On Prince of Persia The Sands of Time... The Movie

I know what you're thinking... 2 posts in one day? Insanity! Oh, maybe you were also thinking, you actually saw Prince of Persia? To which I answer, yes, yes I did. You might also be thinking, how did you see it before it comes out on Friday? And my answer is a sneak preview held last night, which I attended.

Let me first start off by telling you what you are going to see in this review. There will essentially be two reviews of it, one as a stand alone motion picture, freed from the confines of being associated with a video game series, reviewed as though I had never heard of the name before or played any of the video games (difficult, I know) and the other as an adaptation of a video game.

So let's jump in shall we?

Review Part 1: "he would become a Prince of Persia" (superscript Title here)

Prince of Persia The Sands of Time is not a bad movie, let's see the reasons why:

The Story

The story that PoP tells is one of an orphan boy, Dastan, living in the streets of the capital city of Nasaf who is taken in by the King and made his son, and brother to the two sons the King already had, after seeing the boy display a moment of great courage to stop an injustice being carried out by the King's soldiers. Many years later the three brothers under the advice of Nizam, the King's brother and Princes' uncle the Persian army invades a holy city because it appears that they are manufacturing weapons and selling them to their enemies. The invasion is successful and Dastan procures a very interesting looking dagger. The King arrives, questioning the eldest son Tus's command to invade, but happy that his sons were alive and well and proud of Dastan's actions, which were intended to save lives despite the fact that he disobeyed his brother's orders. The King receives a robe from Dastan, which was given to him by Tus and the Princess Tamina of the holy city is given to Dastan as his first wife. The robe turns out to be poisoned and the King dies while everyone thinks Dastan killed him. Tamina convinces Dastan to run and the two escape. Dastan learns soon enough that the dagger is able to rewind time by one minute, but has to get a new supply of some of the Sands of Time to keep using it and also concocts a theory that Tus killed the King because he was interested in the dagger once he was it on Dastan's belt. He returns home to infiltrate the King's funeral to arrange a meeting with Nizam to convince him that he did not kill the King, but in fact Tus did. The meeting goes south however, when Dastan tries to show the dagger to Nizam he finds that Tamina took it from him and discovers that Nizam's hands are burned, presumably by the same poison that killed the King. Nizam tells Tus that Dastan tried to kill him and that instead of apprehending him, his forces should kill him instead, this places some doubt in Prince Garsiv's mind, as Dastan did not kill him when he had the chance while making his escape. Nizam orders his Hassansin (a mutation of Hashshashin, from which the word assassin is believed to originate) to kill Dastan and retrieve that dagger. Meanwhile, Dastan catches up with Tamina and retrieves the dagger, learning about the origin of the dagger and the Sands as well as the destructive potential using it with the Sands could have. Tamina tells him that she needs to take it to a sanctuary, sacrificing herself in the process. They are interrupted while trying to secure it in the sanctuary by the Hassansin's after Garsiv captures them and is killed. Dastan and Tamina escape with their lives but the dagger is taken and returned to Nizam who places it in the High Temple, guarded by an Hassansin. The dagger is given back to Dastan by an African knife thrower met earlier in the adventure, though his life is lost in the process. Dastan convinces his brother Tus that Nizam is a traitor only to have Nizam murder Tus in front of his eyes and the dagger taken again by Nizam. He takes it to the Sands and Dastan and Tamina catch up to him, where precarious rock formations keep breaking off from the base of the Sands and Tamina lets herself die so Dastan can stop Nizam. The dagger is thrust into the Sands and Dastan rewinds time until just before the Princes' invade the High Temple and convinces his brothers of Nizam's deception, killing him, and returns the dagger to Princess Tamina after being offered her in marriage for a second time (to him, anyway).

So the story makes sense (to me anyway), though it is somewhat predictable. I also omitted references to most of the comedic relief provided by Alfred Molina's character, Sheik Amar, as they aren't necessary to tell anyone when summarizing the story. Now I'm trying to remain as unbiased as possible so I will stick to what I believe is generally acceptable to be considered a good story: makes sense, there is a conflict, characters change by the end of the piece, the conflict is resolved. I already stated that the story makes sense, and it should be clear that there is a conflict, Dastan realizes that what his father, the King told him before he died about being a great man, was true, thus changing and the conflict is resolved, so I'm fairly confident in my assessment that the story is good.

