Oh, this is the greatest movie I’ve seen in my- Actually, it’s not that good. Not really bad, but not good.
Honestly, Director Newell is pretty sad these days. Does this man understand the concept of framing shot, or even transitions? I know precisely jack about movie making, but I totally get the concept of “letting the audience know what’s going on”. He did Harry Potter 4, which also had huge problems with the story abruptly shifting to new scenes without letting the audience know what was going on.
I often see movies where the director tries to combine a lot of weak elements together. Here, I see just the opposite. Gyllenhall is pretty fun to watch. “Princess Tamina:” is an annoying little pile of shit, but Alfred Molina and Steve Toussaint play excellent roles. In fact, pretty much all the supporting actors deserve considerable credit for doing a lot with a little. Ben Kingsley, as always, shines. I honestly wish his character got fleshed out a lot more, because while he’s wonderful when he’s onscreen, we get very little of the character to go on.
You never told us how much Persia costs. Is buying Iran in my price range? The realtor said it was “historic”, but I read that meaning “it needs work”.
Saw it on Sunday. I agree…not awful, but not great. To me, the action scenes felt too much like they were lifted directly out of video games (especially the ones featuring much running and jumping off of rooftops). And, I’m really getting tired of the staccato slow-mo technique which seemed to be used in every single action scene.
My wife found Gyllenhall to be hunky, but was disappointed that he was only shirtless once. The actress playing the princess was cute enough, but I agree, she was predictably snotty in the first half of the movie, at least.
Posted this earlier, but since this opened here a week before the american release it sunk like a brick.
I saw it yesterday, and I thought it was distincly ‘meh’. It was competent and action-y, yes. I thought the acrobatics and parkour (inspired by the game) were nice, but most of the action was obscured by quick edits. It’s not Bourne, but I would’ve thought that the action could’ve been brought to the screen a little better.
I also found it hard to empathise with the main characters. Maybe it’s the -look there’s another fight scene AGAIN- where antagonists are introduced just to be beaten (Hassanshins*, looking at you here), or the cliché’d archetypes, but meh.
Then there’s the ‘I am NOT JACK SPARROW’ morally ambigious off-the-wall small-time-criminal talks-too-much eyelinered eventually heart-of-golded ineffectual villain. He got some laughs, but it’s obvious we’ve seen this before.
If you can turn your brain off, it might be a nice night’s entertainment. But it seems to have very little heart.
And there is the very obvious “We will attack in the middle east because someone told us there’d be WEAPONS! Hey, now that we’re in, there seem to be no WEAPONS here. Odd, that. Can we have your stuff?”
Real subtle.
*Their drug use is hinted at in the film, and the censors apparently thought “Hashshashin” was inappropriate.
I want to use the Dagger to go back in time and see what Jordan Mechner actually wanted. I just don’t believe he didn’t water it down or change it to match Hollywood expectations.
For a movie made from a video game, it was quite enjoyable. Well produced. Didn’t care for the direction or editing, but it was a fun Friday night movie.
I saw it and thought it was good. A couple of the transitions between set pieces were a bit jarring, but that wasn’t a significant setback.
If this bothers you, then why did you even watch the movie? It’s a story about a Knife of Do-Overs, and you’re saying actually getting a do-over is a cliche? The whole point of the artifact is that the knowledge gained from the first try is what makes all the difference. The events after the siege did not happen, but they’re still responsible for the man Prince Dastan became, and how he overcame his uncle.
Not really. He does run along damn near anything else. There are a few shots of his acrobatics which are really cool - they look like something out of Assassin’s Creed or the Prince of Persia games. But they don’t edit stuff together well.
[spoiler] Because it’s lazy storytelling. They spend an inordinate amount of time making us care for heroic characters who die, e.g. Tus, and then say they all survived. In moderation, this can be good, but when you get this huge clean sweep, it’s overdone. In Harry Potter 3, for example, they were more honest about it, and that what you saw was what really happened. I think PoP was very similar to the “it’s all a dream” episode of Dallas or the end of St. Elsewhere.
On top of this, I didn’t know until I watched the movie. If I had known (as I did for Repo Men, where I read the summary) I wouldn’t have bothered to watch the whole thing.
I saw this at the weekend and disagree with those of you who say it wasn’t awful - it was fucking DIRE! Easily the worst film I’ve seen this year. Didn’t work as a fantasy flick, or as an action flick, or anything else for that matter. I spent most of the film being incredibly bored by the ridiculous story and contrived plot (I could practically see the story board linking “action sequence” to “Prince and Princess talk to establish connection” to “scene of villain plotting”). In fact I started falling asleep at one point I was so uninterested in what was going on.
The actress playing the princess was cute enough, but I agree, she was predictably snotty in the first half of the movie, at least.