This is a companion piece to THE RECKONING: Part Three. That essay documents the production infrastructure — the budget, the cashflow, the crew, the contracts, the £49,786 in unpaid debt. This piece examines the screenplay that infrastructure was built to serve. The contrast is the point.
Title: Prisoners of the Sun
Writer / Director: Roger Christian
Genre: Fantasy-adventure / ancient-alien horror
Budget (as prepped): $5,899,291 across four territories
Release: 2013 — straight to VOD
IMDb Score: 3.8 / 10
Recommendation: PASS
A princess dies in childbirth in 3000 B.C. Egypt. A guardian mummy is created using alien technology and sealed in her tomb. Five thousand years later, an obsessed archaeologist assembles a team to enter the pyramid before a stellar alignment allows him to activate a buried alien craft using his daughter's blood, which will fire a solar weapon that will adjust Earth's orbit so the aliens can return.
That is the premise. Every sentence of it contains at least one problem.
The screenplay is set in 3000 B.C. — the Early Dynastic Period. These are not nitpicks. They are foundational failures of world-building. A film that asks the audience to believe in alien gods buried under pyramids must at minimum get the pyramids right.
Pyramids visible from the palace (3000 B.C.) — The first pyramid (Djoser at Saqqara) dates to approximately 2630 B.C. The Giza pyramids date to approximately 2500 B.C. The Pharaoh gazing at "the great pyramids beyond" is looking at structures that will not exist for another five hundred years.
Long metal tongs for childbirth (3000 B.C.) — Obstetric forceps were not invented until the sixteenth century A.D. by the Chamberlen family. The physician requesting "long tongs" is requesting technology that is four and a half thousand years in his future.
"Pharaoh's Consort" as title (3000 B.C.) — Not an Egyptian title. Egyptian queens held titles such as "Great Royal Wife" (hemet nesut weret). The term "consort" is a European convention.
Osiris as major national deity (3000 B.C.) — Osiris did not become a prominent national deity until the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 B.C.) and reached full prominence in the Middle Kingdom. Building an entire religious schism around Osiris worship in 3000 B.C. is anachronistic by roughly a thousand years.
To be clear: the Pharaoh is standing on a terrace, gazing at pyramids that don't exist yet, while his consort (a title that doesn't exist) discusses the worship of Osiris (a deity not yet prominent) and a physician prepares obstetric forceps (an instrument not yet invented for another 4,500 years). This is page one.
Masterton — Obsessed archaeologist-villain. Monologues constantly. Slaps his daughter. His motive is never emotionally grounded. We never understand why he believes this is worth the cost.
Sarah — The daughter with the bloodline. Her defining characteristic is hating her father. Her romance with Doug develops across approximately six lines of dialogue. Her moment of agency — shooting Masterton — arrives too late to redeem ninety pages of passivity.
Doug — The reluctant hero. His competence is told to us by other characters rather than shown through action. He follows, reacts, and explains.
Claire — The psychic. She enters trance, delivers prophecy, exits trance. She has no cost, no resistance, no internal life. Her visions arrive precisely when the script needs information. This is not a character. It is a search engine in black clothes.
Levitz — The villain who kills an antique dealer with a sword-cane in a crowded marketplace, leaves the body, and phones the protagonist to blackmail him. Written as a chess player. Acts like a chaos agent.
Adam — Secret half-brother. Shifts from helpful team member to guns-drawn blood ritual in approximately one page. No foreshadowing. No arc.
Al-Khem-Ayut (The Guardian) — The single compelling idea in the screenplay. A mummified human-alien hybrid created as a biological failsafe, awakened by light, programmed to prevent resurrection. His final sacrifice elevates him from monster to moral agent. The script does not earn this moment, but the idea is sound.
The dialogue performs two functions: exposition and cliché. Characters do not speak to each other. They speak at each other, delivering information the audience needs in language no human being would use.
PRIEST OF RA: "You know how the sun is born each morning on the eastern horizon to the sky-goddess, and travels across the vault of heaven to be swallowed by her at sunset on the western horizon." — He is speaking to initiates of Ra. They know this.
GUARDIAN: "The gods are not happy tonight." — Delivered during a meteor storm. The audience had worked this out.
PRINCESS AMANPHUR: "Men are weak around feminine beauty." — Said by a dying woman. The line belongs in a fortune cookie, not a death scene.
MASTERTON: "From the four corners of the world we've come to this place. Today we journey further; into history; into enigma; into the ancient heart of this mystic land." — This is a toast. In a hotel bar. Before breakfast.
DOUG: "Next time, we find the elevator." — The one line in the screenplay that sounds like a human being wrote it.
SARAH: "I loved my mother, you bastard!!" — The emotional climax of the film. After ninety pages of build-up, this is a soap opera exit line. The moment deserved better.
The climax hinges on this premise: a solar beam reflected off a mirrored globe will destroy a planet's moon, thereby adjusting Earth's orbit, thereby altering ultraviolet radiation levels, thereby allowing an alien race to survive on Earth's surface.
This is not how orbital mechanics work. It is not how ultraviolet radiation works. It is not how mirrors work. It is not how any of this works.
A fantasy film does not need hard science. It needs internal consistency. The rules of the world must make sense on their own terms. These do not.
From Stargate (1994): Ancient alien race uses pyramids as technology. Astronomical alignment activates device. Military-academic team enters ancient site. Stargate built this on a single, clear premise. Prisoners of the Sun adds layers of incoherence without the internal logic that made Stargate work.
From The Mummy (1999): Cursed guardian awakens in tomb. Team explores burial site. Traps, curses, supernatural threat. The Mummy committed to tone: adventure-horror-comedy with charm. Prisoners of the Sun cannot decide what it is and commits to nothing.
From Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): Archaeologist-adventurer seeks ancient artefact. Villain wants same artefact for its power. Raiders works because Indiana Jones is a character, not a function. Doug Adler is a placeholder where a protagonist should be.
This screenplay was the centre of a $5,899,291 bonded international co-production. The infrastructure built around it included a hundred-page budget, dual-currency cashflows, thirty-five contracts across four territories, cast offers to Amanda Plummer, a completion bond that called the budget the most detailed they had ever seen, and a production report describing a fully prepped, fully staffed operation ready to shoot.
The line producer who built that infrastructure is owed £19,640. Eight of the ten UK department heads she engaged were replaced and never paid. Total outstanding crew debt: £49,786.
Final Scores| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Historical Accuracy | 1/10 | Foundational errors in every period element |
| Character Development | 2/10 | Functions, not people |
| Dialogue | 2/10 | Exposition and cliché in equal measure |
| Structural Coherence | 3/10 | Pyramid sequences work. Everything else is noise |
| Originality | 2/10 | Borrows from four superior films without transforming any of it |
| Internal Logic | 2/10 | The science is incoherent. The Guardian's powers are arbitrary |
| Commercial Viability | 1/10 | Confirmed by 3.8 IMDb and zero cultural footprint |
| Overall | 2/10 |
This screenplay is not merely weak. It is a professional failure of craft at every level that matters: historical research, character construction, dialogue, internal logic, and structural discipline.
The single compelling idea — the Guardian as biological failsafe — deserved a better film. The production crew who prepped it deserved a better script. The audience who found it on VOD in 2013 deserved their money back.
The budget was forensic. The cashflow was precise. The crew were world-class. The script was not.
The producers blamed the line producer. The documents say otherwise. The IMDb score says the rest.