Things I Learned from Movie X
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
By Edwin Davies
June 2, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Sorry, chicks have to walk.
Based on the seminal and long-running Prince of Persia videogame series - though, considering the numerous sequences in which the title character jumps around bazaars, it may have been written by people who do nothing but get baked and play Assassin's Creed all day (which is actually a really good way to increase the difficulty of that game; you try to perfectly execute an assassination when you don't have sufficient hand-eye coordination to dial a phone) - the 2010 sorta-hit but sorta-not Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer's attempt to create a new Pirates of the Caribbean, preparing for the time in the not too distant future when they will have drained every vital fluid from Johnny Depp's withered, wealthy bones. Audiences gave it a collective "eh", followed by a shrug, not caring much one way or the other. Today, I want us to take this neglected creature under our wing, like an injured rabbit or Mickey Rourke's career, in the hopes that we might nurse it back to health, and perhaps even learn a neat little life lesson.

It should be perfectly legal to remove someone from a position of responsibility because they look obviously evil

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Times follows the adventures of Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal, an incredibly white guy playing a Persian, which I guess makes him the Al Jolson of the new millennium), a young man who was saved from poverty when the King of Persia up and decided to make him his son. I guess he was the Madonna of his day. The little urchin grows up to be a great fighter, probably because his formative years struggling to keep rats from eating him whilst he slept molded him into the sort of sociopath who would have no compunction indiscrimately killing people. After leading the Persian army to successfully conquer a heavily fortified city, he finds himself flung into a mystical journey alongside a Princess (Gemma Arterton) who has been tasked with protecting a magic dagger that allows anyone holding it to turn time into Silly Putty.

Unbeknownst to Dastan, his uncle (Ben Kingsley), plans to use the dagger to go back in time and change history so that he will be made king instead of his brother. But it really should be knownst to him, because if there's any man in the history of the world who looks like he'd betray you for no reason, it's Ben Kingsley. No other man could say the words, "You know you can trust me," and make it sound like the least trustworthy thing anyone has ever said. Well, except maybe Nixon, but it's pretty damn close.

Alfred Molina should be in everything, talking about ostriches

Alfred Molina is awesome. This is not my opinion, but an immutable law of nature, like gravity or the right of every man to grow a fine, luxurious moustache. Alfred Molina improves everything he's in by roughly 25%. All those people who say that the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark is probably the best opening of any film ever because of the writing, directing and the music? No, it's because of Satipo. Spider-Man 2 is the best of the three because of its surfeit of Alfred Molina and its lack of jazz flute. Even the mere inclusion of his name in this column has improved it markedly, though I'm loathe to say it one more time in case he appears in my bathroom mirror and cuts me in half. (Yes, Alfred Molina is also Candyman. Oh shit.)

Jerry Bruckheimer knows all too well of the sheer power of the man, and chose to unleash him on not one, but two slightly crappy blockbusters last year, casting him as a tax-averse, ostrich-loving trader in Prince of Persia and an evil wizard in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. (Yes, someone made a wizard movie with Nicolas Cage in which he is playing anything other than the crazy, evil wizard.) He's a very odd character, full of strange intonations and interests, and if we're to assume that the film was meant to be the launching pad for a Pirates-style franchise, he seems intended as the Jack Sparrow of the story. As such, he's the most vibrant and exciting character in the whole film, and every second he's on screen is more entertaining than the rest of the film could ever hope to be. Mainly because those scenes consist of Alfred Molina talking about suicidal ostriches, or pointing out that you can't organize an ostrich race with just one ostrich, and I could watch that all day all day. If you've ever seen a more pure look of joy than the one that crosses his face when he shouts "Behold, the mighty ostrich!" at the start of an ostrich race - which is the best kind of race, obviously - then, I dunno, you've probably seen the face of a newborn when it sees its mother for the first time or some beautiful shit like that.

When are we going to get to the time travel factory?

The Macguffin of The Sands of Time is a magic dagger that allows anyone holding it to turn back time for short periods, allowing them to survive a snake attack, or bring someone back to life after they have injested poison, for example. The dagger was one of the main innovations in The Sands of Time game, and its timeline-altering capabilities were played up heavily in all the advertising for the film, yet the sequences of people actually using the dagger for the sole reason that it exists are perversely few and far between. Making a film about a dagger that turns back time, then not actually allowing people to use it to mess about with time travel, is like making a Jane Austen adaptation without unrequited love or bonnets; it just isn't done.

Eventually, and predictably, when the film finally does allow Dastan to turn back time in a big way at the end of the film, it allows him to jump right back to the very start so he can have the mega-happy ending, but it can't help but feel shallow since it brings everyone back to life and renders all the events of the film moot. It also sets up one of those weird and creepy romances where the two halves have completely divergent memories and experiences, so they might as well be different people to the ones who fell in love over the course of the story, that only exist in time travel movies.

The mega-happy ending also seems unfair on the rest of the characters; technically, only Dastan got to go on that adventure, whilst everyone else has no idea that they came this close to being obliterated by...whatever the hell it was that Ben Kingsley was doing with the dagger and that glowing wall. To redress the balance, I suggest that anyone watching Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time watch up until the Persian army take over the holy city at the start, then just skip to the last chapter. That way, you get the same experience that everyone in the film did; you get a great victory, followed by two princes going crazy and murdering their kindly uncle in front of thousands of disbelieving soldiers.