The Sorcerer's Apprentice Information

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a 2010 fantasy adventure film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Jon Turteltaub, and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the team behind the National Treasure franchise. The film is named after the The Sorcerer's Apprentice segment in Disney's Fantasia (with one scene being an extensive reference to it), which in turn is based on the late 1890s symphonic poem by Paul Dukas and the 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ballad.

Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage), a "Merlinean", is a sorcerer in modern-day Manhattan, fighting against the forces of evil, in particular his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), while searching for the person who will inherit Merlin's powers. This turns out to be Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel), a physics student, whom Balthazar takes as a reluctant protégé. The sorcerer gives his unwilling apprentice a crash course in the art of science, magic, and sorcery, in order to stop Horvath and Morgana le Fay (Alice Krige) from raising the souls of the evil dead sorcerers ("Morganians") and destroying the world.

Plot

In AD 740, one of Merlin's (James A. Stephens) three apprentices, named Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), betrays him by joining forces with the evil sorceress Morgana le Fay (Alice Krige). Morgana mortally wounds Merlin before another of Merlin's apprentices, Veronica Gorloisen (Monica Bellucci), absorbs Morgana, body and soul, into her own body. As Morgana tries to kill/possess Veronica from within, the third and final apprentice, Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage), stops her by imprisoning Morgana and Veronica in the "Grimhold", a magic prison in the shape of a nesting doll. Before dying, Merlin gives Balthazar a dragon ring that will identify the Prime Merlinean, Merlin's successor, who will be the only one able to defeat Morgana. Throughout history, Balthazar imprisons Morganians, sorcerers who try to release Morgana, including Horvath, into successive layers on the Grimhold, while he searches for the successor.

In 2000, 10-year-old Dave Stutler (Jake Cherry), encounters Balthazar in a Manhattan antique store. Determining that the boy may be the successor, Balthazar gives young Dave Merlin's Dragon Ring, which comes alive and wraps itself around Dave's finger. Dave accidentally opens the Grimhold, releasing Horvath. While battling for possession of the Grimhold, Balthazar and Horvath are imprisoned in an ancient Chinese urn with a ten-year lock curse. Dave is humiliated as he is discovered by his teacher and classmates with his pants wet due to a vase that broke in his lap, and as everyone enters the store, there is no trace of the battle, so it is believed Dave made it up.

Ten years later in 2010, Dave (Jay Baruchel), now 20-years-old, is a physics student at New York University and has made the reacquaintance of a childhood crush, Becky (Teresa Palmer). Meanwhile, the 10-year imprisonment curse of mystical urn end and the urn opens, releasing Horvath and Balthazar. Horvath goes after Dave in search of the Grimhold, and Dave is eventually rescued by Balthazar, riding an animated steel eagle created out of a Chrysler Building gargoyle.

Dave initially refuses to help Balthazar, but agrees to help as long as he is left alone once the Grimhold is found. They track the Grimhold to Chinatown, where Horvath has released the next Morganian, Sun Lok (Gregory Woo). Dave defeats Sun Lok, and Balthazar retrieves the Grimhold. Dave finds that he wants to learn to use magic after all, and agrees to become Balthazar's apprentice. He also becomes romantically involved with Becky against Balthazar's wishes and advice.

Horvath enlists celebrity magician Drake Stone (Toby Kebbell), an apprentice-Morganian, to help him retrieve the Grimhold. They attempt to kill Dave, but Balthazar saves him. Cued by Horvath, Dave demands to know the truth about Balthazar's quest. Balthazar reveals that Morgana is trapped in the Grimhold, as well as Veronica; if Morgana escapes she will attempt "The Rising", a spell that will raise sorcerers from the dead and use them to enslave mankind. Dave, as the Prime Merlinian, a (distant) living relative of Merlin, will one-day become so powerful he won't need his ring to use sorcery, is the only one who can stop her.

After an incident involving out of control animated mops, Dave decides to give up on magic, but changes his mind when he meets Becky again. He returns to his laboratory just as Drake and Horvath try to kill Balthazar after stealing the Grimhold. Once that is done, Horvath turns on Drake, using the "parasite spell" to steal Drake's energy, and takes his magic ring. He releases the witch Abigail Williams (Nicole Ehinger) and uses her to kidnap Becky. Once Abigail completes that, Horvath steals her energy and pendant as well. Horvath threatens to kill Becky, forcing Dave to surrender the Grimhold and his ring. Balthazar then goes after Horvath in Battery Park, knowing that without the ring Dave will be killed.

Horvath releases Morgana, who still sealed within Veronica's body, and she begins the spell as Horvath animates the Charging Bull sculpture to attack Balthazar. With Becky's help, Dave reaches them in time to try to defeat Horvath and stop Morgana from completing the Rising, and Balthazar's eagle flies away with the bull.