The Characters

What makes a good character? Relatability and depth come to mind, for a protagonist anyway so let's go with those for the 3 main characters and a few others and see where it takes us. Note: the actors portrayals of these characters is also considered as a factor, because a character without an actor can be good, but the actor can make or break that character within the context of the film.

Prince Dastan: As stated earlier, he was an orphan living on the streets and taken in by the King and given a family that he loved and one that loved him. He carries himself like royalty when around them, but our first scene of him as portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal is fighting one of the members of his troops, which seemed to be comprised of people like him, street rabble, as Nizam called them I believe. Because of his status as an outsider coming in to a life of royalty yet retaining his feeling of relation with the less fortunate makes him relatable and also gives him depth, as he has the baggage of his roots that he carries around with him. He is also an acrobat and quick thinker, running up walls and bounding off of them and creates a distraction for the Persian troops with little time to come up with one. There main problem with the actor that most people point out is that he, and several other actors in the film, aren't Persian, and thus are unrepresentative of the Persian Empire, despite how fictional this account is.

Nizam: At first he appears to be a wise man, who offered good council to his nephews and his brother, the King, until Dastan discovers that he is treacherous and murdered his own brother and later nephews so that he could turn back time and become King himself. This guy is your run of the mill antagonist, he's a jerk, and a cold, heartless, calculating (for the most part) one at that, I mean, he murdered almost all of his family just so he could get his hands on the crown! Ah, to live in simpler times. Now, antagonists aren't really supposed to be relatable in a film that is essentially just another summer action flick, nor do they generally change in said pictures, so I'll say that Nizam is a good villain and Sir Ben Kingsley did a wonderful job portraying him, and hey, he's only half-white.

Princess Tamina: She is allegedly the most beautiful woman in all the land and according to Prince Tus, "The legends, for once, are true." She serves as the mysterious character that knows more about what is going on than she lets on. She also serves as a plot device and keeps the story moving as well as serving as Dastan's romantic interest, two jobs, one character. She also does manage to appear Persian or at least of Middle Eastern descent, so that's a plus. Also, she does not appear to have much depth, especially seeing that when the end of the film rolls around her character is left at the beginning.

Sheik Amar: He is the comedic relief of the picture and is portrayed by Alfred Molina, who is also only half-white, depending on what you consider to be white. He is basically the conspiracy theorist of the 15th or so Century, wary of the Persian Empire and doesn't like to pay taxes; he also points out that its a bad idea to pay said taxes for a government controlled killing force (the Hassansins, being the reference here). He turns out to be noble before the conflict's resolution but again, the end of the picture turns out to be the beginning, so he becomes unchanged and presumably is still running his illegal ostrich racing league in the "Valley of Slaves," so named to ward off unwanted people, especially pesky Persian troops.

I find it interesting that I can write more about a secondary character, than a main character... but I digress. So the characters, aside from Dastan, are unchanged, due to the nature of the story and they really don't make you care whether they live or die. Being a plot device, Princess Tamina is largely forgettable.

Visuals

The visual effects in Prince of Persia are not bad, but they aren't anything extremely spectacular either, though the one they nailed was the Sands of Time effect, used to seemingly cover the wielder of the dagger's arm in sand with glowing veins running along said arm. The periodic slow motion amping up the amazing acrobatics on display are becoming a staple of most action films these days, and during the time reversal sequences it works perfectly, but every time Dastan climbs a wall, dodges an arrow or jumps off a rooftop? That's a bit much, but only a minor detail. The vastness associated with the ancient cities of the middle east is captured rather well, but the giant destruction sequence near the end of the picture was fairly mediocre in my opinion and looked like something out of a low budget, direct-to-video picture; it was probably outsourced to one of the many firms they contracted to do other sequences, as I noticed in the credits. The overall quality of shot composition was good and the action sequences flowed well, so I'll place this in the good category.

Audio

For the most part I didn't have any trouble with sound effects overshadowing dialogue, but seeing how I don't remember every single line in every single scene, some may have slipped by me. The sounds effects were quite good for the time reversals and the fighting scenes, the sword slashes and clangs were perfectly stereotypical, which is perfect as far as I'm concerned. As far as the music goes, Harry Gregson-Williams never disappoints in any project he composes for and Prince of Persia is no exception. He captures the feel of the Middle East in his unique way, combining both classic and more contemporary types of styles and instruments to create a sweeping piece to display an epic quality and a faster harder piece for action sequences, though I wasn't big on the Alanis Morissette song during the end credits, it fits Gregson-Williams' motif of having one pop-type song to play during the credits, whether this is his choice or not, I cannot speculate. In spite of this one small detriment I'm putting audio into the great category because good just isn't enough.

