Posts Tagged ‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’

Although video games are the second largest competitor with movies in the entertainment industry, behind only television, movie adaptations of video games haven't been received very well thus far. Why is that?

Disclaimer - We have painted video games with an overly large brush, and trust us that we have done so begrudgingly. However, because perception always takes time to catch up to reality when it comes to public opinion, and perhaps in this case critical and executive opinion as well, we felt it was necessary in order to make things more explicable.

It has been interesting to note how critics have commented on the source material for the recently released Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. As most of you know by now, if you didn’t know before the release, the film is based off of a video game of the same name. And like with most films that are adapted from video games critics have pointed out the various congruencies between the two productions, such as story structure and character construction. In the case of Prince of Persia, these two things along with the aesthetics of the movie’s action sequences have been said to resemble (some say closer than others) their corresponding elements in the source material, but the intriguing thing is that the comments written that illuminate these similarities usually paint them as being faults. Anymore if the reception of a movie can be compared to the manner that video games are received (though there are many inherent differences between the mediums) it is taken to be as a deficiency or imperfection. Why should it be considered an automatic negative that a movie resembles its source material if that source material is a video game? Before we get into any sort of discussion that might explain a possible discrimination against video games, let us first try to discover why it is that so many critics find the storytelling techniques of video games and movies to be so incompatible. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: Perhaps the best video game adaptation to date - for what that's worth

Director: Mike Newell (Donnie Brasko, Four Weddings and a Funeral)

Screenwriters: Boaz Yakin (Death and Love), Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard (The Uninvited), Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia video game)

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal (Brothers), Gemma Arterton (Clash of the Titans), Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island), Alfred Molina (An Education)

Length: 1h 56m

Synopsis: One day in an Arabian marketplace one young orphan boy named Dastan would risk his life to save another’s, and the display of such courage and humanity led the disguised King Sharaman of the Persian Empire (Ronald Pickup) to adopt the boy and raise him alongside his two sons. All three boys grew up to share a strong brotherly bond and undying love for their father, however one fateful day the King is assassinated and Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) unwarrantedly receives the blame. On the run with Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), whose city was just recently sacked by the Persians and was being forcefully wed to Dastan, the two find themselves in the middle of an even bigger problem. A scheme was afoot to retrieve a special dagger from Tamina’s city that had the ability to turn back time. A gift from the Gods, Tamina is the guardian of the dagger, which she and Dastan must keep away from whoever was trying to steal it. On top of that, Dastan cannot rest until he proves his innocence. Read the rest of this entry »