Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (The Game) is probably one of my favorite video games ever. It has survived every video game purge I have ever had since 2002. It was certainly flawed, but the level designs and mechanics were so much fun that I just kept wanting to play them over and over in spite of the combat bits. The plot wasn't half bad either. Not challenging, but it wasn't without its charm. The Prince was an amusing (if predictable) protagonist and the Princess provided amusing banter along with plot exposition. Given that she wasn't completely helpless, you didn't resent her like you would other escort-type characters. I always kind of thought that this combination of elements had the makings of a good, big budget film. The plot and characters are simple enough that it wouldn't need to be dumbed down much, and the characters are fun, easily castable archetypes.
Well groomed, anglo-friendly Middle Easterns
are what the kids are all about, right?
So I'll be honest, I wasn't too worried when I heard that Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer were making this game into a movie. I wasn't even terribly dissuaded when they cast the Douchebag from Donnie Darko in the roll of a Persian Prince.
The number of people you are fooling,
Jake Gyllenhaal? 0. 0 people.
So with a movie so clearly ready made for this game, I was pretty enthusiastic when I entered the theater for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (The Movie). And that enthusiasm carried right on through the first third of the movie. Our Prince (Dastan), who is given a name this time around is introduced through a fairly inane backstory about adoption off of the street by the king for blah blah insert trope here. It certainly isn't necessary, but for audiences not already attached to the prince (and given that Sands of Time (The Game) came out in 2003 and the PS2 is getting phased out, on top of the fact that all of the installments since SoT have been godawful, that audience is not particularly large) it helps establish a quick and easy explanation for why he's so good at all of his wall crawling nonsense that we in the gaming community take for granted as "things you can do in a video game". The film opens with the prince, his two brothers, and his uncle (Ben Kingsley) debating over whether to attack a sacred city. The prince's incursion into the city is a marvelous nod to the game, from the sweeping view of the environmental items you'll need to use to get in, down to the moves the prince executes before the battle sequence erupts. This is where all nods to the game are cast aside and thus will say no more on the matter other than: if you are looking for a good movie based off of a great game, you will not be satisfied. Don't waste your time. There is nothing here for you.
And I mean literally nothing. Hell, the movie felt more like a nod to Assassin's Creed (even featuring a panoramic shot of the city rotating around the prince before he leaped from a rooftop) than anything else, the notion of monsters/demons is completely abolished from the movie, focusing instead on a thinly veiled allusion to the war on terror with a little bit of Hamlet thrown in. Ben Kingsley manipulates the prince's brother (the other prince) to order an attack on a holy (middle eastern) city under the assumption that they have weapons which they are selling to enemies of Persia, in spite of the fact that the city has no forges. I think they only cast Ben Kingsley because Dick Cheney was busy that day. Of course, there is a conspiracy to kill the king to take the crown and Gyllenhaal (the prince) gets framed in the whole business, taking the sassy princess of the city he just helped capture with him.
Our Sassy Princess (Gemma Arterton), who is every bit
middle eastern as Jake Gyllenhaal.
I could talk some more about the plot, but for the overall thing, uh... just picture Hamlet, add Gemma, Jake, and Ben, and make the ending a lot happier. Oh, are you wondering why I mentioned nothing about the sands of time, or the time controlling dagger? that is because the dagger is used precisely 3 times, only 2 of which have actual consequence. The Sands of Time, rather, are a macguffin to move the plot along while the Prince and the Princess banter, with the whole "dagger that controls time" conceit ignored for approximately 90% of the film. Also there is an Ostrich Race scene. Oh yeah? Remember the comical, right wing, Jack Sparrow-esque, Ostrich racing bookie from the game? Yeah, me neither.
FACE THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE!!!
The point in the movie where this was introduced was where I suddenly snapped out of all the action sequences and little nods to the game in the beginning of the movie and remembered that this was still a joint from the same team as Pirates of the Caribbean. And that is exactly what 2/3 of the film plays out like. It takes its conceit very seriously at the start, then introduces an Ostrich Racing bookie. It was dark in the theater, so my notes are all over the place, but I can definitely make out at the bottom of one page, written in quotes and all caps: "BEHOLD THE MIGHTY OSTRICH". This was a line actually spoken in the film. Before they raced them. They cling to the Ostrich joke with the tenacity of a Pit-Bull with Lock Jaw. Another topic they love to address in this capacity is their humorous slant on government taxation affecting small business owners, related to the audience in exactly those terms, in case you might miss the humor due to its tasteful subtlety.
