Prince of Persia gets watered down

May 28th, 2010

Prince of Persia

Film: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Director: Mike Newell
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Disney, the Prince of Persia video game franchise, Jake Gyllenhaal, and things that can rewind time.

Despite that, this movie is just another example of why video games shouldn’t jump to the big screen. Or maybe just mystical, knife-wielding action video games shouldn’t be brought to life by Walt Disney Studios.

The Prince of Persia video game franchise, which first began in 1989 with a side scrolling platform on the PC, has since evolved into an awesome, three dimensional action concept for video game consoles, and has constantly been given strong ratings by video game critics alike.

When it got the green-light to be adapted into a film I had big expectations of what it’s potential could be (of a moderately serious, epic, and mystical action flick) even though I knew the Mickey Mouse ears were tagging along with it.

The story basically tells the tale of a 6th century Persian Prince named Dastan, and how he teams up with a Princess named Tamina to protect a sacred dagger, which has the power of controlling time itself, from falling into the hands of his evil king-aspiring uncle Nizam.

After Dastan is framed by his uncle for killing the king, who was also his adoptive father, Datsan flees into the desert with Princess Tamina, who he finds out is the sworn guardian of the “Dagger of Time.” The dagger gives the user the ability to go back in time for shorts periods and change the past. It’s fueled by the “Sands of Time”, special sand that was part of a mystical sandstorm sent centuries ago to erase mankind, but was stopped and contained into a giant hour glass underground a holy city.

For the next hour or so, viewers see Dastan’s journey with Princess Tamina to bring the dagger back to its resting place before his uncle Nizam can steal it and reverse time to become king.

On paper, this sounds like an appealing story-line. But, for some reason, when it hit the screen, any aspect of focus and structure was nowhere to be found, and instead was replaced with a lot of “let’s try and cram in as many random scenes and fights as fast as possible, and then end the movie.”

Specifically on character depth, the film had no real compelling villain. They didn’t take time to really create a scary antagonist that was worthy enough to be a challenge for Dastan. I mean, for a guy who knows parkour and wields a dagger that can rewind time, I’d expect something that was a bit more of an obstacle than just an evil “fairy tale-esque” uncle, or even the random ancient assassin killer (hired by the uncle to retrieve the dagger) that had a script life of probably 2-5 minutes near the end of the movie.

It came to the point where the credits started rolling and I sort of thought the main villain was actually just Dastan’s “fugitive status.”

Another unfortunate item was the lack of screen time given to Prince Dastan’s parkour ability, which is so heavily utilized in all the video games, or to the “Dagger of Time” as well. The film shows quick segments of Gyllenhal jumping and flipping off walls, but they go by so quickly that by the time you contemplate how cool it was, the scene or fight is completely over. And the Dagger of Time’s rewind ability is only used a handful of times, most of them in non-combat situations, and wasn’t really that impressive.

I still don’t really see why Director Mike Newell didn’t opt for an arabic actor for the lead role of the Prince. Gyllenhal did do a solid job as Dastan, gaining five pounds of muscle and taking a variety of martial arts classes prior, but I wasn’t really buying the English accent or the cheesy dialogue.

On a good note, Prince of Persia had some impressive scenery shots thanks to John Seale’s cinematography. I really think he did an solid job bringing out the middle eastern Moroccan desert vibe. And on the note of beautiful, Emma Christina on-screen? Not only was she a smoking gorgeous princess to say the least, but also surprisingly showed that her role was a lot bigger than just playing the “damsel in distress.”

Overall, a video game that was once rated by some critics as a thrilling Mature game has been turned into an almost light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, family movie franchise by Disney.

In other words, imagine seeing an awesome ninja-like warrior doing lots of flipity-flopity jumps and moves with an ancient dagger. But there’s a problem. You can’t take this guy seriously…because he’s dressed up in a Mickey Mouse mascot costume. So you just sit there wondering “what if,” and how much more epic the performance would be if he wasn’t donning the mouse ears. We’ll leave it with a potentially fun experience for the family and kids.

Best Moment: Seeing Dastan silently climb up the outside of a huge castle wall by grabbing onto arrows that were being shot up along the wall by his crew for him to latch onto.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Tags: Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley, Disney, Gemma Arterton, jake gyllenhaal, prince of persia