Balthazar takes Morgana's body-&-soul from Veronica's body into his own, but, with Balthazar low on magic, Morgana is able to escape from his body. Morgana tries to incinerate them, but Dave stops her - proving he is the Prime Merlinian by using magic without the ring. The ethereal projection then shoots energy bolts that kill Balthazar before battling Dave, who destroys her after creating a Tesla coil with the square's lamp posts and powerlines. Balthazar is then revived after Dave jump-starts his heart, and is then reunited with Veronica. Dave and Becky kiss, and fly to France on Balthazar's eagle.

After the end credits, Horvath takes his hat from Balthazar's shop.

Cast

• Nicolas Cage as Balthazar Blake, a one-thousand-plus-year old sorcerer of the "777th degree". Based on the magician in Fantasia.
• Jay Baruchel as David "Dave" Stutler, a highly intelligent college student who becomes Blake's apprentice.
  • Jake Cherry as Young David "Dave" Stutler
• Alfred Molina as Maxim Horvath, an evil sorcerer and Balthazar's rival and former friend.
• Teresa Palmer as Rebecca "Becky" Barnes, the love interest of Dave.
  • Peyton Roi List as Young Becky
• Toby Kebbell as Drake Stone, an apprentice-Morganian and celebrity illusionist, who joins forces with Horvath.
• Omar Benson Miller as Bennet Zurrow, Dave's roommate.
• Monica Bellucci as Veronica Gorloisen, a sorceress, and the love interest of Balthazar Blake.
• Alice Krige as Morgana le Fay.
• James A. Stephens as Merlin, the legendary wizard killed in AD 740 by Horvath and Morgana.
• Gregory Woo as Sun Lok, a Chinese wizard.
• Nicole Ehinger as Abigail Williams, a witch in the second-to-last layer around the Grimhold, who was accredited for starting the Salem witch trials.
• Robert Capron as Oliver Twistmeyer, Dave Stutler's best friend as a child.
• Ethan Peck as Andre Dunlap
• Sierra, Takoda, Samson, and Bandit from Howling Woods Farm as the wolves.

Production

The basic idea for the movie was mostly Nicolas Cage's, who wanted to explore a mystic world and play a character with magical powers, and following a suggestion by his producer friend Todd Garner, decided to make a feature length movie based upon the Fantasia segment of the same name. On February 12, 2007, this film was announced by Disney. References to the original animation include the scene where Dave animates broomsticks to clean his laboratory, and having Mickey Mouse's hat in the post-credits scene.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is set in New York City, and most scenes were shot on location, in places such as Washington Square Park and Chinatown's Eldrige Street. Dave's laboratory was filmed in either an abandoned subway station located under the New York City Hall or a studio recreation of it. In the early morning hours of May 4, 2009, a Ferrari F430 being driven during filming of a chase sequence, lost control and careened into the window of a Sbarro restaurant in Times Square, injuring two pedestrians, one of whom was struck by a falling lamppost. Filming resumed the following night, when yet another accident occurred. The two accidents were blamed on rain making the roads slick.

To make the magic more believable, it was decided to an emphasis of practical, on-set effects, such as making real fire, with fluids or flash powder being used for colored flames. To provide a lighting reference for the plasma bolts, the actors wore gloves with LED displays to make them glow before adding the computer-generated shot. For floating objects, they were either thrown with wires or held by stuntment wearing green chroma key suits.

Reception

Critical reception

The film has received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 42% based on 163 reviews, with an average score of 5.2/10. The critical consensus is: It has a likeable cast and loads of CGI spectacle, but for all but the least demanding viewers, The Sorcerer's Apprentice will be less than spellbinding. Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating from 0-100 of top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 46.

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter has said that "The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a tired relic of summer-movie cliches, clearly beaten to death by far too many credited writers." Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote "This is a much better film than Airbender, which is faint praise, but it's becoming clear that every weekend brings another heavily marketed action "comedy" that pounds tens of millions out of consumers before evaporating". In July 2010, Parade Magazine listed the film #1 on its list of "Biggest Box Office Flops of 2010 (So Far).

Box office

The Sorcerer's Apprentice made an opening gross of $3,873,997 on its first day (Wednesday July 14, 2010). It finished at #3 on its first weekend with $17,619,622 behind Inception and Despicable Me in the U.S. and Canada and gained another $8,928,216 on its first weekend overseas (in 13 countries) for a worldwide opening of $26,547,841. On October 28, 2010, The Sorcerer's Apprentice closed at the box-office in the United States and Canada with $63,150,991 and, as of December 12, 2010, it has earned $152,132,612 in other countries totaling up to $215,283,603 worldwide. Besides the U.S. and Canada, other countries where it grossed more than $10 million were Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States ($13,630,194), France and the Maghreb region ($12,930,320) and Japan ($10,632,660). Its largest overseas weekend was August 13"15, during which it grossed $14,091,169 in 42 countries. It occupies the fourth place on the all-time chart of Sword and Sorcery movies in the U.S. and Canada, and the third place on the same chart worldwide.

Home media

It has sold 1,288,735 DVD units (equivalent to $21,609,680) since its release in DVD. Adding in its box-office revenue, the film's earnings sum up to $236,893,283.

Soundtrack

The score for this film was conducted and recorded by Trevor Rabin. It was released on July 6, 2010.