Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema

Games on Film #7: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Added 2025-11-07 02:19:30 +0000 UTC

Asalaamu alaikum everyone (and especially the wonderful people of New York City). With Black Adam on the docket next week, we revive our Games on Film subseries by checking out another failed big-budget tale of Middle Eastern heroics(?) that absolutely nobody cared about. And for good reason because Prince of Persia was physically engineered to completely slide off your brain like nothing we've quite ever encountered. Pre-Marvel acquisition Disney wanted another Pirates of the Caribbean and instead got known Persian actor Jake Gyllenhaal and his CGI stunt double running with a time travelling dagger he only occasionally remembers to use. This was Cole's idea. They thought it would make for good pre-Black Adam programming and loved the Lego set with the ostriches. Fuck you Cole.

How do we squeeze two hours (not including the "what if goatse was a portal to another dimension?" discussion) out of Prince of Persia? Well...