Assassin’s Creed

Runtime: 2 Hour 20 Minutes

Director: Justin Kurzel

Screenplay: Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage

Story Based On The Video Games Series “Assasin’s Creed”

Soundtrack By: Jed Kurzel

Production Company: Regency Enterprise, New Regency Productions

A lot were at stake here…well at least in the video game movie adaptation department. Assassin’s Creed was supposed to be THE ONE. The movie that will finally end the streak of god awful video game movies that we have been getting for…well since they start making it.

I kind of don’t get video game movie adaptation? I mean, the reason why the stories in video game work so well are because it’s complemented by the actual GAMEPLAY. Some things are better at a very specific medium, and video games are one of them. Although in the case for Assassin’s Creed, the foundations for an actually interesting movie is there, I mean look at the settings- an ancient order of cool Assassins protecting this artifact that has the ability to control free will from the evil order of the Templars, how cool is that? And then there’s the parkour, cool-looking hood, and the badass hidden blade, it’s every edgy teenager’s dream.

Anyway here’s my review for the movie.

Plot

Oh boy. In the movie, they opted for a completely standalone story and characters from the game, which I actually like as they are able to be more flexible in terms of respecting the source material while at the same time delivering a story that is fit for the duration of the movie….things which this movie didn’t do…at all.

Let’s first talk about the pacing. A whole two hours and twenty minutes, that’s a pretty good and lengthy amount for a heavily story-driven movie, you’d think they would do something decent with the story. But nope, they had to screw up that one too. The movie feels really slow in the “present day” and really fast in the Spanish inquisition timeline. For what’s it’s worth it’s not the worst part of the movie, but it’s still pretty jarring.

The dialogue is nothing to write home about. It tries too hard to be somewhat artsy and edgy, but fails hilariously, as it didn’t have any real weight into it so the audience doesn’t really feel any emotions. Some lines are downright cringe-worthy, name dropping video game jargons with terrible delivery. Instead of letting the story unfolds itself naturally, they just narrate the whole exposition for you.

Characterization also wasn’t that good. I’ll talk about it a bit more in the ‘Characters’ section, but basically, from a story standpoint, they really didn’t do a good job of marking us care for these character’s well-being. They’re easily one of the most forgettable characters I’ve seen, which is unfortunate coming from the video game series casts of “iconic” characters.

On to the actual story itself, as I said the reason why video game stories work is because there are actual gameplay to enhance the story experience and the obvious longer duration to convey those stories. A movie that is an adaptation of a video game will find this highly inconvenient, especially if you try to squeeze all of that lore and details into a 2-hour movie, it just won’t work. In this one, in particular, they spend most of the screentime covering the “present day” aspect of the story, which is bluntly very boring. Now, I’m one of those people who enjoy the present day story from Assassin’s Creed 1 until 3. That’s because 1. It’s brief and most of the storytelling happen in the past and 2. Desmond and the gang were interesting in their own way, at least they still have their own charm. All of those things are nowhere to be found in the movie. Instead, they highly underused the highly interesting Spanish Inquisition timeline, rendering it very dull and lifeless.

Characters

Ugh, this one is a huge disappointment too, and probably one of the worse aspect of the story. Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons- those are some big Hollywood names that should’ve elevated the movie in this department. But turns out it didn’t, oh boy it didn’t do that at all.

Michael Fassbender is a fantastic actor, and he does do a somewhat decent job here, but his talent is not complemented by the character he’s playing. Cal Lynch, or the past Assassin counterpart Aguilar, both of them feel flat as a board. There’s absolutely NOTHING charming about his character. Cal Lynch is just some moody dude with a dark past who’s real motivation wasn’t that clear, to begin with, and to add to the injury he underwent a sudden shift in character near the end and turning into a completely different person, which again wasn’t supported by proper character development. As for Aguilar…well, there’s absolutely nothing interesting about him as they didn’t give him ANY characterization in the movie except for the template “He’s an Assassin and he protects the Apple of Eden…why? well, I don’t know we just need him to be a plot device for the present day timeline”.

Marion Cotillard’s acting is quite good. But again, the HUGE problem with the movie is the characterization. And as far as I can see she’s just the typical character on the enemy side but has a different motivation than them. Not a lot I can talk about, as I really didn’t see that much in her character.

As for other characters, they were just…there. I mean I can’t clearly remember any of the side characters. Jeremy Irons is not that bad I guess, but again, no proper characterization.

Visuals

Ugh…You’d think out of all those bad points I mentioned before, the movie would be at least visually pleasing? nope.

First MAJOR issue is the color grading. The movie has two very contrasting visuals for the present and past scenes. The present day scenes use this dull, lifeless, but somewhat bright grading which I presume is meant to give the feeling of oppression and restlessness in Abstergo. But what it is really , is a lullaby, as I feel genuinely sleepy in the present day scenes as there were nothing interesting to see. The past scenes use this piss color brownish color grading taken straight out of video games in 2005 until 2010, which I don’t get. I thought they at least would’ve tried to make those historical cities vibrant and beautiful to look at but what they did was making me feel physically ill just looking at it.

Next is the panning and moving shots from above to show the scenery below, which they do a lot in the movie, especially when it transition into the past timeline. Those shots made me experience vertigo in the theater. It’s a bad mix of low FPS (frame per second) and terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE CGI they used. It’s like they’re trying to imitate the iconic glitches and bugs from the source material.

Another complaint is all the smoke covering the city, which I don’t get at all. Okay maybe they were in the middle of the war, but goddamn did it look terrible. The Spanish inquisition setting is not used to its full potential as well.

The action scenes. They’re terrible. If you see hard enough I guess you can see actual good fight choreography happening, but none are truly showed as it has the same amount of cuts as the ‘Bourne’ series, or even worse ‘Taken’. It’s such a shame that the director feels like everything needs to be shot from multiple angles when they could’ve done a longer and continuous shot that would turn out way better than what we got.

Nothing impressed me in the visual department.

Soundtrack

Well in some scenes they were actually quite decent as they made those scenes more intense than what’s truly being shown. Unfortunately, that’s the only plus side of it, as the soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed is as formulaic and safe as you can get. Nothing stands out for me. What makes a good soundtrack is where you can have an emotional reaction from listening to it, and if you can still remember it AFTER watching the movie, things which the soundtrack for this movie didn’t do.

Verdict

Assassin’s Creed is one of the most disappointing movies of this year. I’d hope it was going to be THE movie which breaks the video game adaptation curse, but it didn’t.

Even after having it be its own standalone story separate from the game, the movie we got was a far cry from the kind of storytelling we experienced in the games. There’s absolutely nothing memorable in the movie for me. I really, really didn’t like this movie.

Final Score

3/10- A “Milestone” Movie Indeed