Prince of Persia
I’ve been extremely nervous about the new Prince of Persia movie since it was announced. As you know, there really hasn’t been a good video game movie so far, at least a live-action one(Yes, I’m looking at you, Advent Children and Pokemon). Among the best on Wikipedia’s list of films based on video games appear to be Tomb Raider, Max Payne, and Mortal Kombat, and that’s not saying much. Among the worse ones, if I can actually narrow it down, are Silent Hill, Doom, and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. So naturally, I’m nervous about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Jerry Bruckheimer. I have nothing against him, he took a ride and made it a successful IP, one that I even enjoy. I do not however feel, that he was a good choice for PoP, The game, while it’s only T(unless you count WW with its M rating) it still too intense for a family oriented Disney movie. If you haven’t played the games then shame on you, you’re 6 years late, and I’m going into details now: In the first hour of SoT everyone but you, Farah, and the Vizier turn to sandmonsters, meaning you must kill many of your comrades, including an emotional battle with your father, in his now zombified state.
That’s a bit intense for your family of 4 going to see this on a Sunday afternoon, don’t you think? I also have doubts about the cast, Jake Gyllenhaal specifically. He’s a bit ethnically challenged for the role. It feels like they might as well have cast Nolan North and gotten it over with, so I could have referred to the whole thing as a mistake, like Spawn the movie. Names, too, Prince has never had a name, they even kept true to that in PoP: 2008, as mediocre as it was they at least got that right. Not only to they give Prince a name they change everyone elses.
That being said, I do see some good in this: Since Jerry Bruckheimer is working on this, there’s basically an unlimited budget, which is extremely noticeable in the trailer, specifically with the slow-down scenes. The firs time I saw the trailer, I thought it was the dark prince emerging, but it’s really just a new take on the time manipulation scenes. The scenery is perfect, Gemma seems a good fit for the Farah-esque character. Jake seems to have the iconic corny comebacks down pretty well, too.
There are two thing in particular I would love to see in this movie: One being the intro/ending. Remember the intro I was talking about? Well it starts off like this: You see the Persian army headed towards the palace, the Prince’s voice chimes in “Most people think that time is like a river, that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you, they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am, and why I say this. Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard” (forgive me if thats a bit off, I’m going from memory). Towards the ending of the game is him sitting with Farah, He tells her of the Vizier and how he plan to betray her country. She wonders how he knows this, so he begins “Most people think that time…” The other scene I want in the movie is the end scene, after he defeats the Vizier, Farah walks in and sees the Vizier really was a traitor. Prince, knowing what all has happened is still in love with Farah, but to her, none of it happened. He leans in and kisses her, and she shoves him away, scorning him. He uses the dagger to go back in time a few seconds before he kissed her. At the end of the scene he is running off, and she asks him for his name, he replies that she can call him “Kakolookiyam.” That was the name of a the hero from stories that Farah’s mother told her when she was little, she had shared this with Prince before he reversed the opening of the hourglass. Those two scenes would just about make the movie for me, I doubt I’ll see either, but I can still hope.
What has really started to sell me on this though is the IGN Rewind of the trailer, where Jordan Mechner actually talks about the movie, scene by scene. His reasoning behind certain questions we all have makes sense, even if it isn’t what we want to hear. He talks about the incorporation of the name, Dastan. It’s Persian for trickster, and it just seems to fit. He explains that in the video game he was nameless you you can further associate yourself with the Prince, but he introduced a name for the movie because when you’re watching it, if Gemma just refers to him as you all the time, it’s going to throw most people off, and even though I’m not “most people”, I not only agree with this, I prefer it. He also talks about the rest of the cast changing, along with the story, He explains that SoT worked very well the way it was, it made for a great third person action adventure platformer, but that doesn’t make the best movie, which is one big reason that most movie-based games suck, they try to follow the story too well, leaving you with a stiff representation of the movie and no new elements to the story. Unfortunately, it works both ways, so trying to copy the game to a T would be dry and washed out. Imagine watching someone playing a game, I for one usually find it entertaining, I can be lazy and experience the game firsthand, along with being able to backseat-game. Now imagine that you’re watching a recoding of someone playing the game, seeing the game played in third person, where it feels like you can manipulate the character, but there’s nothing you can do but watch. That’s not really what I want to go see, no matter how visually impressive it seems to how well written the story is.
On a side note, there is a prequel coming out in April, it’s a graphic novel, and while he didn’t work on any of the interior as far as I’m aware of, Todd McFarlane did the cover to it. I’m genuinely excited for that and that will not change. One funny thing i have noticed about it though is McFarlane left Marvel to create Image, now he’s doing a bit of work for Disney with this GN, who now owns Marvel, just seems a bit humorous to me that he’s doing work for his former employer if you look at it the right way.
Overall, I am hopeful of this movie, even if it doesn’t follow the original story in SoT. There also seems to be elements from the other games as well, such as the temple and the dagger-tail.
And one more thing: Mechner said that Ubisoft was working on something for the movie, hopefully it isn’t a game based on a movie based on a game. I’m personally hoping they’re taking cue from Sony and doing the same thing with the SoT trilogy as Sony has done with God of War and rerelease the games in high def. How great would that be?
Tags: Disney, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jerry Bruckheimer, Jordan Mechner, Prince of Persia, Sands of Time
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