So I've covered Story, Characters, Visuals and Audio, what else is there? Ah yes, the miscellany, where the problems that don't fall into a particular category appear.

Any time a piece goes out of its way to reference it's own title it fails to accomplish anything. I heard the phrase Prince of Persia no less than 3 times... 3 is a lot, hell 1 is a lot, 3 is just ridiculous and I have to wonder why they decided it was necessary to allude to the title and repeat the same stupid phrase in a stupid context on 3 different occasions. I'm putting this in the Okay category, because it was so stupid and distracting that I have to refer to this category in the first place and then deduct some serious points. Otherwise the category wouldn't even be considered

So here's the tally:

Story - Good

Characters - Okay

Visuals - Good

Audio - Great

Miscellany - Okay

And I'm using the scale Amazing-Great-Good-Okay-Bad-Awful, and the average of the scores I assigned comes out to be: Good.

So there you have it, it's a Good film, but not Great, but don't go away just yet, the part of the review that most likely affects those that read this blog of mine has yet to come!

Review Part 2: Adaptation anyone?

*Sigh* let's get started, as I've been writing this damned thing for a lot longer than I intended to.

The Story

The game Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time follows a nameless Prince and for the sake of ease I'm going to just copy/paste the synopsis from Wikipedia.org "the Vizier of the Maharajah tricks the Prince into releasing the Sands of Time contained inside the Hourglass of Time, using the Dagger of Time. The Sands wash over the kingdom, turning all living beings into monsters. The Prince, Farah, and the Vizier remain unchanged due to their possessions; a dagger, a medallion, and a staff, respectively. On a journey to repair the damage he has caused, the Prince teams with Farah to return the Sands to the hourglass, using the Dagger. Throughout the journey, the Prince and Farah begin to grow closer. As they make their way to the Hourglass, the Prince hesitates, and the Vizier uses magic to throw him and Farah into a tomb. Inside the tomb, the Prince and Farah find baths, which they use and show affection for each other. The Prince awakens, and the Dagger and his weapon have been stolen by Farah, who left him with her medallion so that he would not be affected by the Sands of Time. The Prince pursues and catches her, but she falls to her death. Saddened by his lover's death, he angrily strikes the Hourglass with the Dagger, thus reversing time to the point before the invasion even took place. The Prince awakens, still with the Dagger, and makes his way to Farah. He tells her a story about the events of the game, because she does not remember due to the time reversal, but the Vizier shows up, and attempts to kill the Prince. The Vizier reveals his intended betrayal during their battle but the Prince emerges victorious and slays the Vizier. He gives the Dagger back to Farah and prepares to leave. Farah remembers nothing, but is suspicious when the Prince mentions a memory from her childhood."

Now there aren't a great deal of differences between the game and film. The overall plot is exactly the same, a villainous advisor tries to take the Dagger to do something untoward by reversing time and the Prince stops him by reversing time himself with all of the knowledge he has amassed through his adventure. I'm throwing this in the Great category because it stuck so closely to the story of the game, despite having the whole frame up job and adding other Princes, otherwise it would be classified as Amazing(ly faithful adaptation).

The Characters

Obviously if you've read the above review you will notice that the Vizier from the game is replaced by Ben Kingsley's Nizam, and Farah is replaced by Princess Tamina.

The Prince's character in the film gains a name, but his wit, voice style, sense of humor, sense of duty and acrobatic ability are identical, and they even captured the style of dress that the Prince uses in the various games perfectly, most notably the Warrior Within outfit used during the invasion of the Holy City.

The Vizier being replaced by Nizam has its rewards as it gives him a more prominent role as a villain who is actually seen and takes place in the action instead of just lurking in the shadows, so that's definitely a plus.

Princess Tamina does not appear to have any combat skill with an actual weapon, unlike Farah, who is quite capable with a Bow and Arrow and like Tamina she also tends to serve as both the romantic interest as well as a plot device, as she always shows up when the Prince needs help getting through a gate or something.

