Prince of Egypt. Directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells. Performances by Val Kilmer and Ralph Fiennes. Dreamworks Animation LLC, 1998.

“The Prince of Egypt.” Filmsound.org, http://www.filmsound.org/studiosound/postpro.html. Accessed 15 Dec. 2018.