Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed is an ongoing open-world stealth action game franchise that began in 2007 and has a total of 14 main series games, as well as a few spin-offs under its belt. Adopting a premise that mixes science fiction with historical fiction, the story of a seemingly innocuous man mentally connecting with his assassin ancestors as a means of discovering the workings of a worldwide conspiracy that could doom the planet, had enough staying power as well as engaging action, characters and game play to form a successful franchise, one that could soundly transition into a movie if treated well. This would eventually come to fruition in 2016 when Ubisoft (the gaming company responsible for the games) worked alongside 20th Century Fox to create a feature film, and while some were cautiously optimistic due to a few passable trailers and featuring a solid budget and notable actors, the end results were anything but optimistic. A man named Cal (played by Michael Fassbender) is set to be given the death penalty, but quickly discovers that he has actually been abducted by a company known as Abstergo, who are hoping to use Cal, or more rather his ancestor, an assassin in 1492 Andalusia named Aguilar de Nerha (also played by Fassbender), to locate the Apple of Eden, an artifact from a bygone civilization that supposedly has the ability to control humanity’s free will. Using a device known as the Animus to physically connect with Aguilar’s life through Cal, the woman overlooking the procedure, Dr. Sofia Rikkin (played by Marion Cotillard) tries to observe and assist Cal, who is essentially having Aguilar’s experiences and combat prowess ingrained into himself, but her father and CEO of Abstergo, Alan Rikkin (played by Jeremy Irons) forces Cal to continue using the Animus, which is slowly starting to eat away at his mind and mental state. Surrounded by other patients who Abstergo believe are also connected to assassins, and after slowly evolving into someone who has the potential to be the very thing Abstergo is trying to destroy, Cal may have unknowingly found his destiny through the Assassin’s Creed. After being panned by critics and failing to make a profit at the box office, Assassin’s Creed was supposed to lead into a cinematic franchise, but this plan was cancelled once Disney acquired 20th Century Fox who subsequently halted any future projects. It’s safe to assume that was a smart decision given how much of a mess this film is, for both newcomers and especially hardcore fans

This movie actually has a lot of big people attached to it, which is bizarre to see in a video game adaptation for the time. While it’s not rare to see big-name actors appearing in video game films, with examples like Bob Hoskins as Mario, Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Ryan Reynolds as Detective Pikachu and Cate Blanchett, Jack Black and Jamie Lee Curtis all appearing in Borderlands, it’s not too common and doesn’t always equal high content (Borderlands literally just proved that). This movie was originally going to be distributed by Sony Pictures before they were replaced with 20th Century Fox, and Ubisoft had a lot of hope and faith in the final product, even planning to build a franchise out of this film as well as another game. The budget was quite impressive at $125 million, and even featured a producing credit from Frank Marshall, who produced several successful film franchises like Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, and The Bourne Identity, it had a lot of good will behind it. Despite this amount of support, all of it was for naught due to how poorly conceived and delivered this film was. While the idea is strong and has the potential for not just a film, but for a franchise, the execution is laboriously dull, incredibly uninteresting and slow-paced, and is devoid of any fun or creativity that should come easily from the very nature of this idea. Despite having the base outline of the games, it’s an entirely original idea with only ties to the universe, so it doesn’t carry any nostalgic charm from its source material to fall back on, and the new narrative they chose to follow fails to entertain in modern day or within the past, as both are bombarded with over-talking characters, a visual style that looks like it has been bleached, and a tone that has no sense of fun, energy or personality. The screenplay by Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage is truly garbage, with every line of dialogue being pure exposition with no time to develop character or humanity. The long length and dull atmosphere make these moments of drivel even harder to stomach as without a reason to care, it just feels like a homework assignment and not like being introduced to a new world with limitless potential. The directing by Justin Kurzel is aimless and ill-fitting for this idea, as he lacks a style or visual eye that would work within this environment and doesn’t bring anything to the table that warrants this poor delivery. He’s provided decent movies prior, and you can feel that he isn’t bad at directing his actors, but he’s just not the right choice for this franchise.