I'm calling the character adaptation Great as well, and if they hadn't made Tamina almost completely useless aside from her knowledge in the film, it would have gotten an Amazing.

The Visuals

I'm talking here about the visual style presented in the film, not the visuals of the film compared to the game as that would be completely unfair. The production design was fantastic, especially the props, the Dagger of Time taking the spotlight in this department. The cities and temples presented in the film are very reminiscent of the iconic tower in which the game takes place, so that's definitely a good thing and captures the style of architecture of both what I assume to be the period and the region, so I'm calling this Amazing.

Audio

Now, I'm really in a pickle here, because the only thing I remember about the audio is that the Prince sounded British, and since he sounds British in the film, I'm calling this Good and not Great, or Amazing because I cannot accurately assess what I don't remember.

Miscellany

The film included the minute or so limitation on time reversal which was great, as it's just enough time to fix a single mistake in a fight in the game or approach a new jump. The refilling of the Sand was also a nice touch as you must do the same in the game by filling it with the sand of your defeated enemies. Another nice touch was the Prince being dragged out of his body when time is reversing, so he sees the events in 3rd person, just like the game, instead of just living the same event in reverse from the same perspective. Because they did such a great job of translating the little things I felt that they deserved to be mentioned and added, this category gets a Great, because I would have liked to see some spikes on floors and levers that needed pulling, just to satisfy the fan in me.

So here's the tally:

Story - Great

Characters - Great

Visuals - Great

Audio - Good

Miscellany - Great

This averages out to being Great as far as an adaptation goes, now please note that this was not based on the actual merit of the film, just how well the production team managed to capture the essence of the game in every facet, and this is not to be confused as an overriding score to the film.

Post Review

I hope you find this review at the least entertaining and at the most enlightening as to the quality of the Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Also, based on feedback to this, more reviews of various things might appear, so please let me know what you think!

On Riverworld (the Syfy miniseries) and To Your Scattered Bodies Go (the first novel in the Riverworld series)

The Riverworld is a strange place, a place of resurrection, of second chances. The novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer is a very interesting science fiction book in that it's unlike anything I'd ever encountered before as far as the story goes, I mean, a massive planet containing every human being and ancestor ever born after the split from the Great Apes resurrected on a planet that is one long river valley at the prime age of 25 and no longer age? How weird and novel is that? Also interestingly, Farmer decided to take an historical figure as his protagonist as well as several who would become antagonists. The protagonist? Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer extraordinaire and perhaps most well known for his translating and bringing the Kama Sutra from India back to the West. Burton being a man of charm and vast intelligence quickly rose to prominence, leading a group of people (including a pre-human and a humanoid alien who believes he was responsible for the destruction of Earth in the early 21st Century) through the Riverworld on a boat of their creation.

Eventually after approximately 5 years of sailing upRiver, amassing knowledge, including that you will be resurrected again somewhere else along the River should you die, and encountering many small "nations" of slavers and an equal number of peaceable nations they were finally captured by none other than Hermann Goring, Hitler's number 2, and a Roman whose name I forget. After much planning and plotting Burton and friends mount a prison break of epic proportions, killing Goring and almost all of the rest of the slavers, but they soon discover that everything is not as it seems, as the beings responsible for the creation of the Riverworld and resurrection of humanity (the Ethicals) are searching for Burton for his unique knowledge of having an early awakening, pre-resurrection. A rogue Ethical has conscripted Burton for this knowledge to find the source of the River to stop the Ethicals plans. He is nearly captured on several occasions but is able to escape by riding the "Suicide Express" as many call it, to go somewhere else along the Rivervalley.

The novel ends with Burton being reunited with some of his friends after the Ethicals believe they have wiped his mind of his pre-resurrection memories, though the rogue Ethical stopped that from happening and the group decides to sail upRiver yet again to find the source of the River and confront the Ethicals.

