Review of Assassin's Creed (2016) by Trev C — 07 Jan 2017

It's not a good movie, but it's not a bad video game adaptation. The color palette is dark, grey, brown and murky. The world inside the Animus is given very little plot, characters or development (we only spend a maximum of 30 minutes in the Animus, probably less) while the real world (mostly inside an Abstergo facility) is given most of the film's plot, character and development (in other words, the exact opposite of an Assassin's Creed game).

That said, this film does manage to accurately depict the world, backstory and some of the action of the games. The actors all do pretty decent jobs, with the best one being Marion Cotillard as the kind hearted head of The Animus project and the daughter of Abstergo CEO Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons).

I actually gave a shit about her character. Fassbender and Irons both are fine, but ultimately not super memorable. Assassin's Creed doesn't offer much for those who aren't already familiar with the world of the games, it seems to be made for hardcore fans (and even then I've read reviews from fans who didn't particularly enjoy the film).

Assassin's Creed doesn't offer much plot, character development or world building. I thought the Animus arm, some of the action, and Abstergo were cool and I was interested in learning more about Abstergo and what they were really up to.

...unfortunately, there aren't really any surprises (you are told everything you need to know in an opening text scrawl) and the film never really goes anywhere in the end. While there are certainly some cool things inside Assassin's Creed, it moves at a slow pace and isn't as exciting as it should be.

It's not a terrible film (or even really bad), it ends up being just ok. It shouldn't provoke any kind of emotion from audience members. Honestly, I'd say you'd probably get more if you just played one of the games.