Related Sections: Games Interviews Movies News Video
Will this be the first video-game movie that doesn't suck?
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer says he may have done the impossible—made a movie based on a video game that doesn't suck: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, based on the Ubisoft actioner.
"It's like a Lawrence of Arabia with this kind of supernatural element added to it," Bruckheimer said on Oct. 27 in a group interview at his offices in Santa Monica, Calif. "It's like an old-fashioned romantic adventure film. It's really a wonderful biblical story about jealousy. It goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts through history, so it embellishes upon interesting things."
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, a street urchin taken in by a king and made a prince. He must recover a dagger infused with the sands of time and keep it out of the wrong hands. As he jumps across rooftops, slides down sand hills and scales castle walls, Dastan also romances Tamina (Gemma Arterton), so there's something for everyone.
"We tested the movie a few weeks ago," Bruckheimer said. "It tested extraordinarily high. It surprised me, because I always think these things are going to fail, but this one turned out great. The women [loved it]; I was surprised. I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys, but the women flipped over this film. I've never had a score where the parents—and there is violence [but] it's PG-13—the parents rated the film 100 percent excellent or very good, which never happens. So it's one of these movies that we know they'll take their children to go see it, which is a huge advantage for a film, if the parents think it's cool that the kids can see it."
Even Pirates didn't fare this well when it screened for test audiences, he said.
Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner helped adapt the film to screen, writing early drafts of the script and supporting the whole production. What gives Prince more of a fighting chance than other video-game movies is that Mechner always envisioned the game as a movie.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
"I did the best I could on side-scrolling Apple II to try to capture that kind of excitement, and running and jumping and really the first 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981," Mechner said. "The movie, as you've seen, goes very far beyond that. There's Parkour, there's sword fighting. It's pretty extreme. I loved movies growing up as a kid before I loved games—in fact, actually before video games had been invented. This is a game that was inspired by movies, so, I think, really, in writing the first draft of the screenplay I just kind of set out to write a movie in that genre, the kind of movie that I love, that inspired me to create the game in the first place."
That original 1989 game featured simply a prince running horizontally, jumping across chasms and fighting palace guards. The Sands of Time entry evolved for game systems like Xbox and PlayStation 2, with a 3-D style, and the prince had more acrobatic abilities.
A strict adaptation would not have made a great movie, though: For one thing, there'd be very few roles for actors if the film followed the game's story. In the game, the sands of time turn everyone in the kingdom into sand monsters.
"There are no sand monsters in the movie," Mechner said. "For the game, turning everybody in the world except for the two main characters into sand monsters was really useful, because it created an inexhaustible supply of enemies for you as a player to fight. But that's a story that's meant to be played with a controller in your hand. A movie is an experience that's sort of a ride to go on shared by an audience, so we didn't want to make the movie about fighting monsters."
To create the feel of a classic epic Hollywood movie, Bruckheimer set up as much location shooting as possible. There are still computer effects, particularly for the time-travel sand, but much of modern-day Morocco still looks like ancient Persia. The film shot in cities such as Marrakech, Ouarzazate and Erfoud.
"It's just sand," Bruckheimer joked. "There's plenty of it there. No, what we did was we had a fantastic production designer who created these amazing sets. We actually built a lot of what you saw. We added some set extensions to the top of the frame, but a lot of things that you see in there are actually stuff that we built or took structures in Morocco and added our own construction to those actual old structures. We found a part of the city that was one of the most ancient parts of the city that we were able to use for this movie. The city allowed us to shoot there, and the government allowed us work with the residents, as far as being in the suits. It's stopped in time."
Prince of Persia opens May 28, 2010.
By Obi Window Washer at 11:52 AM ON 11/04/09
There are degrees of "Suck" when it comes to game based movies. It ranges from "Resident Evil" to "House of the Dead"
"Hitman" falls just short of "RE" while "Doom" is lumped close to "HotD".
I'll have to see the movie before I can judge where "Persia" falls on the scale.
By asfm at 11:55 AM ON 11/04/09
Silent Hill doesn't suck. It's hardly a great film, but it definitely doesn't suck.
By IronOre at 12:15 PM ON 11/04/09
It's rather pretentious comparing any movie based on a video game to "Lawrence of Arabia." I doubt there will ever be video game movie that is even half as good as "Lawrence of Arabia" was.
