Official Blog For Author Thomas McClurg

There are immediately two ways to approach this movie. One is from the perspective of someone who is familiar with the video game they are adapting the movie from, the other obviously is from the position of ignorance about the game.

I played the game, enjoyed it a lot, therefore i can’t help but come at this review from that perspective. This will bias the review, but since every review is basically someones opinion it doesn’t really matter, just wanted you to be aware of the color of glasses i saw the movie through.

Anytime you deal with an adaptation of anything you have to realize that there are going to be liberties taken. Books are always better than the movie because books don’t deal with the same limitations as movies. Adapting is difficult stuff to do and it’s no wonder why so many adaptations end up sucking, especially when it comes to video games. Video game adaptations have been historically horrible, really horrible. So instead of locking my spine and becoming as rigid as i possibly can, i went into the movie hoping for a few things.

I wanted the spirit of the games characters to come through. In this case it is the prince and the princess who are the focus. Get those two right and most everything else will be forgivable and at the least bearable. Mess them up and the movie crashes and burns.

Aside from the obvious lack of ethnically specific casting, i felt they did a respectable job. The banter between the two characters was appropriately push and pull, laced with jabs and barbs delivered with a smirk and a grin. There isn’t a ton of depth in the script but the movie isn’t supposed to be deep. Even then i cared about what happened to them, even if i was unlikely to cry if either were to suddenly drop dead. I also thought the acting from both leads was good in the context of the movie. Again, this isn’t high drama, it’s popcorn action, and i enjoyed what they gave.

The second thing i wanted to see was the flavor of the games action, which largely deals with the prince performing a near constant string of mind boggelingly dangerous free running type stunts along with some sword play mixed in. They establish this tone in the movie early on with the young Dastan running from guards and thankfully this element is featured in pretty much every action scene. I thought they were well choreographed to be at least somewhat believable (Never been a big fan of the CG/wires running on lily pads effects in stunt work) For that matter i felt most of the actions was fun to watch.  Sure there was some CG sprinkled in, but they didn’t lean on it like a crutch and the movie benefits from that slight touch of realism, especially since video game plots are inherently ridiculous for the most part.

And that leads to the third part. the story. Again, it’s an adaptation, so very little of the games story remains intact. Basically the dagger is involved, so is the sand of time, and the bad guy must be stopped from getting both. Everything else is mish mashed together to bring us to that ultimate resolution. As a result. things jump around a bit erratically, almost like the prince himself, hopping from one seemingly random place to the next until we reach the end. It lacks a lot of substance and continuity. Fortunately for me at least, the action and characters were sufficient to maintain my enjoyment.

One thing i would have liked to see, and it’s a small gripe, is more of the dagger’s time controlling ability. In the game you could go more than just backwards. Would have been cool to see Dastan slow down time and wipe out a whole group of guys in slow motion or something.

On the whole it was a fun action ride with a plot both ridiculous and somewhat light weight in its execution. A typical problem for video games since many start out with ludicrous paper thin plots to begin with. Sadly the transition from game console to big screen has yet to tighten up that aspect while taking advantage of the wonderfully creative action potential of video games as well as their colorful characters. In my opinion Prince of Persia succeeds on two of those three counts, and while not overwhelmingly so, combine to make a fun summer movie watching experience.