Prince of Persia Film Trilogy

It's true. The Prince of Persia game saga is going to be translated to the big screen, the first film set to be released in 2009 right now. Jake Gyllenhaal is slated to play the protagonist, Prince Dastan, and the film boasts other recognizable stars such as Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, The Company) and Sir Ben Kingsley (Lucky Number Slevin, Ghandi). The story (as far as I understand) is being based upon the story in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and shares the same title. It's being directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and was scribed by Carlo Bernard, who also penned The Great Raid in 2005.

But enough of the facts, now onto some thoughts. My biggest beef with this idea so far is that it's all ready slated to be a trilogy right out of the gate. Now this isn't new, and Indiana Jones did this, as well as Star Wars and several other extremely successful trilogies, that's not my problem with it. The reason I have a hard time accepting it is because it's a video game movie. And I love video game movies as much as the next guy (hell, I want to write some of their scripts myself) but the current trend in adaptations of games into cinematic films is that they suck. There is total and unprejudiced disregard for all the material that even made the game franchise successful in the first place. Pretty much all that survives this brutal cutting process is the character names. The Hitman movie (with Timothy Olyphant as Agent 47) shared only names with its digital counterpart. The Agency, Diana, and Agent 47 remained continuous but all things related to the plot, the structure, the mannerisms, even the back story was off, changed for the sake of the particular film they wanted to make. If they wanted to change so much they should've made it a different movie and saved Hitman for a movie worthy of that moniker. 

I fear Prince of Persia (a game I haven't played too much of, admittedly) will fall into the same rut. The first movie will bank on the built-in demographic of gamers who all know it'll be horrible but will line up to pay their $8 tickets anyways, and it'll make what they spent and get a profit, but it'll ruin the potential for a good film. Especially reading the slightly worrying summary of the movie. The Prince teams up with a rival (note that, a rival) princess to stop an angry ruler from unleashing a sand storm to destroy the world. This sounds like it could've been inspired by the game's events, but I don't see mention of time-effects or anything of that nature, and that's a big enough deal to enter the subject of a summary and logline. Oh well, hopefully the stories in the sequential two games will be more well thought out.

And what happened to the good ol' days when you signed up for a trilogy but the second two  movies were actually based on the merit of the first? Nowadays we just chug out three films with the same unlucky actor who got stuck in a shitty contract and there goes that, a good 6 hours and $24 of our lives. Assuming you don't buy popcorn or anything. 

I pray that the excellent casting of this movie and director can overcome this challenge and create the first in a hopeful wave of game-to-movie adaptations that actually live up to the underrated medium they were born from. Videogames deserve so much more than cookie-cutter, money-hording cinematic executions. Give 'em a chance, please.

IMDb's site on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is here.