The miniseries is a strange beast. I saw it before I read the novel and had no idea what the novel would be like based on the series. The writers created a brand new character in Matt Ellman chosen by one of The Caretakers to stop a villainous Sir Richard Francis Burton from reaching the source and doing something untoward by "killing" him. Already I have serious problems with this as it has already been established within the series that he will just be resurrected somewhere else along the river. Ellman also claims at this point that he is not a murderer and after being captured by Francisco Pizarro, who is aiding Burton in his quest (chosen by a rogue Caretaker) to destroy the Riverworld. After escaping his cage in Pizarro's fort and meeting with Samuel Clemens (yes, he's here too, in fact, he's the focus of the second novel The Fabulous Riverboat, which I'm currently reading) he proceeds to murder(!) a bunch of guards to rescue his friends. He is soon revisited by the Caretaker that chose him and again told her that he wasn't a killer... ... wait, what? Seriously? You just put an axe into a bunch of people's backs and that doesn't make you a killer? Someone's clearly in denial. At any rate the Caretaker tells him that he must kill him to stop him, despite the big elephant in the room that he'll just be resurrected and that the Caretaker can't help him because it's against their laws to interfere. Matt then gets capture by a group of rogue Caretakers and is tortured by them... wait what? I thought they couldn't interfere, well, maybe that only applies to the non-rogue Caretakers, but are you telling me that the rogue group is so vast that you can't even uphold your own laws? If that's what you're telling me then why aren't you the rogue group seeing that you're the minority and can't even carry out your authority?

At any rate, Matt gets rescued and I'm pretty sure he snaps a rogue Caretakers neck... but he's still not a killer... whatever. Matt also suffers from flashbacks to a time in some unnamed (I think) probably East European Bloc country with his cameraman buddy while he reports on some civilian killing or some such nonsense that is pretty forgettable. Matt and crew finally get to the source with the help of an airship built by the man who built or designed the Hindenburg as Burton stole Sam's boat. Matt and his Japanese lady samurai friend Tomoe head in and kill some people and once again Matt still isn't a killer... Tomoe is killed and Matt continues on alone to confront Burton and is finally reunited with Jessie, his girlfriend before they died and then it is revealed that while in that unnamed country he SPOILERS killed a little girl by running her over in a truck while saving his friends life. So he really was in denial, even after killing a bunch of people on screen. Anyway, Burton destroys some Caretaker ship that appears to be loosely based on a ship written about in the novel and Matt and friends are reunited on Sam's boat after 7 years of searching for everyone. The miniseries ends with Burton and Jessie waking up in their version of the pre-resurrection room from the novel with the rogue Caretaker smiling for some reason.

I'm really not sure why the miniseries decided to not make any sense, but it doesn't make any sense. There are a few serious problems, mainly how by killing Burton, Matt can save Riverworld, despite real death not existing; it's only a stop-gap, a stalemate, like an unrelenting foe who will show up somewhere else entirely on a planet with a river 20 million miles long if you kill him. It just seems like a really dumb idea. I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot more before I read the novel and you can definitely enjoy it if you don't pay any attention to what's going on, but without a second installment to wrap up the stupid, confusing last scene there's no reason to watch it, but the novel is a much more worthwhile investment of time.

On Dollhouse and Altered Carbon

So I just finished reading Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan and it took me a whole 12 hours of retrospection after completion of the novel, not including the 3 or so days of sporadic reading to realize that I had experienced a somewhat similar universe in Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.

In Morgan's universe everyone has a cortical stack implanted at birth which stores the person's consciousness and memories until they are killed at which point they are "resleeved" or put into another body (provided they can afford the expensive process) or are kept on stack (placed in storage). In Dollhouse there are "Actives," people who have willingly signed a contract for a variety of reasons to essentially rent out their bodies while their minds are kept on a harddrive waiting until the contract is up and all of the Actives have "architecture" in place to make the process work, similar to a cortical stack, I imagine. The rich and powerful in Dollhouse are also those able to hire Actives for their "engagements" though this is very dissimilar from Morgan's work as the Actives rarely receive the mind of another, though clients who have died do get a chance to say their goodbyes while in the body of an active, similar to the way in which murder victims are taken off stack in Carbon to testify against their killers.

Now I am not saying that Whedon is ripping off Morgan in anyway, I was just surprised that I didn't notice the similarities before, considering my experience with Dollhouse was only a few months ago, and those of you who know me know that I tend to remember things about subjects I enjoy quite well. I also wonder if anyone else has made these connections, perhaps Whedon was inspired by Morgan's novel seeing how it's a very interesting concept and twist on immortality.

Next time on Observations of Humanity look for my review of the Riverworld miniseries by Syfy and the source novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer contrasting the differences and discussing how well they worked as both independent works and an adapted work