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| 20th Century Fox |
At the beginning of 2016, I was convinced that this was going to be the year of the video game movie. Three big budget game movies based on two games I love and Warcraft? What could possibly go wrong? Well, not being very good movies did (even though I enjoyed Warcraft myself), even though Ratchet & Clank got a great game out of their awful movie. However, the one that we all had our eyes on was Assassin’s Creed, produced by and starring the great Michael Fassbender and directed by the guy who did the last Macbeth movie (and did a pretty good job, if I might add). Pair them with a fascinating sci-fi premise and you should have a winner, right? Let’s find out.
Assassin’s Creed begins with convict Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) getting executed in Texas by lethal injection for a brutal murder he committed. Just as the lethal injection seems to take, he wakes up in a white room next to Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard), who explains that he has been taken to the labs of the shadowy Abstergo Industries. She reveals that he has been selected to be put into the Animus, a machine that causes its user to relive the memories of their ancestors, and to help her and her father Alan (Jeremy Irons) find the powerful artifact known as the Apple of Eden. The last known location of the Apple was in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, so Callum must follow the footsteps of his ancestor Aguilar (also Michael Fassbender), a member of the order of Assassins currently fending off an incursion into Granada by the Knights Templar. The two stories intersect from there as Callum starts to learn the truth about this ancient conflict and yadda yadda yadda this movie is dumb, guys. But let’s be positive first, shall we?
In the midst of this jumbled, convoluted and rushed mess are the seeds of what could have been a great sci-fi action film. The acting is certainly there, as Fassbender and Cotillard give this film their all, as do the supporting characters (a truly wasted selection of great actors like Michael K. Williams, Brendan Gleeson, and Charlotte Rampling). In fact, Cotillard was giving such a strong performance that I had to look at the screen and wonder if she knew what movie she was in. The interesting concepts of the game are also sprinkled through here and there, though they are only interesting for brief moments. For instance, the idea of the bleeding effect from the Animus that causes Callum to have visions and learn his ancestor's skills is cool, at least for the first time.
The sequences in the past are the film’s strongest parts, as everything that we believed we were getting with an Assassin’s Creed adaptation comes to fruition. They are all straight action scenes with no real plot, but they are all well-directed (showing why Justin Kurzel would have been the right choice in an all-past version of this film) and have some really fun parts. Everything you love about playing the game is there, from the crazy parkour to the swordplay and brutal violence. I woke up every time the Animus was activated, and I was sad every time one of those sequences ended because that meant that the rest of the movie had to go on.
Okay, I think I need to clarify one thing before I continue: I have problems with this film as a movie nerd and problems with the film as a video game nerd. Starting with my film nerd problems, this film is a structural mess from beginning to end. The editing is awful throughout, with certain action moments being ruined by being cut too soon and some dramatic scenes getting chopped to oblivion and ruining any impact they might have had. The scenes that suffer the most from this are the Animus sequences, as the camera will shake or cut away to something before some kills are delivered amongst other things that ruin the experience. It’s honestly baffling that a film with so much action has such bad editing, as I’m sure the choreography was wonderful, but I can’t give them credit for that if I can’t see it!
The biggest problem on a film level is the script, which goes between mediocre and godawful as the film progresses. There are scenes where Michael Fassbender is supposed to simulate going crazy from exposure to the Animus, but what is written is so completely laughable that I stared slack-jawed at the screen refusing to believe that an Academy-Award nominated actor would ever agree to do something so asinine. I feel bad for calling Rogue One’s characters underdeveloped, because those characters might as well have been written by Shakespeare compared to this film. This is an actual exchange that is supposed to develop Callum’s character. “Why so angry?” “I’m an angry guy.” It’s not delivered with any humor, either, it’s literally delivered like we’re supposed to take it seriously. Cotillard and Irons have a decently developed relationship to each other, but it comes way too late into the film for anyone to attach themselves to it. That’s a shame because it’s the only interesting dynamic in the whole movie.
Even though Callum gets bad development, that might as well be a novel’s worth of material compared to his fellow Assassins. All the characters in the present, from Callum’s father to Michael K. Williams’ Moussa, have no character to them at all except for one defining trait that keeps them somewhat distinct in your mind. And still, that’s so much better than what Aguilar gets, as he is literally a vehicle for action sequences and has no character at all. Nobody in the Animus sequences has development of any kind, with not even so much as a generic character trope being attached to any of them. Anyone who knows the games knows that you follow the past Assassins through most of those stories, and to find an Assassin character who somehow has less character than Arno Dorian from Unity says quite a bit about the writing of this film.
Okay, as I cross into gaming complaints let me just give you this warning right now: if you have never played an Assassin’s Creed game and don’t know anything about the overarching narrative, you will be completely lost. The two main concepts of the first game, the idea of genetic memory and what the Apple of Eden is, are either brushed over quickly or not even discussed at all except in very vague terms. In the very first moments of the first Assassin’s Creed game, genetic memory is discussed and described in an accessible amount of detail to the player, while in this film it is given one quickly delivered line and never discussed again. The Apple appears to be some weird technological device that occasionally leaks energy, but while the first game had a final battle revolving around the enemy using the device, this film gives it one scene of Jeremy Irons holding it to sell its menace and fails miserably. Imagine if they tried to include the Precursors or the glitches of the Animus or the fact that Assassins have the Eagle Vision thing! Actually don’t, because it just makes me even sadder than I already am that this film butchered what it did have so badly.
Abstergo Industries, the corporate front for the Templars in the game, is given a huge downgrade in terms of being an actual threat in the movie. In the game they are portrayed as being on the cusp of victory over the Assassins, master operators with unlimited resources and the most dangerous men and women in their employ. In the movie, Jeremy Irons has the dumbass decision to put a bunch of trained killers in a building together, mostly unsupervised, and to not give the guards any guns whatsoever. So yeah, the entire third act could have been avoided had just one of the villains been carrying a gun, and it makes Abstergo look like a bunch of amateurs when they should be like the Empire in Star Wars. Instead they look more like the Three Stooges.
Finally, what is the most annoying part of any Assassin’s Creed game? It’s the present day sequences, right? We don’t want to follow Desmond and his lame story, we want to hang out with Altair and Ezio and Connor in the past. Well buckle up folks, because Callum enters the Animus a total of three times in the film, and the way the Animus is portrayed really bothered me. It’s not that I don’t mind it forcing the user to be more involved physically, it’s that the film constantly takes you out of the past sequences to say “oooh but remember it’s actually Callum doing this stuff” by flashing to him doing something in the Animus before flashing back to Aguilar. It’s incredibly annoying and ruins your immersion into the otherwise great action scenes, and once again reminds you of the thing you hate the most about the games. They might as well have just stuck him in the chair!
Insert final statement here because this movie has already wasted enough of my time. Go see Rogue One again and pick up the Ezio Collection that just came out. The games, even the weakest ones, are so much better than this that it’s embarrassing. I just hope the actors all got a good paycheck with the proper amount of zeroes. Otherwise, this exercise was a waste for everyone.
My Rating: 1.5 stars out of 5
Assassin’s Creed is, unfortunately, in theaters now.
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