Review of Assassin's Creed (2016) by Paul T — 10 Nov 2017

Assassins Creed is a sci-fi/action film based on the Ubisoft games. Assassins Creed is about Callum, a murderer who is on death row, who is saved by a group of people who want to use him to access his ancestors memories and find the Apple of Eden, a powerful object that could change the world for good. First of all, if you enjoy the games, particularly Assassins Creed 2, Brotherhood and Revelations, you will not like this film and if you haven't... you probably won't like it either.

There are many fine actors in the film, Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons to name a few but the plot and dialogue in this film is so poor that they all go to waste. The protagonist, Cal, as we are first introduced to him as an adult, is a murderer and the only explanation we get for this murder is that the person he killed was a pimp. Throughout the film he in angry and violent, grabbing a woman by the neck and displaying nothing that would endear him to the audience and yet the plot is encouraging you to root for him. When he is then put in life threatening situations, there isn't any tension because we, the audience, don't like him and don't care what happens to him. This is a problem with all of the characters in this film, they are all 2 dimensional, boring characters that you can't get invested with. The strongest character, in my opinion, is Maria, an assassin played by Ariane Labed, who values her creed's cause more than her own life and completely dedicated to what she is doing but ultimately her character's arc comes to nothing.

The best thing about this film is probably the parkour scene, which was somewhat like the huge amount of free running you do in the games, and was entertaining to watch but unfortunately this was only a short scene. The rest of the action in the film is very disappointing. Not only are there a lot of cuts but the director has chosen to turn the Animus into some kind of robotic arm that throws Cal around in the air and intercuts shots of Cal flailing around in this arm in the middle of the fight scenes. This is incredibly frustrating, detracts from the tension and flow of the scene and ultimately looks kind of silly.

Cinematically speaking, the film looks okay but there are far too many panning shots of an eagle flying around to show a change in scenery, which feels like a feeble attempt to link the film to the games. Also, I don't know if the film makers thought 15th Century Spain was constantly ablaze or had an abundance of smoke machines but whenever the scenes shift back to inside the Animus with Aguilar's memories, everything is covered in fog for absolutely no reason. Perhaps to hide bad graphics? Whatever the reason, it doesn't work.

In terms of the plot, it deviates so far from the original plot of the games that you would think that none of the people involved had ever played them. It misunderstands everything about: the assassins (except their motto), the apple of Eden, of which there are more than one and what it can do, the use of the Animus and the bleeding effect and generally representing the Creed as a murderous cult. Even if you judge the film purely based on it's own merit the plot is inconsistent with characters developing attachments to one another for no reason, they make decisions that are completely out of character and the film ultimately ends on an anti-climax in some misguided attempt at setting up a sequel.

Disappointingly but not surprisingly Assassins Creed proves once again that adapting a game into a film is no easy task, especially when those involved don't understand why people loved the game so dearly in the first place. Requiescat in pace Assassins Creed because this film has clearly killed any interest to adapt this franchise again.