Assassin's Creed (2016)

5:01 PM

Your Destiny is in Your Blood.
Assassin's Creed is directed by Justin Kurzel (Macbeth, The Turning) and stars Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Prometheus) and Marion Cotillard (Allied, Inception). "When Callum Lynch explores the memories of his ancestor Aguilar and gains the skills of a Master Assassin, he discovers he is a descendant of the secret Assassins society". Video game movies still haven't had their big break - this is the third one from 2016 - can it beat both Warcraft and The Angry Birds Movie to become the first video game movie to actually be great?


Assassin's Creed isn't a terrible film because I wouldn't really class it as a film at all. This literally is of the quality of a trailer for a video game - the whole film is just a set up of what's to come (but I don't think we will ever a sequel) and that really angers me. I was also shocked when the film ended because there was no sense of climax or a peak of excitement - I don't really know what the whole film was building up to? There was no big third act battle, it was just very strange and ended very suddenly (not in a cliffhanger way though). 

I think the performances in Assassin's Creed were so mixed because most of the leads were miscast. Even though Michael Fassbender is a good actor and is actually pretty solid in this, I couldn't help but think that someone of his calibre does not belong in a film like this. I also think he didn't really bring much to the character and when the character supposedly goes mad, I was not convinced by his performance. I think this character would have been more suited to Chris Pratt and I would actually have put Michael Fassbender in Passengers - Fassbender would have performed in a similar style to Lawrence and it may have worked much more. Back to Assassin's Creed though, Marian Cotillard still fails to impress me - I didn't really feel her in Allied and the same applies here. She literally brings nothing to the table and the moment where she screams 'No' towards the end of the film was incredibly cringe-worthy and did make me laugh out loud. None of the other actors in the film are worth writing about other than the fact that one looked like Shawn Mendes (points if you can spot him). 

I found this film very hard to follow and I was mostly lost when watching it - I had no idea what was going on. I have never played Assassin's Creed and have no background knowledge so this may explain why but I found the whole plot uninteresting and not very captivating - I'm in no rush to want to explore this world further. I also thought the whole set up was really strange - what was the importance of this apple and SPOILER, if it was the answer to world peace, why did the characters try and stop it from being activated at the end of the film? Assassin's Creed was a pretty violent for a film that's end goal is to get to world peace. The script was also silly and dumb and I really don't care about the characters - the main thing I cared about was why that bird kept swooping in every time we entered the other world. 

Speaking of entering the other world, that is where most of the action takes place and I think the whole concept is very Avatar-esque. However, there are far more plot holes with Assassin's Creed - like how is this only the first time a person has entered water in the virtual world if so many people have been experimented on? Why do we only cut back to Fassbender attached to the robotic arm when he is doing cool action moves, what about when he would clearly look stupid? The actual action was very interesting to watch - the scenes were choppy but watchable (unlike Jason Bourne) but it felt like the movements of the characters had been sped up which looked a little silly. The action sequences were admittedly quite fast paced and entertaining but they weren't enough to make me care about this story. The cinematography was quite nice when we were in the other world. Another note, the violence in this film was far too clean - many throats are slitted and there is no blood that can be seen - 1. that doesn't make sense 2. this film made no money anyway with a PG-13 so going to R wouldn't have made much difference. 

What angers me most about the plot of Assassin's Creed is we literally have to sit through a two hour film just to get to the end where nothing much has changed and we need to see a sequel to see how the story progresses and concludes. This isn't a book series adaption and who knows whether filmmakers would stay loyal to the narrative of the game? Can Hollywood not tell a whole story for once and forget about franchise possibilities? Warcraft somewhat suffered from this as well. If you think of it logically, video game films should tell a whole story but leaving a few smaller doors open for sequels as when gamers complete the game, that is it completed - they are satisfied. 

Assassin's Creed isn't really a disappointment for me because I never had high hopes for it. Some of the action sequences are cool and Fassbender's performance is solid but this is mostly a flawed and pretty weak feature that won't be kicking off the video game movie era - I actually think they are running out of games to turn into a film! The plot isn't complete and isn't interesting - this is just one big set up. There are many times I laughed at Assassin's Creed's stupidity and cringed at the dumb script. I can't tell you what Assassin's Creed is about after watching the film and I think that is a problem. 


44
/100


What did you think of ASSASSIN'S CREED? Will a video game film ever be critically acclaimed? - COMMENT BELOW

See You Soon!

You Might Also Like

1 comments

  1. Watching it right now. Google to see if the guy in it was in fact Shawn Mendes

    ReplyDelete