The new trailer for Mike Newell’s Prince of Persia adaptation actually got me pretty excited for the film and it didn’t even have anything to do with Jake Gyllenhaal’s rippling muscles, glistening in the Moroccan sun (this time anyways). The imagery and special effects look beautiful and seamless. This bodes very well because the final product is really going to need a sense of epic grandeur to work for me.
I’m not quite as convinced on some of the other aspects of the film. The story, for one, can be rather convoluted and I haven’t seen anything to assuage my fears of them butchering it from any of the teasers so far. Also, while I don’t dislike Gyllenhaal for any particular reason he is usually a large slice of mediocre pie (with a few exceptions), in my opinion. I will admit he looks the part, but as we all know it can get cheesy fast when you cast an American to play an outside ethnicity. It shouldn’t be problematic with heavy hitters like Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina to distract with solid performances.
This isn’t necessarily detrimental to the experience, but I did notice the score sounded incredibly similar to something you’d hear in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I personally really enjoy the music in the pirates films so that’s not the issue. I just don’t want to be drawing too many parallels between this film and the other Jerry Bruckheimer/Disney features.
Despite these few misgivings I’m pretty interested to see how it all comes together. Check out the most recent trailer…
That accent could turn ugly quick!