Assassin's Creed
/"We work in the dark to serve the light. We are assassins."
Filmology Rating: 1.5 out of 4
I’ve never been that much of a gamer, as much as I try at times. My video game system of choice is still my Nintendo 64 and whenever I get the chance to play games on my PS3 they are either Lego games or NCAA football games. Needless to say I’m not into the gamer scene, however, I had reason to be excited for Assassin’s Creed. The film stars two of my favorite working actors, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, and it was directed by Justin Kurzel, who directed a version of Macbeth in 2015 that I thought was a visual wonder. I quickly realized that my journey with the assassins would quickly turn into a nightmarish bore.
Assassins and Templars have been at war for centuries. The Templars are after the Apple of Eden so they can control all free will in the world; the Assassins are protectors of the Apple and believe that free will must remain within our human nature. After centuries of fighting, the Templars feel they have finally found a way to find the Apple and destroy the Assassins with the Animus Project. The Animus Project allows the person who enters to relive memories and actions of descendants. The Templars save Callum Lynch, played by Michael Fassbender, from death row since he is the descendant of Aguilar de Nerha, also played by Michael Fassbender, who has the final clue to finding the Apple.
Basically the film is incredibly convoluted and features actors like Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons talking about scientific gibberish that they can’t sell as believable. If the actors in the film aren’t believable in the roles then the movie falls apart because I have no connection to them. All the actors in the film are very capable and normally offer good performances which makes me want to put the blame on the screenwriting team consisting of Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper, and Bill Collage. The film opens with an incredibly heavy exposition scroll and then indoctrination of Aguilar and tries to set up Callum as a child who lives in a world without rules. Both of those scenes needed to be played out more so I wasn’t hit in the head with facts that I felt were forced into the film. The two scenes are just that, two scenes. The writing team is trying to set up a new world that many haven’t journeyed to in two scenes. It’s an insult. I want the journey to hold mystery and suspense but the two scenes tell me that everyone is a bad guy in the world other than Assassins. Nothing is shades of grey, it's all black or white.
The one shining light in this film is the production design of fourteenth century Spain. The film had a production budget of $125 million and this is where you feel the budget from the costume design to the locations, your eyes always have a visual feast. Justin Kurzel reteams with cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who also was the cineotogroper for the picturesque The Light Between Oceansearlier this year, to bring fourteenth century Spain to life in ways that have never been visualized before. The film sadly feels like it has a completely different motive when it’s not in the past; the past features fun action with grand visuals while the present day features a drab location with action that becomes confusing to watch.
Perhaps I should be putting all of my blame onto Ubisoft, the creators of the video game, but I find that to be unfair because this is a film. For some reason we can’t seem to get any good video game movies, yet we continue to get fantastic movies based off books and comics. Some of which feature movies that are better than the material they are based on like Atonement and Jaws. We keep getting movies like Super Mario Brothers and Ratchet and Clank when we deserve a movie like Wreck-It Ralph.
Rating: Skip It
-Jonny G