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Prince of Persia |
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In 6th century Persia, life isn't easy for your average street urchin. And if that's your lot, you generally don't want to draw much attention to yourself. But when a Persian captain of the guard starts beating a boy for spooking his horse, the scruffy Dastan can't just stay in the shadows and watch. He leaps to the other boy's defense … and is soon nabbed to be beaten himself.
 Luckily, King Sharaman happens to be passing by at that moment and sees a special quality in young Dastan's actions. Not only does he order him spared, but in true One Thousand and One Nights fashion he adopts the orphan on the spot.
Jump ahead 10 years or so and the now Prince Dastan has grown into a handsome twentysomething whose love for his adopted royal family is only superseded by his bravery. So he's the first to leap acrobatically into action when it's reported that the neighboring holy city of Alamut is selling weapons to Persia's enemies. But when Dastan and his brothers take the city they find no weapons. Instead they encounter the beautiful Princess Tamina, indignant that Persian forces have overtaken her peaceful home.
It's at this point that King Sharaman makes another timely appearance to calm the waters. But this time he's mysteriously murdered—and the crime is pinned on Dastan.
In 6th century Persia, life isn't easy for your average prince accused of killing his pops. And if that's your lot, you generally don't want to draw much attention to yourself. But Dastan won't just disappear into the shadows this time, either. That's good, because there's more at stake here than just his good name—like the fate of the entire world.
:: Review
Back when Walt Disney and prolific film producer Jerry Bruckheimer first announced that they were going to create a movie based on a Disneyland theme park ride, pundits gave the news a smirking dismissal. The result was a string of Pirates of the Caribbean summer blockbusters that generated gazillions of dollars and made Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow the prancing and arrghing scallywag of the decade.
So it should come as no surprise that Bruckheimer and Disney now hope to repeat the movie magic … with a video game this time. I was curious to see what the result of this attempt might be.
The answer came early on. In one of the first scenes, the parkour-practicing prince crests a steep city wall and the camera quickly pinpoints all the beams, crevices, ropes and ledges he'll have to leap, swing and cartwheel to in order to raise the main gate. It was so much like an actual Prince of Persia game that I had to stop myself from reaching for a controller.
The Prince of Persia games first appeared in 1989 sporting an acrobatic, gravity-defying protagonist who is actually quite well-suited for the movies. He trod an Aladdin-like world full of magic and blowing sand, sprinkled generously with formulaic whiz-bang. How could Bruckheimer and Disney pass him by?
Well, they couldn't, as you now know. And it apparently didn't matter much to them that half the Persia games so far are rated M. Because a lot of the game violence that pushed them into the "mature" category also makes its way onto the movie screen, Persia pushes the PG-13 rating pretty hard with heavy doses of sword-swinging, neck-slashing, bloody knife-to-the-chest violence. That and the franchise's polytheistic, sometimes dark, spirituality should make family audiences think twice before walking out into this hot desert sun.
The prince's heroism doesn't get completely overshadowed. But it does take a bit of a beating.
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In 6th century Persia, life isn't easy for your average street urchin. And if that's your lot, you generally don't want to draw much attention to yourself. But when a Persian captain of the guard...
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