There’s no shame in a big budget blockbuster failing to accomplish its aims of critical and commercial success, but stumbling on four different fronts is borderline embarrassing. Unfortunately, that was the fate that befell 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which transparently tried to do too much and ended up with nothing to show for it.
The first two arenas in which National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub’s reunion with Nicolas Cage fell flat are the most obvious; with critics and paying customers. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice only raked in $215 million at the box office on a $150 million budget, while respective scores of only 40 and 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes underlined the apathy.
Not only that, it didn’t manage to capitalize on Disney’s newfound trend for turning its live-action back catalogue into viable feature-length success stories, either, with the movie taking its title and much of its inspiration from the segments of the same name found in 1940’s Fantasia and its 1999 sequel.
If that still wasn’t bad enough, the marketing that pegged The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as “Pirates of the Caribbean with magic” also failed to hook viewers in a meaningful way, which is pretty much exactly what happened when the Mouse House tried to do it in the desert (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), the Old West (The Lone Ranger), and the Amazon (Jungle Cruise), too.
Then again, it’s been 13 summers since Cage and the latest addition to his catalogue of crazy wigs sank without a trace, and it’s still managing to draw in a crowd on streaming. Per FlixPatrol, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has conjured a place on the Disney Plus rankings, so maybe it’s in with a shot at some form of longevity.