Escape to the Movies: Prince of Persia

Kungfu_Teddybear

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Now i want to see it even more, and as for the "whitewashing" comments i got to say i think they picked the actors quite well, i mean Jake acctually does kinda look like the prince with the long hair and wearing the costume.
 

Seneschal

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Jun 27, 2009
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Oooh, nice to see a good review for this. I don't mind the "whitewashing", neither in this or in The Last Airbender. They're both fantasy fiction, not documentaries. And I don't want to watch an American summer blockbuster with authentic Persian actors speaking in Old Persian. If it was made all gritty like Apocalypto, then by all means, an interesting experiment. However, PoP traces its influences to pulp-adventure literature and "the Arabian-Nights-type of film", with the odd piece of Middle-Eastern mythology. And it has time travel, so all notions that it must be "consistent" now make no sense.

MaraJade03 said:
Yay!!! A good Game Movie, or just an all around good movie that's fun to watch. Can you really ask for much more? Either I'm happy and will be seeing it tonight or tomorrow morning.

Also the whole the "whitewashing" thing, how come the people who complain about it the most (loudest) seem to sound more racist the what their complaining about? I don't mean MovieBob, I mean the European descent guy I have to listen to at work so he can appear open minded or culturally enlighten? Is it me? Am I just not seeing/getting it?
Hey, where is your avatar from? I got a childhood flashback when I saw it, but I can't pinpoint why.
 

ZombieGenesis

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Well I recall noticing the flag mix-up but as an English guy, I tend to see that a lot so I really wasn't offended at all~ Hell Bob's made that mistake before with Africa, and I was just as surprised as he was.

I guess in some ways since Prince of Persia's narrative in the games FEELS like a throwback to the old middle-eastern fantasy epics, one could expect a movie adaption to be just that. It would be the same as the Resident Evil movies, sure they feel like cheesey Romero-esque zombie flicks, but that's because the original games they were based on were made to mimic that feel.

Oh and, as an added note, I totally called that Lost would abandon all interesting questions and cop out. I'm not proud of it, but nothing that lasts so long ever ends well.
 

Wolf Devastator

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I still don't see how Silent Hill was a 'bad' movie. Besides it being a little lengthy and the plot being a little iffy, they made it actually look and feel like the game it was based on. I thought it was a great movie with a great cast. Though my love may just stem from me loving the games, but still, I think I only finished the first Silent Hill once and only ever tried Silent Hill 2 after that. (for anyone saying the plot was hard to follow in the movie, try playing the game and trying to understand)

If anything, there's your first movie that was well adapted, considering the game already had it's faults, why not just adapt those faults into the movie too :)

Julianking93 said:
By the way, this is not the first good videogame movie. That goes to Silent Hill.
Yep, and I'm not going to go see PoP either, never liked the games
 

ccesarano

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GameGoddess101 said:
I wasn't impressed by the concept, only because POP:SOT was already a really cinematic, story and character driven game. Honestly, take out the repetitive battles, exploration, and having to redo particularly difficult rooms, you've already got like, 4 hours worth of game at most, so really it's not asking too much of Hollywood to try and make that leap.
I look at Prince of Persia as a sort of necessary step into "what sort of games to make film out of". I mean, why would you make a film out of a book when there is so much more room for plot and character development in the novel? At best it can be looked at as a really expensive two-hour commercial for the games.

Unfortunately most of the games chosen have all been the wrong choices. With the exception of Silent Hill, which I've only seen about the ending half-hour or forty-five minutes of (I was loving it until BARBED WIRE AAAUUUGGGHHH DISGUSTING!), this is one of the first games that actually had a plot to begin with. Resident Evil technically did as well, but the real story was in all of the extra documents discovered in the facilities rather than the events of Jill and Chris. Converting that into a cinematic form would be a much more difficult task (and, as can be expected, was too much for little ol' Paul Anderson, whose only real worth as a director is some decent combat cinematography sort of).

Prince of Persia was a franchise that you could take all the necessary story elements in them and easily translate them for a movie-going audience. I think one of the big issues a lot of gamers have is wanting the adaptation to be for them, but just look at how skeptical people in this thread are being.

To me, Jordan Mechner working with Jerry Bruckheimer was perfect. Bruckheimer can make fun films out of the dumbest concepts (National Treasure) and Jordan Mechner would include all the elements essential to the Prince of Persia experience. Y'know, what with being the creator and all.

No, it's not going to be high-art, but in order to accomplish that you'd need something that can be recognizable as art to begin with. There aren't many games out there that can be translated on the level of, say, Fight Club. So until gamers finally grow up and accept deeper experiences mixed in with their gameplay then I say Prince of Persia is the perfect film to say "Hey, Hollywood, this is how to do a game-based film right".

As such, they get my dollar (plus, it's Bruckheimer. It's going to be fun no matter how stupid or generic it gets).
 

obisean

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Feb 3, 2009
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I wonder if M. Night Shyamalan is going to demand you apologize for possibly butchering his name. Seriously, I don't get why he had to apologize about the whole British/English flag thing.

