I was disappointed but I had pretty high hopes. I was looking forward to this movie because there was so much potential in almost every aspect of the production. You have a coming of age story mixed with magic and adventure, sound familiar? This is definitely going to be compared to Harry Potter and sadly, it doesn’t hold a candle next to it. But even so, it does conjure up an adventure for kids and fans of movies like the National Treasure series which shares the same director (Jon Turteltaub) and producer (Jerry Bruckheimer) as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as well as the star, Nicolas Cage.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is about a very old prophecy set by the great sorcerer Merlin himself and carried out for centuries by one of Merlin’s three apprentices, Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) while battling his arch-nemesis who used to be his best friend and one of Merlin’s other apprentices, Maxim Horvath played by Alfred Molina. My first gripe of this movie is all the back story that they tried to stuff into the first five minutes. I was sitting next to a parent and her child and both of them were lost trying to explain what was going on to each other before the opening credits were even finished. I even got lost in some of the mumbo jumbo that was thrown together. There’s a lot of fluff in the story that I feel was unneeded…just get to the action!
777-Level Sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) and his arch-nemesis Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina)
The action scenes and special effects were pretty cool. The post-production on this film is probably the highlight of it all. The magic in this movie is truly more on the sorcerer side rather than the magic wand side…you get plasma balls, metamorphosis, clever tricks, and a hard-hitting raging bull. The visual effects are as cool as the sorcery itself and adds a great dimension to the movie. I’m actually very glad Disney didn’t decide to do this movie in 3D, it would’ve messed up the grimey feel that it had. Those things aside, the plot was weak. I did expect more from a story that’s inspired from the classic film Fantasia. However, my favorite scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was the dancing mops and brooms which is straight from the inspiring scene of Fantasia this movie is based upon. There are a few scenes that you can smile about and you’ll get a chuckle from some of the awkward conversations between sorcerer and apprentice but that’s all you’ll get: a chuckle.
The Sorcerer (Nicolas Cage) and his Apprentice (Jay Baruchel)
It was great to see the magic in the real world that we live in. The movie is based in New York and the bulk of the movie is set in modern day so kids and adults alike can see themselves being magicians and sorcerers in their own daily lives. The movie tries hard to make science “cool” as the sorcerer’s apprentice Dave played by Jay Baruchel is a physics nerd and explains a bunch of the magic in science terms. I don’t think it quite succeeded in this goal since Jay’s character was an annoying nerd who was just awkward (and not the good awkward like one of Michael Cera’s characters). He was even worse than his persona in She’s Out Of My League which was bearable and improved throughout that movie. In this movie, I got a bit peeved with his voice alongside the whispers of Nic Cage. In the end our scientific sorcerer, Dave, does get the girl, but who wouldn’t get the girl with plasma balls forming from their bare hands? (sorry if you think this is a spoiler but it’s incredibly predictable) Hopefully some kids get turned on to Physics from this movie, but I doubt there will be many converts…you’ll probably just get more kids playing Magic: The Gathering.
On that note, I think there should be a new film award for product placement because it’s starting to get ridiculous. This movie has so much product placement subtly positioned in scenes that you would think they were just coincidently there while the crew was shooting. I think I might start documenting the product placement in movies in a “Sponsored By” section, what do you guys think?
Disney started their showcase with a first look at Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time starring Jake Gyllenhaal, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and directed by Mike Newell…all three were in attendance to talk about the movie. Prince of Persia is based on the popular video game of the same name. It follows the adventures of a prince who stumbles upon a mythical object which can affect time itself. He teams up with the princess of his rivals to stop a sandstorm which would end of the world. From what they showed and said, it’s definitely an action-packed summer blockbuster but Jerry kept highlighting the points that it would have lots of comedy and romance. Pretty much, it’s trying to have mass appeal and target the largest market possible. It was filmed in Morocco where it was said to be over a hundred degrees every day. Additionally, they sent teams around the world to take authentic pictures and bring back the images to build unique sets. But even with that backdrop, a lot of the movie will be computer generated. The footage they showed looked very common and bland. Granted, it’s still early and the scenes weren’t polished up yet. However, the time travel affects with the sand looked awesome as well as the scenes with snakes…they did some really cool things there. It’s reminiscent of the director, Mike Newell’s work in Harry Potter, very magical. You can expect a lot of free running/parkour type stuff from Jake who literally runs up walls.
Jerry Bruckheimer stayed in his seat as the panels changed because he was presenting his 2nd upcoming film with Disney, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel and is directed by Jon Turteltaub. Set in modern-day, a college student in New York City finds himself in a magical battle between good and evil. He is destined to become a great and powerful sorcerer trained by an old wizard by the name of Balthazar. On the plot, Jon Turteltaub commented on how fundamental this plot is to Disney and that it originated from a segment in Fantasia. He comically said that obviously they’re not doing a cartoon for two hours of a mop (even though the iconic sequence of the mop is in the film). To me, the footage looked amazing. This is going to be a homerun for Disney and regain them some lost fans while gaining them a lot of new ones from the younger generation who has no idea what Fantasia is and would definitely not sit through it today. You can tell it’s still geared towards kids, but it looks really funny and entertaining…kind of a Harry Potter like feel. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice looks at magic a different way than Harry Potter though. Turteltaub said he wanted to create a very realistic and modern weird feeling as if you were in this world with the characters on the screen and then the magic would enter all of our lives.
Finally, Disney’s last film showcased was a continuation of a little known franchise from Disney Pixar called Toy Story 3. The third film in this series follows the characters as they are abandoned in a day care while their owner, Andy, goes away to college. At first, to all of the toys except Woody, it looks like a paradise but kids love new toys…The director, Lee Unkrich, said that it took two days in a cabin to come up with the story but over two and half years of storyboarding and fine tuning. He felt the pressure of taking this huge franchise and creating a third feature length film every day of the process of making it but it doesn’t look like he failed…every time a new character was shown to the audience, there was a collective “awww.” There’s no doubt in my mind that this film will resonate with the new generation of kids and that the old fans will flock back to see the new instalment. When an audience member asked Jeff Garlin about improvising in the movie he said that when the script is good, he doesn’t like to improvise. He likes to improvise in order to help a movie out but with Wall-E and Toy Story 3, he felt that the scripts were great so that should give you an idea of how good this one is going to be.
WonderCon is one of the country’s best comics conventions featuring guests and events for comics, movies, video games, and other popular media. This year, WonderCon had presentations by such Hollywood studios as Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, and Lionsgate.
