We got a Games Editor and a Film Editor to review the new Assassin’s Creed movie, with emphasis on the film as a game adaptation, and as a piece of cinema, respectively.
Spoiler: they both thought it was bad.
A Gamer’s Review: Cahal Sweeney
Out of Ubisoft’s long and respected lifespan as a games developer, their flagship title has undoubtedly become Assassin’s Creed. With the first instalment released in 2006, the games have become a genre changer. There’s nothing more satisfying than being perched on a narrow beam half a kilometre above a bustling city, then diving neatly into a haystack, stabbing your target in the back unnoticed, and blending away into passers-by. Fans wandering bereft since the brilliant Syndicate only have Assassin’s Creed: The Movie to satisfy their desire to see the Animus in action for the next year. Ubisoft is now to be marred as being the latest company to prove for the umpteenth time that video games-turned-films simply do not work well.
Considering Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and director Justin Kurzel last worked together on 2014’s epic adaptation of Macbeth, all I can suggest is that they knocked this together during their coffee breaks on set. I also assume that Ubisoft only gave the go-ahead on this to take a backseat roll and hoover up the royalties. Even if we accept this as one purely for the fans, the film is dire. Why, for example, does only about twenty minutes take place with Fassbender actually in the Animus? Due to increasingly negative reactions towards the modern day story, this aspect of the game has been gradually phased out (with only brief cut scenes at the opening and conclusion of Unity and Syndicate referencing the present day at all). The film attempts to revive the premise of the first Assassin’s Creed game: modern day Templars using a kidnapped Assassin’s memories to find an Apple of Eden, with extra rebellions and moral conflict thrown in. This leaves us with a film which feels like it was based on material cut from the games in development.
Secondly, there is absolutely no effort to build Aguilar as a character. We are never shown why he joins the Assassins or how he feels about affairs in Spain at the time, apart from some half-baked lines in the modern day about his family being attacked by the Spanish Inquisition. There’s no conflict in Aguilar’s character like there is with all of the games’ protagonists. For instance, Native American Connor Kenway in Assassin’s Creed 3 is faced with the Hobson’s choice of siding with peaceful oppressors or liberators who have attacked his tribe during the American Revolution. Shay Patrick Cormac in Assassin’s Creed Rogue is torn between a creed he increasingly finds outdated and immoral, and the group he has hitherto devoted his life to fighting. There is none of that here. Partly due to the minimal screen time, Aguilar never feels like a true Assassin.
Finally, and least forgivably, even the few sequences set in the past don’t work to their full potential. What critics have raved about constantly through the game series’ life is being utterly absorbed into the past world. From Crusading armies marching around, to hearing snippets of news about Colonial Boston coming under siege, to watching smokestacks belch filth into Industrial London’s sky, the games’ worlds feel truly alive. Fifteenth century Spain looks fantastic visually but the frequent cuts to Fassbender in the Animus and huge spans of events being left out fail to build the absorption we’ve come to expect from the games. Think the Altaïr sequences from Revelations, minus the general story in Constantinople, and you get the idea.
It is the lack of all these elements which makes it impossible to recommend seeing Assassin’s Creed: The Movie. The poor script, the misused CGI, the numerous plot holes – all are bad. However, the absolute worst is how the film somehow manages to trivialise an epic war spanning all of human history to two groups squabbling over some kind of Apple. “Everything is permitted” indeed – Assassin’s Creed fans are permitted to cut themselves a break by giving this a miss.
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A Film Review: Lee Jones
Full disclosure: I have never played the videogame Assassin’s Creed. But according to the producers of the film adaptation, knowledge of the source material isn’t really a requirement. Within the first fifteen minutes, I’m completely overwhelmed by the spectacle.
The film opens with a black screen and a paragraph of text that explains the basic premise. Suspiciously like the opening of a Star Wars film, but minus the iconic music and any sense of excitement. From what I can decipher, ancient 15th century Spain is torn between the Templars who want to control the general populace and the Assassins who advocate free will and are in charge of the protection of the Apple of Eden, a device that has the power to control mankind. With that exposition out of the way, we are then thrown into modern day Texas where a little boy witnesses his father murder his mother in cold blood. On its own, this scene is completely arresting. The ominous score, the dark palette of colours and the little rural kitchen setting all combine to create a mesmerising introduction to this world. However, like the rest of the film that follows, moments of brilliance are overshadowed by a poor script and a convoluted plot.
Michael Fassbender plays the lead role of Callum Lynch in the modern world, and the Assassin Aguilar in ancient Spain. Fast forward twenty years and the little boy in Texas has grown up to become a murderer himself. Awaiting the death penalty, Callum Lynch is rescued by the glowing Marion Cotillard and transported to a research station where he learns that he is a direct descendant of an Assassin. Fassbender and Cotillard work as well together here as in their past work, and their characters are perhaps the strongest part of the film.
One of the more interesting concepts of the plot is the Animus, a machine that relies on genetic memory in order to allow Callum to re-enter his ancestor’s past and try to locate the Apple of Eden. However, the film fails to strike a balance between Callum’s present and his past as the Assassin. Roof jumping, horsemen and knights are unsuccessfully juxtaposed with scenes set in military compounds and drawn out conversations between Cotillard’s character and her father, the gloriously evil Jeremy Irons.
The strength of the cast would suggest that the film, initially, had something going for it, attracting seasoned actors like Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling. That being said, midway through Assassin’s Creed, I’m still struggling to understand the appeal. The quest to retrieve the Apple of Eden becomes formulaic and dull.
On a positive note, I found the CGI to be a breathtaking addition to the film. The opening scenes set in Spain rarely feel artificial and the atmosphere that the director creates around these expansive shots of landscape and cityscape is brooding and dark. The style of the film works well and the action sequences (and there are many, many action sequences) are flawlessly executed, albeit lengthy and distracting at times. The score by Jed Kurzel and the cinematography are also commendable aspects of an otherwise hapless videogame to film adaptation.
So, on the whole, it isn’t a terrible film. From the perspective of a non-gamer, unfamiliar with the videogame itself, Assassin’s Creed serves as a bewildering introduction to this world. Often, it is unbalanced and confusing but now and again, the action and style prevent it from descending into total rubbish.
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