Prince of Persia: The Trouble with Time Travel

Recently I caught Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and it has just hit video. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhall in the title role Gemma Arterton as the love interest, and Ben Kingsley as the villain. I guess now is the time for the warning that this will be a spoiler heavy post. So those of you that have not seen this film stop reading now………

Prince of Persia is set in a fantasy version of said empire, nothing historical need be noted. Frankly, I am just fine with this, I wanted to see a pulpy, swash and buckle adventure and I got one, with Arabian Nights trappings and plenty of pulpy goodness.

The basic plot is that the Persian king has three sons. Two are his natural children, the eldest destined for the throne, the second, captain of the cavalry, and the third, adopted from the streets is a rogue. The hero of the film and leader of the king’s special forces.

The vizier, played by Kingsley, convinces the brothers that they should attack a holy city that is seemingly running weapons for Persia’s enemies. The hero prince, through high flying swashbuckler daring, takes the gates and lets his brothers rush in to take the city. During the fighting he takes down an escaping warrior and obtains a glass hilted dagger that is a potent magical weapon, because within the glass are the Sands of Time. The sands allow the wielder to step back in time by a minute to correct a mistake, or avoid a killing strike.

Kingsly’s character manipulated the attack to gain possession the dagger and, the actual source of the power, to place himself on the throne.

Despite the sheer predictability of the story, which is actually the focus of this post, I just want to say that I really enjoyed it just the same. The adventure itself was a fun ride, the characters well done, the villains even more so. The use of, and look of the Hashishins (assassins) was very pulp sword a sorcery, and very cool. Of course the special effects were what is expected from Hollywood now. Despite any nit picky complaints, it is a fun movie that I will add to my collection.

In Prince of Persia, the hero is able to step back a minute and correct his mistakes, or change the course of events. The films follows the course where everyone dies, the brothers, the father, the love interest, and even helpful sidekicks all the way through are dying off. These characters dying, their sacrifices, created tension for the hero, but not for me, because the whole time I knew that the hero would turn back the clock to a certain point and none of it would have happened.

The actual idea of this post is the nature of time travel in movies and fiction in general. It always sounds so cool, but is nearly impossible to execute because of the paradoxes and the idea of “do overs”.

This is the biggest flaw in trying to create a time travel adventure. The hero can always fix his mistakes. As a matter of course it is actually the main thrust of such adventures from Back to the Future to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The tension and story come from the hero trying to correct those mistakes or set things right, but in the end we know they will. Outside of failing in the middle of the adventure, which no writer if it be screen plays, scripts, or fiction, would do.

Some films have pulled off the time travel adventure by stepping out of the norm for such stories, and a very few have actually pulled off some surprises. The two above used humor to tell the time travel story, Bill and Ted was over the top with the guys taking mental notes on going back in time to set up events to help them in the present, which of course worked….mostly. The first of Michael J. Fox’s movies did this well with the “my own grandpa” kind of shtick. Few actually seem to hold many surprises though.

The Terminator series took a slightly different tack, thank you Harlan Ellison. The first did well with the time travel elements of Reese being Conner’s father, because even the viewer knew he was going to die, the tension in the film actually came from that knowledge. The rest fell into a cycle of sending the next new and improved model after Conner. I imagined Sky Net sitting in Mordor (oops) saying “Did it change yet? Damn! Send another one!” Again, I imagine: why not send Arnold back with a dirty nuke in his guts and BOOM! Sky Net wins!

So what is the purpose of this post? Not much other than pointing out the pit falls of the time travel genre. I will turn off my logic engine and put in Time Rider followed by Time Line and if I have time, another viewing of the sword and sorcery fantasy Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I will follow the axiom on the subject from South Park: The rules for time travel are just silly.

Wolfhound: Sword and Sorcery from Russia

Wolfhound is a fantasy film starring Alexander Buharov and Oksana Akinshina; directed by Nikolay Lebedev. Made in Russia and recently imported to the US on DVD. The tag on the cover says it is a combination of Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian. Watching the film I could see elements of both, and it is different enough from either to be its own film and a good one.


Wolfhound is set in a fantasy world in which the gods still move about the land, they channel their power through their worshipers, and others are locked away for good reason. Wolfhound is the title character who survives the massacre of his clan, the Grey Dog Clan, only to be sold into slavery. He escapes to wreak vengeance upon the men responsible for the destruction of his people, and the death of his parents.

He destroys one of his enemy’s called the Eater of Men, and rescues a young girl and a blind old wizard, Wolfhound reluctantly looks after the pair. He joins a caravan and protects a princess from his other foe, a druid and powerful priest to the dark powers. These events and companions set him on a course of the epic hero quest.

The story is well done, with the subtleties of socerous magic; a land gripped in an unnatural winter, blood to open the portals between worlds, and magical healing needing external sources to help it be effective. The special effects are top notch from what appears to be a low budget film, avoiding the cheese factor most movies seem to suffer from on the Sci Fi Channel. The acting, as I can determine because I watched the dubbed version not the one with subtitles, was good, the lines fitting the setting with verisimilitude. The characters looked to belong in such a setting. The women, though attractive, did not have an artificial beauty that so many actresses’ posses, that make them anachronistic within the world they should exist in. The men are hollow cheeked and hard featured, looking as if they had just dropped out of a history book. The one that deals with blood shed and barbarian hoards.

Wolfhound himself is dour and taciturn, there is little humor or warmth in the character, which is as it should be. This film was done as a serious fantasy movie should be done, without any slapstick antics, or witty banter that falls flat for being too modern in its application.