The "whitewashing" of this movie is also stupid and really only goes one way (I don't believe there is a term for black or asian "washing". You'll see what I mean below.). Should they have gotten a stereotypical Persian for the sake of him being a stereotypical Persian? Would the complaints that he is a (possibly) terrible actor then have flooded the forums? Would comments like, "It was a good movie, but the lead actor should have been someone that can carry a movie better", start appearing everywhere?

Also, if I remember right, The Karate Kid didn't take place in China, didn't have Chinese kids picking on the protagonist, and the protagonist wasn't black. No complaints there? Probably because, I have to admit, it looks like the move will be good regardless, even if they swapped some stuff around and didn't stick 100% to the source material. Which is all that matters.
 

MovieBob

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MasterSplinter said:
Fuck, this review is about prince of persia, why is lost crammed into it? I have to wait until sunday to watch the final chapters of lost cause of my crappy third world cable channels, and now i can't watch this either. I was waiting the whole morning for this...
I really am sorry about that. For what it's worth, if you stop the player at about 4:30 you can get basically everything about the movie without having to hear the "Lost" jokes ;)
 

Grand_Pamplemousse

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Lost was just dragged out too long.

If any one watches British TV we just had an amazing series end, called Ashes to Ashes. The ending wasn't a cop out and it was actually really very good.

Anyway, I am the only one who thinks Movie Bob is the best thing on the escapist?
 

obisean

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Feb 3, 2009
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MovieBob said:
MasterSplinter said:
Fuck, this review is about prince of persia, why is lost crammed into it? I have to wait until sunday to watch the final chapters of lost cause of my crappy third world cable channels, and now i can't watch this either. I was waiting the whole morning for this...
I really am sorry about that. For what it's worth, if you stop the player at about 4:30 you can get basically everything about the movie without having to hear the "Lost" jokes ;)
If anything you did him a service. I want my 6 years back.

Grand_Pamplemousse said:
Lost was just dragged out too long.

If any one watches British TV we just had an amazing series end, called Ashes to Ashes. The ending wasn't a cop out and it was actually really very good.

Anyway, I am the only one who thinks Movie Bob is the best thing on the escapist?
I dunno, I'd have a hard time picking between this and Doraleous.
 

Kazedarkwind

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Nov 18, 2009
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Saw this last night, im a huge supporter of the original SOT series and sorry all, THE MOVIE GAVE THE GAME JUSTICE, it was a very excellent example of a video game to movie transition and i was FAR more impressed and did have a congratulations party in my head from it

as for whitewashing, idc, does it really freaking matter, no it doesnt >.<
 

300lb. Samoan

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Wow, so I have zero regrets about having never watched Lost. That's cool.

Also, I'm inclined to think that as far as claiming "FIRST!" as a successful video-game movie, that title would go to Tomb Raider. A fun movie based on a game that was so derivative of other movies that the video game stuff was mostly lost in translation. I'm with you on this, Bob, the first true video-game movie will be the one that manages to elevate the goal-oriented plot to something greater than just another summer popcorn flick. I've always thought the first Half-Life game had potential to be a great movie... or a completely shit one depending on how it was handled.
 

Spinwhiz

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I enjoyed Aladdin back in the day:

Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves
Scheherezad-ie had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves
You got a brand of magic never fails
You got some power in your corner now
Some heavy ammunition in your camp
You got some punch, pizazz, yahoo and how
See all you gotta do is rub that lamp
And I'll say

Mister Aladdin, sir
What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order
Jot it down
You ain't never had a friend like me
 

esperandote

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I take he didn't think the Silent Hill movie was good. Also the Doom movie was a good representation of the game's spirit, just monsters and guns action.

I also thought this movie would be worse speacially because it thought the story would be dificult to be portrayed to people new to the story.
 

Cousin_IT

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Alas, it would seem to make a successful summer blockbuster, your lead actor has to be white or Will Smith.
 

esperandote

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Grand_Pamplemousse said:
Anyway, I am the only one who thinks Movie Bob is the best thing on the escapist?
Probably not the only one but certainly not a high pertentage. My personal favorite is Doraleous & Associates
 

300lb. Samoan

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esperandote said:
Also the Doom movie was a good representation of the game's spirit, just monsters and guns action.
Except that the script completely removed all mention of Hell, which is what Doom is really about - unleashing Hell. If they hadn't copped out on that then the movie would have been genuinely true to the game AND would have had much more interesting visuals!
 

Waif

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Heh, I played Prince of Persia, couldn't get over the fact that falling 6 feet would kill your character instantly. Never ended up finishing it, but I did end up finishing Flashback, which had a similar game mechanic going for it. I wonder if they would ever make a movie based off Flashback. I guess if they have a Prince of Persia movie out, anything is possible ^~^!