While some of the characters within the Assassin’s Creed universe haven’t been the most engaging leads, there is at least an attempt for the roles within the modern and past time periods to be memorable. In regard to this film, it doesn’t feel like there was any attempt, as despite housing some pretty amazing actors to portray them, every character in this film is instantly forgettable. There’s no sense of personality among any of them, none of them have unique or memorable characteristics, you get no idea of who they are or what drives them, their writing is generic and offers no insight, and they are only ever defined by what they do, not who they are. The main character is so flat and doesn’t leave a single impression, whether it be Cal in the present of Aguilar in the past. Cal is written with no sympathy, understanding or development, only a mold for the rest of the movie to spew exposition into and feels more like a blank slate than the one presented in the games (who is also a little generic, but is at least treated like a character). Even with that in mind, Aguilar might be an even worse role as he doesn’t even get the courtesy of having dialogue or moments outside of pointless action to exist as a character. While it’s already distracting having someone like Fassbender as a character that is supposed to exist within 15th century Spain, the most distracting thing is just that the role is nothing but a puppet for action, barely even feeling like a real person. It’s not like anyone isn’t trying as Fassbender, Cotillard, Irons and Brendan Gleeson in a brief cameo, are clearly putting effort in and it comes from them being pretty solid performers, but they just aren’t written to have any charisma, and therefore have nothing that can keep people invested, and every actor is like that in this film. The only one who feels like he’s surviving this with a sense of dignity is the late Michael K. Williams who plays a fellow in-mate in the facility. He also has no character and his purpose in the film is only relegated to about three scenes, but at least he has dialogue that actually sounds human and the way he delivers his few moments are far more intriguing than any of the several scenes any other actor has in this film.

Since the games allowed its players to adventure to several different locations throughout various different time periods, it gave the games a cool sense of adventure and even a dabble of culture and history, while still maintaining its standings as a fun action stealth game, providing the best of both worlds, and that could open up a lot of possibilities for a film franchise that could explore similar elements from a cinematic level. However, the film is not only stuck with a terribly ugly washed-out visual style that somehow looks too harshly exposed in one minute and then under-lit in the next, but also has effects that are quite embarrassing for something with a decent budget and backed by a well-known studio. Despite having a gaming company work with them who have released games with nice graphics previously, this film has visual effects that border on looking like a PS2 game, with glitchy characters in the background of fight scenes, transitions that would feature nice cinematography by Adam Arkapaw if they weren’t awkwardly rendered, and a level of fakeness that takes away from what could be legitimately cool elements. The action set pieces are a bit of a disappointment, not because they are poorly handled, but rather it’s difficult to properly gage their quality due to how horribly the film is edited and composed together by Christopher Tellefsen. It feels like there are decent stunts and an occasional creative element involved within these sparse moments of combat, but the rapid editing, poor shot composition and ugly visual filter makes it hard to watch them sometimes, which makes it even worse when you can tell some of these stunts are real. Apparently, one of the film’s stunt performers, Damien Walters, performed a free fall from the height of 125 feet (38 meters), which was at the time the highest free fall done by a stuntman in almost 35 years, and the movie destroys this moment by drenching it in fake effects, edits it together in a choppy fashion, and picks a really poor choice of shot to showcase it, it’s a real disservice to a talented stunt person. For a movie that apparently pushed to feature as much real elements as possible, it’s a shame that said effort was drowned underneath unneeded post-production digital touch-ups. The musical score by Jed Kurzel (the brother of the director) is very droning in its sound and features a metallic repetitive beat that becomes annoying and distracting the more times it is played. It matches better in the steely washed-out present but doesn’t at all fit in the more natural tones of the past, showing no attempt to provide a different sound when placed in a different period and making the piece as a whole feel lazy.

Much like other examples of popular games being turned into films, Assassin’s Creed is a pretty big failure and despite some claiming that it isn’t as poor as some other adaptations previously made, the movie doesn’t do a good job standing up for itself. Some of those other examples may be less authentic to their source material, but they at least have their own unique flavor and passion behind them, whereas this feels as dead and lifeless as the victims of an assassin’s blade. The directing is poor, the actors are struggling to make their material work, the writing is terrible, it’s an ugly looking movie and whatever practical elements are involved are quickly ruined due to some terrible CGI. Maybe for those that are deeply attached to the games, it may satisfy them enough, but for what was promised to be a huge franchise, this leap of faith feels pretty misguided.