By cogadh at 12:30 PM ON 11/04/09
There are so many reasons this film should suck: Disney, Bruckheimer, Gyllenhall (a charter member of the "Mumbling Actors Guild" and not even close to Persian), Ben Kingsley (how many stinkers has he done), overly excessive CGI effects... the simple fact that this is a video game based movie... but for some reason, I am... hopeful. Could it actually be possible to throw all that suck in a pot, mix it up, bake at 350 and end up with something brilliant? The trailer looks promising, the info about testing sounds promising, the fact that they actually got the game's original creator on board for the writing is really promising... have Bruckheimer and co. actually achieved the heretofore unseen holy grail of gaming entertainment: a good video game movie!? I may have to Netflix this one...
By cleatless at 12:40 PM ON 11/04/09
after watching the trailer, I'd vote this will suck, like Scorpion King suck.
By Spot at 1:02 PM ON 11/04/09
The Super Mario Bros movie didn't suck... IT BLEW!
By bonsiobhan at 2:34 PM ON 11/04/09
one reason prince of perisa won't suck... jake "blue eyes" gyllenhaal.
By antodav at 3:16 PM ON 11/04/09
Disney and Bruckheimer were responsible for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and Bruckheimer for many other good films and TV shows (CSI, Black Hawk Down, Remember the Titans, Enemy of the State, Bad Boys, Top Gun...the list goes on), so I don't see how that is automatically a sign that the movie will suck.
I would not count Resident Evil among good video game movies (nor would I count Super Mario Bros., but I have a nostalgic childhood fondness for the film that makes it a cult classic in my opinion), but there have been a few. I usually here Mortal Kombat cited as the best video game movie ever made, though it's been years since I've seen it and I don't remember it very well. I also thought the first Tomb Raider movie was ok. Either way, the trailer looks good to me, so I'll see it. It may very well be a waste of money, but there's no way to know until it comes out.
By terafi at 4:51 PM ON 11/04/09
Just judging from the trailer, I'd say that they used every cliche in the book to make it look like it will be a good movie - cg shots abound, witty banter between hero and heroine, evil looking villains (animals optional), and action with a dash of mystery. There are two outcomes here - a) it *will* be a good movie or b) it will blow. It has been my experience that when they use this formula, the movie has a tendency to disappoint. Time will tell.
By jolinar at 8:42 PM ON 11/04/09
Video game movies that didn't suck:
1. Mortal Kombat, 2. Resident Evil, 3. House of the Dead (1), 4. Doom, 5. Alone In The Dark etc. etc..
By wzeller at 2:18 PM ON 11/05/09
@cogadh: To say that Bruckheimer involvement is a sign of suck is to ignore the fact that while he's put out a few stinkers (which you clearly must have hated) he's also one of the greatest producers of our time. His resume includes tons of huge hit movies over decades. To say that Ben Kingsley is a sign of suck borders on heresy: That guy has proven time and time again that he can ACT! Just look at Ghandi (or, for more recent and more fun, look at Sneakers). He's been in a few stinkers, sure, but those were due to poor direction or poor acting (or both) - never due to a lack of talent in Kingsley. Just look at this crazy-long list of awards the guy has won, including an Academy Award and three more Oscar nominations, plus a bazillion others: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001426/awards (For that matter, if I'm linking to award lists, I might as well include Bruckheimer's too: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000988/awards )
For all the reasons this movie might suck, Kingsley and Bruckheimer aren't in the list. They are in the list of reasons that it might rise above the video game curse. (Kingsley is the only reason I didn't instantly scoff at the Lawrence of Arabia comparison, as ludicrous as that comparison is likely to be.)
I predict major suckage only because we've been promised non-suckage on so many other video game movies and non-suckage of this type has yet to be delivered.
But here's the thing: I don't think it's the video game heritage of a story that condemns it to mediocrity at best and oh-god-please-dig-out-my-eyeballs-with-a-spoon-hellishness at worst. I think it's the fact that you get a writer or producer who wants to make a movie and can't come up with a good original idea and so they substitute imagination with hey-let's-remake-old-stuff-or-steal-plots-and-ideas-from-other-media-and-act-like-we-had-an-original-idea-in-doing-so stupidity.
If you can't create an original story, what makes you think you can take an old one and make it better? If you lack imagination then you're just spinning your wheels.
Hollywood needs to remember how to create. It's an art long forgotten there.
By wzeller at 2:57 PM ON 11/05/09
Heh. The sentence should have read "He's been in a few stinkers, sure, but those were due to poor direction or poor WRITING (or both) - never due to a lack of talent in Kingsley."
Never due to poor acting. Just had acting on the brain when I wrote the original sentence. ;)
By vao75 at 5:41 PM ON 11/05/09
i'll wait until they do a Pacman movie....
Visit mobile.syfy.com/wire on your mobile device.
vao75:
i'll wait until they do a Pacman movie.... ...More »