Review of Assassin's Creed (2016) by Ryan S — 20 Mar 2018

Video games are challenging to adapt, which is why they never turn out well. While Assassin's Creed may have been good for a TV show, a series as long and complex as this is not fit for a 2-hour movie on the big screen. No one expected this to be good, but I did not expect this to be this bad. Here, it switches between the present day and the Spanish Inquisition, much like how the games move between time periods. However, in the games, the player will spend the majority of the time in the past, rather than in the present. The movie does quite the opposite. While we could be seeing Agular's adventures in the Spanish Inquisition, they opt for an extremely dull story involving the Templar's quest for the Apple of Eden in the present day and the psychological effects of using the Animus. While those would be a pair of interesting episodes in a TV show, we want it to be about the Assassins, not the Templars in the present day. It also doesn't help that none of the characters in this movie are memorable in the slightest. The main character is this death row inmate who gets shipped to Abstergo, who try to use his lineage to find the Apple of Eden. There's also this really boring side plot about the leader of the Templars and his daughter, which is neither interesting nor memorable. The movie's color scheme is terrible. The whole dang movie is varying shades of brown and gray. Some of the scenes in Spain look cool, but for the most part, it's just the same two colors. It's very unappealing to look at. Even the stuff that's actually in the games was done horribly. They even found a way to screw up the Leap of Faith, which I didn't even think was possible. The ending was remarkably stupid, which is especially bad when one considers that this movie is in fact part of the Assassin's Creed canon. All in all, it's just another entry in the list of failed game-to-movie adaptations.

Oh, and by the way, Michael Fassbender sings in this movie. You can't make that up.