In my opinion, first good video game to movie transition

Rating: 8/10 (4 June 2010)

I am a big video game nerd, so when a good game or game series get made into a movie or movies, I get excited, and nervous. Turning a video game into a movie is a hard process, because so much of what makes a good video game good, is the interaction between the storyline and the user control. Without a movie theater that lets us vote on what we want to happen or what we want the main character to do, the whole thing loses that decision aspect. So it is hard to make a good video movie.
I have seen many other movies based off of video games. The Super Mario Bros movie... awful. The Bloodrayne series, and any other movie done by Uwe Boll is just terrible (he has turned a lot of video games into "movies"), Silent Hill was a decent movie, but compared to the original game, it wasn't that respectable. The Resident Evil movies had hardly anything to do with the original games so I can't even compare them. That is all I can think of off the top of my head.
Other GOOD directors such as Peter Jackson, want to try and tackle such an idea, specifically with Jackson, the Halo games. He and others involved in that project realized it would be too hard, too costly, and too problematic to make such a highly rated game series into a movie, so it got put an indefinite hold. So even good directors like Peter Jackson take their time with the idea.
So going into this movie, I was expecting to be disappointed. The Sands of Time was one of my favorite games for the gamecube/PS2/xbox console. When I was done with the movie, I was throughly impressed. It wasn't groundbreaking in cinematography or anything of the sort, but for the type of movie director Jerry Bruckheimer had to deal with, he did a great job.
The movie itself didn't mirror the actual game, because if so, it would have been a crazy movie, but it did keep the major key elements that was in the original story. There was even some homages paid in the movie, that normally wouldn't have been smart film shots, but referenced to the cinematic in the game. It was small things like that that made me appreciate the movie more. The movie had great action, thoughtful dialog and really interesting CG that complemented the key story concepts I mentioned earlier.
The only complaints I had were: - There were some cheesy lines from time to time, but I was kind of expecting that since it is a Disney movie. - The fight style of the game, of Dastan, was unique and is one of the main reason the game was so much fun to play. He was a fast, acrobatic fighting machine. He would jump and flip off walls, slide, turn, dive off anything and everything in the game, making the obstacles an interesting play through. In the movie, they do have some scenes where he has to show those skills, but it is only for a short time. He does do a good amount of fighting, but less of the acrobatics. I really wish they did a little more of that in the movie.
Besides that, I thought it was a great movie, and anyone else that likes a good action movie, or anyone that was a big fan of the games should go see it!