The film does have elements and acts that seem to be lifted directly from The Lord of the Rings and Conan; the aforementioned destruction of Wolfhound’s village. The style and cinematography seems to be borrowed from Peter Jackson, but resolve into a much darker and gritty tone that would have pleased Robert Howard far more than J.R.R. Tolkien.

I was impressed with Wolfhound with only a couple minor complaints that the pacing was a tad slow for me, which is not to say it was too slow, only that I enjoy my films with a little more alacrity. The other complaint is that the hero needs the direct intervention of the gods to accomplish his goals, where the film would have had greater impact had Wolfhound persevered by his own merits and skill.

My recommendation is that if you like fantasy films, good fantasy films, with a flavor that you will not experience from an American film then check out Wolfhound.

Solomon Kane: Swashbuckler and Hammer of God

“If I had to pick one Howardian character that I gravitate to the most, the answer is very easy. I would choose Solomon Kane as well. Kane was Howard's most unique character, and did not have to suffer the thousands of pastiches his barbarian characters had to endure. Kane wore his melancholy in plain sight, mirrored by his black garb and wide-brimmed hat. In many ways I always felt he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, as many good men do, and Kane was indeed a good man. He also balanced a strange duality in his nature, with a strong Christian drive to subdue evil in all its forms, and the savage pagan rage that would reveal itself during battle. Kane was the prototype for the theory of id vs. ego.” – Mangus




So wrote my friend over at Sword & Sanity of the question I put to him about his favorite character in Robert E. Howard’s dark fantasy stable. His position sums up my own in words that I wish I had written.

Solomon Kane is the creation of Robert E. Howard; a swordsman, pirate, wandering adventurer, and puritan. Howard wrote about his black clad soldier of the 16th century between 1928 and 1932, seeing publication in Weird Tales. It had been often noted by many that the Kane proves that Howard was more than the sum of Conan. I would argue that Howard was never the sum of Conan or any one character, but rather each protagonist is his own man, his own world view, and his own story to be told. Solomon Kane is my favorite.

Solomon Kane was a creation of Robert E. Howard, a master of pulp fiction and one of the forefathers of Sword & Sorcery fantasy. Solomon Kane appeared in magazines from roughly 1928 through 1936 and reappeared in the late 1960’s on the paperback racks. He appeared in comic form for Marvel Comics at about the time their popular Conan series ran in the 1970’s and 80’s. Dark Horse, the comic company that has revitalized Conan in the graphic form has released two series of adaptations for the Puritan. A theatrical release is supposed to be released at the end of this month.

Who or what was Solomon Kane? Robert E. Howard described him in The Moon of Skulls thus: “He was a man born out of his time--a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more that a touch of the pagan, though the last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the somber clothes of a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect--he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.”

Living in the age of Elizabeth I roughly between 1575 through 1610 or so, Solomon Kane is described as tall, gaunt, “darkly pallid” and dressed all in black, save for a green sash about his waist. He was armed with weapons of the period, usually two black powder pistols, a rapier, and in many tales a musket and/or a cat headed staff given to him by N’ Longa, an African sorcerer.

A questing knight six hundred years and more too late, a swashbuckler and Hammer of God; Solomon Kane was all this and more and that is why he is such an enduring and memorable hero. His adventures spanned the coast of England in Blades of the Brotherhood, also known as The Blue Flame of Vengeance; to the darkest heart of Africa in several tales like The Hills of the Dead and Wings in the Night. In almost every tale of Solomon Kane, the Puritan is driven to seek out revenge in the name of justice or otherwise defend the weak. The hero would cross continents and face the very demons of hell in Howard’s yarns of daring. Through out the man remained true to the convictions of his own personal honor and belief in the righteousness of his cause; for he had the fanatic’s zeal, tempered with practicality of the world weary adventurer

There was a power in Howard’s prose: to sum up a character so succinctly in one statement that the man himself uttered: Kane said to John Silent in the fragment The Castle of the Devil: “It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives.” Like all Howard’s creations, there was the simmering anger beneath the surface that all men seem to feel at the world as it is, not as it should be. This is what draws readers to Kane, Conan, and Kull. But with Kane there is more, there is a feeling of moral obligation to act on those impulses that other heroes do not answer to. Where Conan acts for gain in one aspect or another, Kane takes action because it is what must be done for the greater good, or the preservation of others. He will take the haunted road to rid it of the evil that stalks the path.



With the tragic death of Robert E. Howard many of the secrets that Kane held were never revealed. Where hence came the green sash that he wore, the only splash of color upon his whole person? Kane never had a love interest in the tales of Howard, another curious division from heroes like Conan. Perhaps that bit of gaudy cloth came from a lady? The poem Solomon Kane’s Homecoming suggests that he had loved once, but his wanderlust drove him away: “Where is Bess…..I left her—though it racked my heart to see the lass in tears….. In a quiet church yard by the sea she has slept these seven years…..” Did Howard himself even know the answers to Kane’s past? As he told others his heroes told him their stories, he only related them. Kane’s existence did not end with his creator’s death, but rather each generation is rediscovering the Puritan and his barbaric brethren as new media comes out and the old work is republished. Perhaps someone else will take up a pen and tell the rest of Kane’s story. Though I hope not, I do not believe anyone can truly tell the stories as Howard had, and some mysteries are better left undiscovered so one’s own imagination can fill in the blanks.

There are many resources on the Puritan swashbuckler on the web, here are only a few of the better examples I have come across:

http://www.robertehoward.com/ : the only place to start.

An excellent chronology of Kane.

The Return of Sir Richard Grenville : an independent film based on the poem.
Gary Gianni: the great artist behind some of the best Kane images, as the one posted on the blog from Wings in the Night.