See that up there? That's Jake Gyllenhaal. With muscles and stuff. Now as fun as it is to stare longingly at pictures of Mr. G, my purpose in including it here is for more than just eye candy. Jake is all buffed up for the new Jerry Bruckheimer produced film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time coming on May 28th to a theater near you. Unless you don't have any theaters near you in which case I hope you enjoy hanging out at Wal-Mart on Saturday nights.

 

Let's just get it all out on the table right now; I love Prince of Persia. I remember playing the original Jordan Mechner classic at a young age and just being sucked in by it. Essentially Prince of Persia (similar to Braid now that I think about it) is an puzzle game that charades as an action game. Sure it's fun to run, jump, and sword-fight around the dungeon as the prince, but when you get right down to it, the whole game is just about solving the puzzles that masquerade as the ledges and pits of the levels. This is not a good start for our movie discussion. We're really talking about a puzzle game here when it comes down to it, and that particular game had almost nothing to do with a story. Sure there was a sequence or two at the very beginning which shows the Princess rejecting the Vizier, him getting pissed at her rejection, and the Prince being thrown in the dungeon with only an hour to escape and save said princess. But about 3.5 seconds into your first movement in the game, you forget all of that and focus on not dying as you run around like the little dex monkey you are.

 

But lucky for us, this movie isn't based on the first game my friends. The source material for this story (which was actually used in pitching the movie by Jordan Mechner himself by the way) come from the game with the same name, The Sands of Time. I've played almost every Prince of Persia, and I have to say that to this day it is still my favorite. It just represents the perfect mixture of narrative, action, puzzles, and game mechanics. I could go on about why this game is fantastic, but this post is about the movie and not the game (I'll do one on that later, ok?) In any case, they picked the best story from the series to use for a movie at the behest of the creator, big deal! As we all know, movies can have the greatest premise ever and still find a way to screw the pooch hardcore.

 

So let's cut the chatter and get to the analysis here:

 

Maybe Good: Sir Ben Kingsley is in it - True, Sir Ben Kingsley has a role in this movie which he will undoubtedly execute exceedingly well after all he is Sir Ben Kingsley. But we're smarter than that folks, we saw Bloodrayne. Sir Ben was in that, and it was a total crapfest. So negatory on this one.

 

Maybe Bad: Jake Gyllenhaal is rocking a British accent. Honestly, I'm kind of sick of this whole pehnomenon. Accents are really hard to pull off in movies and even though Jakey-poo is working his level best to sound like the Prince in the actual game, I think I still would prefer him just not having an accent and focusing instead on acting. This doesn't mean the movie will be horrible though, I mean just think about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Oh. Wait. Don't.

 

Maybe Good: The story at least seems to follow the game narrative very well. The focus on the dagger and it's powers still seems to be the focus and all in all the basic narrative appears in-tact. This is good news for those of us that really enjoyed the story of the Sands game. I always thought it would work well as a movie. Sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for. 

 

Maybe Good: The action actually looks quite good in the trailer. Clearly the film makers have worked to preserve the Prince's signature agility and dexterity, while not going over the top with ridiculous special effects a la 2012. While this doesn't mean the movie will be good, it certainly does lend hope to the idea that it will be some fun to watch.

 

Maybe... uh something: Jake Gyllenhaal - Say what you will about Jake, he's a good actor. I really don't see me waiting to beat him senseless at the end of this movie like I did with Tobey Maguire at the end of the Spiderman movies. This is a good thing too because Jake is substantially beefier and would probably beat my ass, only emphasizing to the world that I am both less handsome and scrawnier than he in the process. Come to think of it, I'd like to watch Jake beat the ever loving snot out of Tobey. I think that would be fun. I know Jake was brought in to impress the guys and give eye candy to the ladies. But wait a second fellas, the Prince's love interest ain't too half bad to look at either. Can you say date movie?

 

Maybe Bad: Just accept it guys, Disney is banking on this movie becoming the next Pirates of the Caribbean. It is no coincidence that Jerry friggin Bruckheimer is producing this one, nor is it surprising that the trailer has a very Pirates feel to it... you know without the pirates and ships. And some deserts and Arabs. I'll just go on the record now as saying I hope they took enough time to let this one bake in the oven before releasing it to the public. Otherwise it will end up more like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride rather than the Pirates of the Carribean. And as an aside it is very sad that Mr. Toad's is not longer around... :(

 

Maybe Good: Special effects on an acceptable level - The trailer is not built around blowing away the world on special effects. It's clearly more character and narrative based which makes me happy. Remember how The Mummy shocked us at how good the effects are when we weren't really expecting it? (and as an aside that Brendan Fraser could actually star in a movie that wasn't like experiencing a two and a half hour migraine. That was a shocker too.) Well the trailer really says to me that effects are a big part of the movie, but not what's most important. This is good, let's just hope it stays that way.

 

Maybe Bad: It's based on a videogame - There's no ignoring this folks, no matter how we try to pretend this is just another movie, it's not and we have to accept that. This means that there is (according to prior history) about a 98.76% chance (I made that up... just pulled it right out of my bunghole) that it is going to disappoint, induce vomitting, or at the very least create a very dissatisfying experience in the theater. The odds are against it, but I'm still holding out hope. It's Prince of Persia! Please don't screw it all up!

 

So in summary, color me excited, but skeptical. But you probably already knew that. Sorry I wasted your time. I'll go ingest some worms as punishment...

 

But what do you think? Are you exited, or are you expecting more of the same rat crap with a videogame casing that Hollywood seems to love to unleash on the world? But remember, we can always just play the game and pretend it never happened.