Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with coverage of the Disney panel at this year’s Comic-Con with appearances by Jake Gyllenhaal, Nicolas Cage, Jerry Bruckheimer and Lee Unkrich.
This article’s on Prince of Persia, but I’m also whipping up coverage of the rest of the lengthy panel, including Toy Story 3 and Sorcerer’s Apprentice stuff.
Jerry Bruckheimer took the stage after being introduced as this being one of his first ever convention appearances. He quickly set-up the first clip. As a 10 year old boy, Gyllenhaal’s character impresses a Persian king with his warrior ability and the king adopts him.
The clip is a big action scene set 12 years after the King adopts the kid. There’s a sort of stalemate siege on a walled city called Almut. Almut apparently isn’t watching its ass, focused instead on the battle at its front door, as Gyllenhaal and his friends scale the unguarded wall by using a powerful mechanical crossbow to fire thick, bolt-like arrows into the wall as Gyllenhaal climbs up, essentially just one arrow behind at all times.
You’ve seen this part in one of the trailers where one arrow almost takes his hand off and he shoots a “WTF!?!” look back at his buddy.
The scene has the Prince (which I’m calling Gyllenhaal now so I don’t have to keep typing Gyllenhaal over and over again… I think that one little change will save me about 23 minutes of typing) knocking out guards, using them as counterweights as he leaps from the top of the castle walls down one level at a time using little but his rope and some amazing freestyle Parkour wall jumping shit.
The Prince eventually opens the front door and alerts his army that they can slip into the castle now… unfortunately this also alerts the other army and there’s a big fight.
He has to stop the incoming bad guys and does so by tipping over some oil hanging over the entrance and setting flame to it, raining fire down… although oddly enough not on anybody, just enough to stop them from going through a door and killing his buddies.
The clip ended in a sword fight between the Prince and a nobleman (could be the King). The Prince is in a tunnel as the battle rages within the walls of the city. The maybe King dude sees him and charges, on horseback, with spear pointed.
The Prince sees this and runs up the tunnel wall, jumping over the spear’s tip and tackling the maybe King off of his horse. The Prince whips out two curved swords and then they clash. Eventually the maybe King loses a satchel containing something he’s obviously alarmed at being separated from. The Prince notices this and ends up with the bag.
Not surprisingly it contains the hero dagger containing the sands of time… But he doesn’t know that yet. It just looks really expensive and sharp.
The whole sequence played like most post LOTR/Kingdom of Heaven large scale period battles, but seemed to be cut very well and everybody was obviously having a fun time. I don’t know what the whole will be like, but I gotta give a little trust to Jerry Bruckheimer… the dude always goes for high entertainment value with a heaping spoonful of fun. Sometimes it’s a hollow experience and I hope that isn’t the case with this one, but at least he’s trying to put the money up on the screen and deliver a good time.
Bruckheimer was joined on stage by Jake Gyllenhaal, director Mike Newell and the original Prince of Persia creator and collaborator on the script Jordan Mechner.
Here are the bullet points from the Q&A:
- Original game was born out of love of Thief of Baghdad, said Jordan Mechner. Started with him and his brother in their garage with his brother in baggy pants as reference for the Prince.
- Newell was asked if he played the game. “I played the game as much as I was able. I was absolutely hopeless. He fell into the revolving knives every time!”
- Gyllenhaal did play the original video game as a kid and a light came into his eyes when talking about the side-scrolling nature of it. I think he might be a closeted geek, folks. You heard it here first.
- On why he wanted to break from his dramatic work and do a big budget studio action movie: “All my peers seemed to be getting into it, so I thought I’d try my hand,” was his joke answer and his real answer was that he grew up loving big Action/Adventure movies, especially Indiana Jones fan. He said the movie mixed all these interests he likes so much.
- Newell was asked about the tone and said it was NOT post-modern. “Meaning the hero doesn’t do something amazing, then turns to the audience and winks.”
- Was filmed on the Bond Stage at Pinewood.
- Alfred Molina plays “a wonderful, untrustworthy desert sheik.” Yes please.
- Sets were designed so they could shoot anywhere. They were 2/3rds real “and I mean real” which gave Newell a lot of freedom to experiment with shot selection. If he or one of the cast had an idea, they could explore it easily since what was built wasn’t just what was planned to be in front of the lens.
- A girl came up to the mic and told Gyllenhaal: “You’re pretty. I just thought you should know.” It’s usually the fanboys stalking the hot actresses, so this was a funny turn of events. To Gyllenhaal’s credit he took in stride, smiling.
- With this and Donnie Darko is Gyllenhaal attracted to time travel? Whether conscious or unconscious he’s fascinated about time, he said. Q: “Where would you go if you could travel through time?” A: “If I could travel? “To my birth. I’d love to see what that was like.” That one went over like a bag of bricks, but he did get some laughs.
- Bruckheimer says the character drama in the film is Shakespearean. “No matter how good the game is if we give you a bad story you’re going to be bored. You’re not going to be bored with this movie, I promise you.”
- Apparently Jordan walked the sets and did a “drawing diary.” He didn’t write a diary, he drew a diary. Newell says he’s a research freak and built that not only into the game, but also the first draft of the film’s script.
- Was there any talk about doing the film in 3-D? “Avatar hadn’t come out. It wasn’t as popular.” Cameras weren’t as advanced and “we’d still be shooting if it was in 3-D.”
- About the free running: The production team worked closely with David Belle, inventor Parkour and Gyllenhaal trained with him.
The second clip they showed was titled “River Rewind and Montage.”
This scene was fireside on a riverbank between Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton and starts out as a seduction scene and quickly turns into a sword fight.
The prince seems to be laying it on really heavily, saying he promised his brother he’d kill her if his brother couldn’t have her… but in a sweet way, I guess. She’s playing along and he leans in for a kiss and she grabs the dagger from his belt. They tussle for it and the dagger is knocked away, sticking in the sand.
Arterton grabs a sword, swipes at the Prince, who easily avoids the blow and reaches the dagger in the sand. She raises the sword to strike saying, “Give back what you stole, Persian!”
Gyllenhaal raises the dagger to counter the blow and inadvertently pushes a button on the hilt, releasing the sands of time. You’ve seen the trailer, so you know what the effect looks like as he travels back in time. Little pieces of him flake off like his body was made up of sand… yeah, it looks a tad Spider-Man 3.
The world around him reverses itself and he’s back to when Gemma Arterton is about to attack. He’s confused and not the on the ball warrior he was earlier, dodging her blows with a smile. This time he gets cut and drops as she raises the sword for the kill. He realizes it’s the dagger, hits the button on the hilt and time stops just short of being skewered before running backwards again.
This time he stops her as she grabs for the sword sword. “If you grab for that sword again I’ll break your arm!” “Again?” She realizes what’s been going on. He pulls the dagger and realizes he’s used up all the sand and then has the trailer moment where he vocalizes exactly how the dagger works.
I liked the first scene better, but I do love the concept of someone that has the ability to reverse time by a few seconds (go Galaxy Quest!), but that ability is limited, so you can’t erase every bullshit thing that goes wrong.
We’ll see what the movie turns out to be. My fingers are crossed for something big and fun. It doesn’t have to be smart (but that’d be nice), it doesn’t have to be perfect (but that’d be nice), it just has to be entertaining without asking for too much suspension of disbelief.
At the very least we’ll have more Alfred Molina, yeah? There’s always that!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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