Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time

There was a moment in my life, probably January of 2009 or so. I found an image on the internet, and laughed for three days. This image isn’t as funny anymore, but it was the first poster / image about Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Three. Days. Of Laughing.

Seriously, somehow that was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I loved the PoP games for the last generation of consoles, and don’t even hate Jake G. Yet somehow, that image was so unbelievable it just made me giddy. I didn’t hate it, I just couldn’t stop laughing either.

I did go watch it in theaters as soon as I could, but only now finally got to watch it on Blu-Ray.

The movie is based on the games but not any in particular, keeping somewhat with the same mythos. Jake plays said Prince, Dastan, but he isn’t royal blood. He was adopted by the King, and therefore has some cool brothers! Tus (Richard Coyle), the oldest and strongest, and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell), the smart one. That lets Dastan be the sneaky and very dex based one!

According to their uncle (Ben Kingsley) a rival (normally peaceful) nation is producing a lot o weapons, and plans to attack. So they march on over, Tus in charge, to take em down. Hey look, hot princess (Gemma Arterton) is super confused about it all, but arrested. The king gets assassinated by a poisoned cloak (go with it), presented by Dastan so he also gets blamed for the murder!

He quickly flees from the castle, along with the princess and her kick ass dagger. After she tries to kill him and escape he realizes that the holder of the dagger can go back in time! Assuming it has some special sands of time in it. Hells yeah. He also finds out that of COURSE the uncle planned on killing the king. He also faked the info from the spies to get them to take over the city, just to get the dagger and go back in time to rule the kingdom himself!

So they must go back to the kingdom, without you know, dying or being caught, convince his older brother of the time traveling truth / shenanigans, and maybe protect the world. Maybe. But if he goes back in time all the way, can he get the girl?!?

If he can keep her that wet in the dry desert, then probably.

Elements from a bunch of the Prince of Persia games can be found in here, including just running up walls and areas that just feel puzzle-ish. But then of course there is a lot not like it, but hey, it works in this universe. The games all tell different stories, so why not this one. The dagger also pretty much works like the first one did in the movie, just sand is much harder to come across in the movie. Magical sand, asshole.

I was disappointed with the graphics in Blu-Ray, didn’t feel top notch for me, so didn’t think there was that big of a difference. Good effects for what they were going for. How many people watched this didn’t think their way of showing going back in time was cool? I did. And there was appropriate amounts of comic relief too.

But also a lot more death than I would have figured. For a Disney movie, I was worried they’d just knock everyone out, and the bad guy would go to prison. Thankfully they are more true to the rugged life than that, and didn’t feel like it was “for kids” completely.