Before watching Prince of Persia the movie, I thought it could be that movie to pave the way for great video game turned movies. Sadly, I was wrong. This is the same opinion I’ve seen on other websites before and after seeing the movie. I can understand feeling this way before the movie from all the trailers but afterwards?
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trailer
[spoiler title=”What this movie is about”]Prince of Persia: Sands of Time stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Dastan, the Prince of Persia in sixth century BC. He was born as a street rat and in the movie’s opening scene you get a sense of Aladdin’s opening scene from Disney’s Aladdin. Just a side note, Walt Disney Pictures is the company heading this project.
Fifteen years after Dastan is rescued from the streets, he leads his team of fellow street rats into the city of Alamut where they are victorious and this starts the ripple effect for the rest of the movie. During the siege of Alamut, Dastan finds the dagger that controls the sands of time. Shortly after the fight, the King’s advisor and brother, Nizam, played by Ben Kingsley, sees said dagger and says that he should hand it over as a gift to the King. Instead Dastan’s brother, Tus, tells Dastan to offer a royal gown that was given to him by Nizam. Of course this kills the King and the blame is placed on Dastan. As he escapes, he is followed by Princess Tamina of Alamut, played by Gemma Arteton. She is the one sworn to protect the dagger and tried her hardest to get it back from Dastan as they make their way to his father’s funeral. On there way they are captured and taken to an ostrich race track run by Sheik Amar, played by Alfred Molina, who is against taxes and Persians. Leave it to Disney to find a way to put some type of odd animal into its movie. Once they escape, in a Disney chaotic fashion, they finally reach King Sharaman’s funeral where Dastan is able to talk to Nizam and tells him that he believes his brother is involved with the death of his father. Dastan shortly learns that this isn’t true and that Nizam is the cause of everything. Nizam wants the dagger so he can undo the moment when he his brother the King when they were kids. If Nizam had never done this, he would have been the King of Persia. Dastan is able to escape (yet again) and he and Tamina head off to return the dagger. She tells Dastan that there is an hourglass, created by the gods to punish humans for their sins. If the dagger breaks the glass, it will mean the end of the world.
Now that Nizam knows who has the dagger and that Dastan is aware, Nizam sends out his version of the Black Ops, lethal assassins known as the Hashahashins. Dastan and Tamina are ambushed as they try to return the dagger to its rightful place. The dagger is taken back to Nizam and the two heroes must take it back.
With the help of the ostrich race track owner, they head back Alamut where the hourglass is located. This is where Tamina discovers that she isn’t the one destined to save the people but it is Dastan’s job. She falls into a pit while Nizam and Dastan fight over who will cut the hourglass first.
Of course Dastan is the one who wins the fight and time rewinds to right after Alamut is taken. Dastan rushes to his brothers to tell him that Alamut is not making weapons for Persia’s enemies against Persia but instead Nizam wants the city taken so he can get his hands on the dagger. To convince is brother Tus, Dastan tells him something that only Tus and his father shared together. With these words about brothers, Tus believes Dastan.[/spoiler]
Almost half way through this movie I started to get bored with it. It felt repetitive and predictable, more so than other movies. It was nice to see some of the puzzle elements from the game woven subtlety into the movie and the fighting scenes were nice to watch but I don’t feel like this is that video game turned movie that is just so amazing that it will pave the way for other great movies based off of video games. This leaves me waiting for that movie to come along that will show non-gamers that video games are capable of telling a great story on the large screen. Perhaps I will have to wait for Mass Effect to finally get what I’m looking for in a video game turned movie.
Now don’t get me wrong, Prince of Persia is a good movie and deserves a watch at least once. It is rated PG-13 but that doesn’t stop parents from allowing younger kids into the movie.Visually the locations are beautiful and the action scenes are great but with a fast moving camera, it is very easy to miss something.
Overseas the film is doing much better than stateside, almost making close to 89 million. In the US, however, it was beaten by Sex in the City and only took in around 30 million.
Just a bit of back story on Prince of Persia the video games, the first installment was released back in 1989 and has been released on at least eighteen different systems. Prince of Persia has been through several reboots and retelling of the story but one thing remains: it is set in Persia with the main character called the Prince who has amazing acrobatic skills.
