Earlier this week, Disney and OnePR treated games journalists to the first ever screening of the Prince of Persia film trailer.
If you want to see it for yourself, sit tight – it runs with the premier of 2012 on November 13. Also I'm sure it'll hit the interwebs well before then. If you want to know how I felt about what I saw, read on. But know that I still haven't forgiven Ben Kingsley for BloodRayne.
Now I realize that once you've played Gandhi on the silver screen (and won an Oscar for it), everything else must pale in comparison. But seriously, Sir Kingsley, would it have killed you to show up for fencing lessons in preparation for filming BloodRayne? Just because the director sucks doesn't mean you have to.
As it turns out, Sir Kingsley only has two lines in the trailer (which is still twice as much as what comic relief character Alfred Molina gets) – so I can't judge his performance based entirely on that. The majority of the trailer is Jake Gyllenhaal leaping off of things while Gemma Arterton narrates in a quasi-mystical voice about the Dagger of Time and its powers.
Like all action trailers, there's a lot of quick cutting between unrelated sequences. Someone opens a door, the Prince looks around like he's confused and the Princess – called Tamina, not Farah – walks around looking pretty and exchanges PG-rated flirts with the Prince. Some dudes in black robes show up, looking like they just walked off the set of The Scorpion King and there's a lot of sand and gold stuff.
An interesting scene I noticed being repeated was a glowing fiery vortex within the Dagger of Time. You can see it in the trailer when the Prince activates it during a fight to rewind time. You see it again at the end of the trailer only somehow the Prince and some other person appear to be inside the Dagger, swirling around the vortex. Seems like a climactic boss fight to me. Also a temple-looking place collapses – it's all very Indiana Jones.
Speaking of which, someone pointed out to me the irony in having Alfred Molina play a comic relief character in an Indiana Jones-esque film. I'd completely forgotten that he's the guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark with the famous line "Throw me idol, I'll throw you the whip." How about that.
After the screening of the trailer, we were given a little bit of Q&A time with Jordan Mechner – but you'll have to sit tight for that as well.
Be honest – how many of you are going to go see the film 2012 just so you can watch the Prince of Persia trailer on the big screen? I totally did that with Scooby-Doo for a Harry Potter trailer and again with some other terrible film for a Two Towers trailer.