Category Archives: Games

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

My Review: 5/10

Alright, so I got critiqued pretty heavily on my Avatar review, which I took deeply into consideration. (Special thanks to GreyJaeger and Dragonaide). My initial review of Sands of Time was much higher, simply because I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I took a minute to step back and analyze it, and found a few more problems I hadn’t initially encountered.

Problem 1: The Dagger. Basically, the dagger is the iconic weapon for the basis of the entire film. It’s very heavily plugged in the trailers. Going in, I was afraid that it was going to be used relentlessly to undo every single mistake in the movie and thus interfere with the whole plot proceeding forward. But, as it turns out, the dagger cannot be used infinitely.

(Minor Spoiler)

The Sands of Time contained within the hilt are not infinite, and once used up, must be replenished. Thusly, as It turns out, the magical properties of the dagger are only used 4-5 times throughout the entire film, most of which are used the first time around within a time span of two minutes. So the whole ‘reversing time’ thing is very scarcely used.

Problem 2: Tag, You’re it. Scattered with frequent action moments, chase scenes, and ostrich racing (yes, ostrich racing), the action does not take away from one simple fact: the majority of the movie is little more than a complex adaption of “Capture the Flag: The Movie”, with the dagger frequently changing hands.

Problem 3: Predictable, Cliché Ending. I won’t spoil it here. But if you’ve seen the trailers and know the basic formula for the movie, you can probably guess. But also, the movie is based on a Video Game. Go ahead and name three good movies based on video games. I dare you.

Now, the transformation. What Transformation, you may ask? While it is true that no person transforms during this movie, and it may not even be called a transformation film itself, I have taken this into consideration. But I cannot ignore the concept which this movie is based around.

Time. (Minor Spoiler ahead)

When the jewel on the hilt of the sword is pushed, the Sands of Time contained within are released, swirling around the user and reversing time itself, to a period of, which, if I recall was mentioned in the film, one minute. The effect is quite something to see on the big screen,  quite different from simply rewinding your VHS without all those scratchy lines. The effect is radical and cool to see, but I feel like SoT made several efforts so as not to simply appear as an amped up version of ClockStoppers, which had the same general principle, that being that those not holding the time-altering device is completely unaware of the effect. But my lingering question was, what if more than one person is holding the dagger when the sands are released?

All in all, I enjoyed myself, nonetheless. It was a good movie, but I feel it could’ve been great. Although the ostrich racing certainly got my attention.

BrisingrKonungr

Authors Note: Well, this is it! At 13, this is the first Series Finale. (I decided to call each set a series rather than a season because it just seemed to make more sense.) The initial run of most series nowadays is thirteen installments, so this seemed like a good place to leave off. Anyone who has read or commented on any of my previous entries is encouraged to do so here. Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? How can I improve my reviews? Is there something you’d like me to do more or less of? Please, let me know! I have great fun writing these and aim to not only please my readers, but I read all of your comments and try to incorporate them as  best I can.  I look forward to writing more reviews for Series 2, which, I promise, will contain ONLY TF related movies. See you in August!