The story for Prince of Persia was developed by Jordan Mechner, the author of the original game and head developer for the series. He recognizes that movies and games are fundamentally different and completely reworked the story of The Sands of Time to work better as an action-adventure movie, since watching the game's plot on the screen would've been painfully boring.
I thought it was better than than the trailers made it look like it would be. It's probably better without the game, though since, it simultaneously makes no sense within the game's universe and yet leads right into the beginning of the game version of Sands of Time.
I've never played the game or seen the movie, but the trailer looks pretty bad to me.
If I were making a movie about that subject (and maybe this will make it clear why I'm not a producer), I'd go for more of an "Adaptation" style film. Viewers can't control time? Play it up, by (visually) admitting that the game powers like "rewind" are done on film through multiple takes, and stunt men, and editing. That's how you translate game to film, and this game mechanic provides the perfect opportunity.
So you've got a normal action film for the first X minutes, and then there's a fight scene, and Jake trips and flubs it, and we hear someone call "cut!", and you see everything freezes while the crew rush in to reset everything to 10 seconds earlier, and they run it again. The first time this happens, it's super quick, so the audience is left wondering if they really saw it or not. As the film goes on, it happens more often, and more extensively. Maybe sometimes the actor tries several times and then gives up and runs off stage, and a stunt man runs in. Maybe sometimes you expand and see that the whole thing is happening on an editing workstation, and they move clips around to make it look like everything worked, and then they hit "play" and you're back in the story.
Then at the very end, it zooms out to show the filmmakers watching what we just saw, and they say "Nah, nobody would ever believe that it all just worked out perfectly the first time like this". Fin.
If the whole point of PoP:SoT is the protagonist's ability to control time, film already has a way to do that. Don't try to just embed an old mechanic in the new medium. That's like building an interpreter for C, and calling it a day. You've got a native JMP here, so use it.
Exposing the deus ex machina as a mundane studio recording effort is an interesting idea, but detracts from the immersiveness and suspension-of-disbelief.
Great humor potential, though it'd get stale and instead become the story.
I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a film.
For example, I can't stand musicals, because I think characters breaking out into song and dance every 5 minutes destroys any attempt at immersiveness or believability. But lots of people love them, and don't find this incongruity problematic. So I don't think breaking from the flow of the main story necessarily breaks the story.
Did the structure of "Adaptation" detract from its 'immersiveness'? I'd say it's the wrong question to ask.
My purpose was not humor, but to pull back the curtain and show the absurdity inherent in all action movies, and the work involved. Satire can be humorous, but that's not really the goal. I'd still love watching Jackie Chan outtakes even if his movies weren't comedic.
I have no use for yet another (whitewashed) action movie. Then again, as I said, there's probably a reason I'm not a Hollywood filmmaker.
Honestly I really liked Adaptation, but then again I liked Stranger than Fiction, and many other existentialist flicks (Run Lola Run? hell yes).
I know a bunch of folks who walked out feeling cheated or confused.
I think most of the issue is that people want a) a story b) to be entertained and c) to forget about the outside world for a bit.
Anything that fills these boxes is good for mass consumption (from Hollywood producer/ purely dollars point of view). Enlightening the subject or shocking them with with new points of view are entirely stretch goals.
That's believable. Also, my idea is a single movie. It doesn't easily generate other movies. Hollywood today wants franchises, i.e., mass production, too.
