05 Jun PRINCE OF PERSIA RE-REVIEW

This is part of my ‘Re-Review’ series, where I revisit a movie that I haven’t seen in several years to evaluate if my opinion has changed with time.

Old Opinion: A great, under-rated action adventure that should have kicked off a franchise

New Opinion: A mediocre, outdated action flick that exemplifies Disney’s cultural and financial problems with live action films

With Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney stumbled into a franchise that has made billions of dollars, and as Pirates contracts were expiring, Disney needed a new profitable franchise! Pirates 2 & 3 cost a combined $525 million to produce but made $2 billion, so Disney spent $200 million on Prince of Persia. But movies need to make ~2.5 times their production budget to turn a profit, and Prince of Persia only made $336 million. That’s great for Pirates, but why there is no sequel to Prince of Persia. It was also produced at a time when photo-realistic CGI was improving rapidly, but absurdly expensive, and during the post-Avatar 3D craze (which doubled film and CGI costs). So, what does all of that mean? It means that Prince of Persia had some damn big obstacles in its way to make $500 million and kick off a lucrative new Disney franchise.

To Disney’s credit, they made some smart choices. First, they picked a well-known and recently rebooted video game IP. They also signed respected director Mike Newell, who had just completed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (read: experience with a big budget special-effects film). Disney also managed to snag Jake Gyllenhaal in his first blockbuster role—and he got hella swole to boot! And they got a great supporting cast, including Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Gemma Arterton.

But there were some challenges as well.

Video game adaptations are a no-win scenario. They often tell a story over dozens of hours and chopping that down for a film is like abridging 95% of a book: whatever is left is not the same experience. And by altering the experience, you fracture the core fanbase. In addition to the core fanbase, you MUST add a ton of people who are not familiar with the game, which means both simplifying the story and including enough background so that newbies can get up to speed, which further ostracizes the fanbase.

To its credit, Prince of Persia’s script is only loosely based on the video game and makes genuine strides to create an independent cinematic world. Newell wrangles all the elements of the film admirably and keeps the entire production on track. The special effects are solid, and the unique properties of the titular Sands of Time are pretty cool in how they operate and are portrayed in the film. And action scenes are exciting and easy to follow in a time when Bourne movies were infecting action scenes with quick-cut trash editing.

But the real problem with Prince of Persia is that it is a movie set in the ancient Middle East, and it stars a bunch of white people, some of whom have suspiciously deep tans. This is a problem Disney leaned into for 2013’s The Lone Ranger before they finally realized that whitewashing and cultural appropriation shouldn’t be part of their production values. But at the time, there was a blockbuster production paradox: how do you make a $200 million movie without big-name stars attached…many of whom are white? Well, the answer, ironically, came from Disney, in their 2019 line-action remake of Aladdin: you cast culturally appropriate actors…and still make a billion dollars! But in 2010, Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton are playing native Middle Easterners. No amount of well-toned muscle or shapely cleavage allows cultural appropriation to age well, and THAT is why Prince of Persia is harder to watch now.

There are other problems with the movie (inconsistent accents, cheesy dialogue, predictable plot, etc.), but these pale in the face of the poorly aged cultural portrayals.

The other major failing worth noting is the disservice done to Genna Arterton’s Tamina, who is the only prominent female character in the film. Arterton has to do a lot of heavy lifting with a script that over-compensates trying to balance between presenting a strong, female, Disney-appropriate character in a setting where females were de facto second-class citizens. Through no fault of her own, this balance is wildly inconsistent, leaving her with few options but reductive dialogue that does not serve either her character or any sense of realism.

Pros:

• Solid visual effects create a fun cinematic world that subtly references the video game
• Good performances all the way around, given the material to work with
• Action scenes are genuinely thrilling and well-staged

Cons:

• Whitewashing and cultural appropriation (read: dealbreaker)
• Gemma Arterton is unfairly treated by a script and setting directly at odds with each other

Rating: 1.5/5…the film is a fun, mindless viewing experience if you can look past the whitewashing. But…should you?

Review by Jim Washburn