The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

This film’s story draws its origins from a wonderful movie called “Fantasia”. In it is one of the most memorable presentations of Mickey Mouse, in his red robe and his star spotted Wizard’s Cap. It is also a sequence that cannot really be improved upon or truly remade according to Jon Turteltaub, the director. He also said it would be very hard to do a two hour movie about mopping as that was what you saw in the original sequence in “Fantasia”. He wanted to create a story that showed magic was alive and well in this world. He could think of no better place than New York.



The clip they showed begins with Dave Stutl, your average American kid, finding his way into Balthazar Blake’s Magic Shop. Balthazar understands more than he let’s on and shows something to the young Dave, a small silver Dragon. This dragon animates and, after examining Dave a moment, wraps itself around his finger. Balthazar is happy to find this out, telling Dave only that that means one day he will be a very powerful and very important sorcerer one day. The clip ended there

At this point, Jay Baruchel, who plays Dave Stutler, and Nicolas Cage, who plays Balthazar Blake, and Teresa Palmer, who plays Becky came out. Cage was dealing with Laryngitis during the panel, so his voice was fairly worn. The three of them talked about their characters, describing a bit about each. Dave finds himself very much a fish out of water when Balthazar enters his life as he attends NYU. Baruchel had fun with the role, dealing with his character has Dave learned about magic and ultimately saves the day. Palmer’s character, Becky, gets thrust into this world with Baruchel’s, seeing the glory of magic. It was something akin to having a thin veil lifted that her character had not realized was there. Cage enjoyed his character because of the little “glint of madness” in Balthazar’s eyes.

Turteltaub talked to us about his approach to the movie. He got a great cast and a solid story. Magic is something that is tricky to handle at best, so making sure you can manage it properly is very important. He wanted to appear more that magic was entering their lives and did so tactfully. He wanted the movie to have a serious tone in it as well as its humor. The movie does look like it has promise from the clips we were shown at the show as well as the previews that are floating around on the internet.