Growing up, my cousin was like an older brother to me. He put me on a skateboard when I was five, I fell off and skinned my knee. He smashed my Hungry, Hungry Hippos game for fun, I cried. He let me play with his action figures, I went hysterical when he lit up the toy’s red eyes in a darkened bathroom while yelling “BLOODY MARY! BLOODY MARY! BLOODY MARY!” You know, sibling stuff.

He also introduced me to video games. It’s because of him that I can impress boys with my knowledge of Contra, warp zones, X-Men for Sega Genesis and unsolicited Street Fighter references. Of course, I’m not a gamer, but these are the vast coal mines that make up a black-lunged pop culture freak’s bounty. Anyway, to wit, my makeshift older brother is the first person who introduced me to the cage-dropping, Vizier-fighting, spike-landing-on world of Prince of Persia.

In the original computer game, the Prince was a pixelated doppelganger of Ahnold—muscular, tanned with a mop of blonde hair. Of course, back then, I had no fucking idea where “Persia” was so the fact that its Prince was white really didn’t concern me as much as not landing on those damned spikes. But leave it to Jerry “Keep It Simple, Stupid” Bruckheimer to create a historically/culturally/linguistically inaccurate epic that will continue to convince hordes of mindless-moviegoers that all heroes are hot white guys who speak the Queen’s English. (Trailer below).

Disclaimer: I’m definitely not convinced that we’re living the Benetton ideal. But I figure that if Jake “Donnie Darko“ Gyllenhaal can fight his way from cult-classic indie fave to big budget box office badmon then at least us stride-making coloureds have a shot. I kind of feel stupid in suggesting they could have at least cast Sayid from Lost as the Prince. (Seriously, not even Kal Penn?)

This is so frustrating I’ll even throw out the current most popular “evidence of post-racialism” catchphrase to illustrate my point, “WE HAVE A BLACK PRESIDENT!” He’s not even my president, and he’s totally just a dude with a black father and white mom, but cahmon? A Persian prince with an English accent? This shit is worse than Gladiator, which was awesome, but so confusing because I thought it was set in Greece or something but everyone sounded like they were from England.

So, despite my desire to see how those aghhh ridiculous spikes look in live-action and as much as I want to see rippling muscles and sweaty sex scenes and the alpha-male fight sequences of my wet dreams, I can’t help but lambast Bruckheimer on my group blog first before declaring “I will download it instead.” It’s the principle of the thing.

Watch the trailer for Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time