While Disney's latest, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced and Mike Newell directed Prince of Persia: Sands of Time doesn't quite plummet to the depths of vapid mediocrity that Sex and the City 2 does, the film remains a hilariously awful over-produced and frivolously sculpted special effects spectacle with little purpose other than to freakishly bring to life the 2003 version of the Prince of Persia video game.īeing a rather disjointed blend of Bruckheimer and Newell, Prince of Persia somehow manages to squeeze in touches of world history, the obligatory classic British accents despite the film's being set in Persia (Iran), a buffed up and usually shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal and an abundance of occasionally awesome but more typically cheesy special effects that fall far short of indicating the film's $150 million production budget.ĭastan (Gyllenhaal), a name linked to the concept of destiny, is the films hero. How is it that two films both shot in the beautiful, majestic Morocco can both suck so incredibly badly? Mechner also said he’d like to revive Prince of Persia.How did we end up with two films made, at least partially, in Morocco in one week? You can read Mechner’s original Sands of Time screenplay on his website.
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“Adapting a game story for a linear two hour movie was a challenge.” “The movie evolved a lot from the first screenplay I wrote, which you can read on my website if you’re interested, but it still kept the same basic structure of the story,” Mechner said. That’s why in the movie the dagger is powered by a limited supply of sands and only has a set amount of uses. “You’ve got a dagger that can turn back time, but what could be more undramatic in a movie than a hero who goes through the movie and any time something happens that’s bad, he can just press a button and undo it? It’s nice to have in a game, but in a movie you can only do so much of that.” “So how do we create a story that takes advantage of what movies can do and somehow still tell the story of the game in such a way that it still feels somehow Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?” Mechner asked. It had to depict Ancient Persia, there needed to be armies and huge caravans. Resident Evil was a horror movie, that was fine, but we weren’t making a low budget horror movie, we were making this giant thing.”īecause it was a big deal with a big budget, it had to be suitably epic. So this is going to be a Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer movie - it’s not going to be a story about two people going through a destroyed palace. Adapting that into a movie was a big challenge. “In that case the storytelling was a pleasure, it was easy because it’s a story that works best for the game. “So the staircase has been destroyed by an earthquake and suddenly you have to find a creative way to get up that broken flight of stairs. “The fact the palace was destroyed worked well because what’s the point being able to do parkour and run on walls if you can just take the stairs?” Mechner laughed. As a result, the only other people you meet aren’t actually people - they’re sand monsters who want to stab you to death. In-game this was a symptom of the game engine’s inability to render crowds. In the game, the Prince and his companion, Farah, are the only two human characters, which obviously wouldn’t work for a film. The rewind, the parkour, we knew that was the gameplay and then it was a matter of coming up with a story that would put that gameplay in the best possible… that would highlight its strengths.” “The Sands of Time - the game - wasn’t adapting the story of the original Prince of Persia, it was creating a new story that was custom tailored to that game. “The movie screenplay was a challenge because that was the one time it was a direct adaptation,” Mechner explained.
Unfortunately, it appears that the source material is what held it back. He also has a background in movies, so he appears to be the perfect person to write the screenplay for a movie adaptation, then.
Mechner is also a game developer and is the man responsible for both the original PoP game and The Sands of Time. The Prince of Persia movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal was particularly duff, however, and the GameLab chat with screenplay writer Jordan Mechner might hold the answer as to why. Silent Hill might be the only good one and even that isn’t exactly Oscar material. As we all know, video game movies are cursed.