1. Nicolas Cage
While we usually find Nic Cage entertaining, even when he's being ridiculous, the man does not open movies anymore. Besides both National Treasures and comic book movie Ghost Rider, his last dozen films have all brought in less than $25 million on opening weekends, and many brought in less than that overall. Granted, the same could have been said of Robert Downey, Jr., but Iron Man was more about the armor than the man inside it, while Apprentice was all about Nic Cage in a leather trenchcoat.

2. It's a Kids' Movie That's Not for Kids
An adult might have thought the movie was a lot of fun, but kids probably would have enjoyed it the most -- if it had had anything for them. The movie started off promisingly enough, with a ten-year-old protagonist meeting up with a powerful sorcerer... and then skipped ahead a decade to follow the adventures of a gawky, physics-loving college student with girl problems. While a fan of Jay Baruchel's other, more adult movies (She's Out of Your League, Knocked Up, Fanboys) might have enjoyed it, kids didn't find a lot in the hero to relate to. Which may be why Despicable Me made more in theaters, despite being a week old.

3. It Didn't Have Mickey Mouse In It
Most remakes try to recapture the magic or at least the vague feel of the original, but here Disney opted to scrap everything but the title. Granted, the original Sorcerer's Apprentice, an animated short that showed Mickey Mouse working for a wizard in a spooky castle, had no words and was just one small part of a feature-length celebration of classical music, but perhaps they might have been able to eke out some measure of nostalgia if they'd made the movie an animated comeback for the now largely irrelevant Mickey. Because it's hard to generate nostalgia when you only have two words and a definite article to work with. Especially since the original is likely better known by the full movie's name: Fantasia.

4. The Magic was Kind of Lame
While there were a few cool spells, and artifacts that did different things, a lot of the showiest magic in Apprentice involved shooting fireballs from their hands. Even the supposedly most powerful sorcerer in the film can just shoot them faster. Maybe this was meant to reference the video game Street Fighter or the once-popular cartoon Dragon Ball Z (both of which feature fireballs, and both of which recently had movies that fire-bombed), but compared to the various types of magic in Harry Potter -- or even the elemental manipulation in The Last Airbender -- it was weak sauce.

5. It Was Up Against the Best-Reviewed Action Movie of the Year
With a few notable exceptions, Inception has been getting largely rave reviews since the first screenings, so anyone looking for a decent action flick was going to go see that first. Sure, it was complicated, but Apprentice was also sort of labyrinthine, with a lot of voice-over explanation at the beginning, several tiers of villains, a hash of science and sorcery, and a couple of MacGuffins. Plus, Inception had twice as many known actors in it, better special effects and a more original story. If you chose Inception over Apprentice, you chose wisely. Unless you hated Inception.

Did you see The Sorcerer's Apprentice? Tell us what you thought below, then read our review, our Inception review, and see what The Vulture has to say about how the weekend went down.

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