Look, I could go on, but the bottom line is this: There are a few action sequences worth watching, the performances are about what you'd expect from an early summer big studio flick, and if you have that mental disorder that makes you think Pirates of the Caribbean in any of its iterations was good, you'll probably have a good time at this movie. If you want them to actually explore any of the plot conceits (such as, I don't know, a fucking DAGGER THAT CONTROLS TIME) that make it an original movie, then you will walk away feeling cheated. And if you expected it to be a thing like PoP: SoT (The Game) then I will find a time and a place for us to meet so that we can order a good bottle of Whiskey and drink until the brain cells responsible for making us think this would be different from any other video game to movie title are dead.
I am coming for YOU, you little Bastards.
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8 comments:
This is the worst thing ive ever read.
May 31, 2010 at 9:33 AMThe Prince of Persia game was retarded in its story. Thank God thils film has made me forget the atrocity that was PoP: tSoT.
This film was amazing and I feel sorry for you for not seeing that.
Agreed, trying watching the movie before criticizing, it sounds like you watched the trailer and read a couple bad critics to get your info. The movie was great, the action scenes were well done and well placed, alot of running around roof tops (the game was well placed around that) fancy acrobatics and epic knife fights with easy to like characters. And it was clean (unlike your above critique)
May 31, 2010 at 9:46 AMWhat more could someone as for?
I actually like the film, to tell yu the truth. I went in believing with all my heart that it would be like any other movie adaptation of a video game: having nothing in common with the source material save for a character or two. But what I instead found was a wonderfully strung together film that manages to take key elements from the video games in such a way that you couldn't help but grin. The Sands of Time game was fun and intuitive in a VG kind of way, and Sands of Time (film) did the same in a movie kind of way. I mean, I know it had certain things that were vastly different in contrast to the video game (i.e. Where were my monsters?!) but they weren't so important once you got into the whole movie. But, we can all look back and say "It sure beats the Super Mario Bros. Film". God that was awful (SMB is my favorite VG series btw and that movie was the spawn of Satan). So, I think I was by far the best video game adaptation yet. Now, let's talk about a Pixar Mario Bros. Movie.
May 31, 2010 at 10:28 AMAnonymous who is 3rd from the top gets all of my respect for justifying why they liked it, rather than just telling me I'm wrong. Hey, 3rd from the top anonymous, rock on with your well supported opinion!
May 31, 2010 at 1:38 PMAnd yes, i did "trying watching movie" before I saw it, it cost me 9 whole bucks. Would you like a scan of the ticket stub?
Thanks for reading!
Dude, the guy captioned with "Face the thing that should not be!!!" kinda LOOKS like an ostrich...
May 31, 2010 at 2:41 PM@Joe: That would be Alfred Molina, aka Doc Ock.
May 31, 2010 at 3:19 PM@M. Butler: One word, my friend: proofreading. A blog that calls itself WordsFinest should be above sophomoric slip-ups like "it's" vs. "its" and "he" vs. "the".
Side note: the Pirates franchise was certainly ill-advised, but the first film in the series was an enjoyable, well-done piece of cinema. I'd like to gain your respect a la Anonymous #3 & support my position, but explaining my feelings on the film would take an entire post itself.
I have no idea what grammatical errors you are referencing...*shifty eyes*
May 31, 2010 at 4:38 PM@Anonymous posters 1 and 2: You have no idea how to support an opinion. Your views will appear elementary and will be disrespected by anyone who reads them because all you had to say was that the writer has a different opinion than you and that makes him wrong.
June 1, 2010 at 4:51 PMFirst of all, I thought that the first Pirates movie was great, though the series went downhill after that. I liked it better than this movie, that's for sure. If SoT had been more like Pirates, I probably would have liked it better. Even though Jack Sparrow was ridiculous and crazy, he was still very serious and a cut-throat pirate. The Disneyesque parts of this movie were just too much like a kids movie and they didn't belong. The problem was that they couldn't decide if they wanted to make a serious movie that followed a serious and intense VG, or make a fun and happy Disney movie. I was very disappointed that the makers of the movie showed so much skill in tributing the VG through action sequences, and then just fucked everything up by stopping caring half way through the movie and doing whatever they wanted to please a wide variety of audiences. Not that the later on action sequences weren't cool, but they had nothing to do with the game. I don't even care that much about the lack of monsters (though that was a large point of the game) but the fact that the dagger (the main point of the game and the reason to play it) was not central to the movie (besides plot) is just a disgrace. They should not have given the rights to Disney if they wanted to make a movie that gamer can appreciate.
All in all, parts of the movie made me very nostalgic and I really want to play through the game again for those parts. But, I mostly agree with Butler that the movie is not worth seeing except for the fact that you can have a good laugh while making fun of it.
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