To say it’s the greatest game movie of all time wouldn’t be giving it enough credit. They finally make a game movie where they actually care about the source material, created a story that’s engaging with an extremely likable cast. They worked the runny/jumpy bits in the story without it being too much or unbelievable. The climax got to be a bit much, but, meh.
It could also be the most violent disney movie yet.
Sorry but The Last Starfighter is still miles ahead of this.
Hell, The Last Starfighter: The Musical is better than this and that version’s Death Blossom is just the main actor spinning around in a twirly chair going pew pew pew.
Except, you know, there never actually WAS a game named The Last Starfighter, they made it up for the movie.
(That said, TLS ruled. 
)
The greatest videogame movie ever is Tron.
I think the greatest vidya game movie was Lion King. The game like didn’t even have a story. I think if you take a game with no story you have a better chance at making a good movie.
You better be joking
So your saying that it is better for a movie to be based on a game with a lot of story? I dunno man, too much to ruin if you ask me.
Lion King wasn’t based on a game, it was ripped off Kimba The White Lion, an Anime from Osamu Tezuka, the same guy who created Astro Boy. And yes it was aired in America, so there’s no excuse for the similarities.
(Ironically, Tezuka’s daughter claims that her father loved Disney -he even borrowed the whole “Big Eyes” thing all Anime now uses from them- and would’ve been touched that Disney would copy HIM.)
Wow, they only changed one letter. And they look exactly the same… Well kimba looks cooler if you ask me.
The real question: do we stay after the credits?
No
I love this video of Mechner’s brother acting out the moves of the first game (the animation was based on them). It feels like watching the game.
Hey, there seems to be a real controversy now about the fact that the movie’s stars are NOT Arabic: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/05/racebending.html
This refers not just to PoP but also to The Last Airbender movie.
My opinion: in Airbender’s case, the fact that they did not use Asian/Inuit actors for the parts has been a criticism from the start, and it’s a fair one. The whole point of the series (though most of the audience didn’t realize it) was to expose people on this side of the world (mostly the kids) to the cultures of the East (and Inuit) something that, let’s face it, they otherwise never would outside of the occasional film like Mulan. So not using such actors is indeed going against the basic principle of the series.
THAT said, both Airbender and PoP are FANTASIES that are not set in actual historical periods (TLA isn’t even set on Earth!) The characters in the series did not look Asian because the series was imitating Anime, which oddly rarely if ever features Asian-looking characters itself. Also: should I, as a person descended from Spaniards, be offended that there were apparently NO European-based cultures on the series? Seriously, I love Avatar, but as I watched the characters encounter cultures from around their world, I started wondering, “Say, where are the White people? Or the Black ones, for that matter?” But in the end, such a thing would have disrupted the flow of the story and wasn’t really necessary. So, while I can see the point of the people who complain, I don’t think it should be made that big of a deal.
Now, if they were making, say, an actual historical film set in nonEuropean settings and used only white actors, THEN I can see people being offended. (And such things HAVE happened in the past, like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan- God, who let THAT happen?? )
:no2:
I don’t see why people get offended by anything racial, it is some of the dumbest shit I have ever known. Seriously, its fucking pathetic. So what if John Wayne played genghis whatever, that doesn’t matter. So what if Steve Buscimi played Martin Luther King Jr., MLK is still a rotting black corpse. If anybody is really getting offended by the ethnicity of an actor, in my opinion, they are no better than the RoUSA.
Not when white actors are the norm in western media. John Wayne as Genghis Khan was a bloody brilliant idea, however.
GSG, go ask a librarian about books on racial relations or read some history.
Don’t worry, God got her revenge. That’ll learn ya’ to go filming in a nuclear testing site.
How come this was never a real issue til recently? How often do chinese or hawaiian/polynesian actors play japanese characters? Whites have been playing Egyptians, Greeks, ME’ers for years. Jesus was a fucking towelhead and no one has raised a fuss about it. Hell, it was even socially acceptable for whites to play blacks in the 20s and 30s. No one got fussy when The Wayans played white women. Fuck, now I’m mad for no reason.
And the characters in the Airbender cartoon, looked pretty fucking white no matter how you look at it. The LA actors look closer to their animated counterparts than Asians would.
I’m almost waiting for Japanese to complain that anime characters look caucasian.
Fun fact: Latinos used to be cast on various ethnic roles in the days of “Old Hollywood”- for example, Ricardo Montalban played an Indian in “Across The Wide Missouri” and Rita Moreno played a Thai woman in “The King and I”. Kinda unfair to ALL groups involved, but there you have it.
Are you serious? Standards change. Chinese, Hawaiian and Japanese people no longer belong in a collective, exotic Other column. Greeks, Italians and the Irish are considered white when that wasn’t the case some decades ago. All-white casts in movies that take place in non-white locales are going extinct. Appealing to tradition is meaningless when the 20s and the 30s were an era where racial segregation was institutionalized: this era can boast no authority nowadays.
So I just saw the movie over the weekend and it was quite entertaining.
I recall reading reviews of the movie before I went to see it that mentioned it should have been retitled to Prince of Persia: the Abs of Jake.