Don’t hate the player or the game, hate the adaptation.

The last collaboration between Director Justin Kurzel and Michael Fassbender left me feeling cheated that they’d cut too much out of the Scottish Play, rushing through it for the film adaptation, so it’s with not a little irony that I had the exact opposite experience with this polished but ponderously dull Assassin’s Creed video game adaptation.

For centuries, The Knights Templar have waged war on the Brotherhood of Assassins, determined to gain control of the Apple of Eden which the Assassins have sworn to protect. Whoever controls the Apple of Eden will gain access to the genetic code for Free Will and be able to rule the world.

Opening in late 15th century Granada, we see Aguilar de Nerha (Michael Fassbender) being inducted into the Brotherhood and being told that their ‘lives are meaningless. The Apple is everything’ in a scene that feels like a crass fourth-wall breaking reference to “Steve Jobs”. There’s an unintentionally hilarious moment as the title sequence begins when ‘Entrance Song’ by The Black Angels crashes in and it looks like it disturbs the meeting of Assassins but the titles themselves are brief and suddenly we find ourselves flashing forward to 1986 and Aguilar’s descendant, Cal Lynch witnessing his father murder his mother before fleeing as Templar troops arrive. Yet another flash forward brings us to the present day where Cal (Michael Fassbender) is sentenced to death for a murder. But his execution places him in the hands of the Abstergo Foundation, the modern day front for the Knights Templar.

With nothing less than mankind’s Free Will at stake, it’s disappointing that this glacially paced movie offers so few reasons to choose to watch it. The historical scenes are handsomely staged but the action is marred by muddy bronze-hued CGI and terrible lighting consigning much of the best of the action to the shadows of the screen. The constant (if skilfully executed) cutting back and forth from the present day Animus (a weirdly kinetic genetic memory “Matrix”) robs any of the action of its drama because you’re constantly reminded it’s a simulation. The present day scenes are saddled with an excess of exposition as the movie tries to accommodate all those cut scenes without providing the audience the option to skip them.

Having never played any of the games, I can only look at “Assassin’s Creed” as a movie and as such, it’s a sluggish, convoluted and boring waste of two hours. Genetic memory or no, I’m pretty sure my ancestors disapprove of how I spent this particular two hours of my life. The tangled plot and its improbable MacGuffin feel lifted directly from an early Dan Brown draft before even he dismissed it and while Fassbender gives it his brooding best, nobody else around him seems remotely invested in the sub-“Inferno” conspiracy theory and Renaissance Free Running shenanigans on offer. Marion Cottilard, in particular, seems half asleep throughout the movie, at least providing the audience someone they can identify with.

I have to assume the games are more fun to play than this movie is to watch. The curse of video game adaptations is still very much alive, it seems, and is no respecter of the quality of the cast thrown at it. Production design does not a movie make, and Assassin’s Creed has little to offer beyond its looks.

assassin's creed review
Score 4/10


Hi there! If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up to get new posts sent straight to your inbox?

Sign up to receive a weekly digest of The Craggus' latest posts.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

logo

Related posts

The Lobster (2015) Review

The Lobster (2015) Review

How do you begin to describe “The Lobster”? A twisted and surreal love story? A pitch black comic morality play? An absurdist fantasy on a theme of societal convention? “The Undateables: The Movie”? It’s all these and much more as director Yorgos Lanthimos takes us on a bizarre journey into...

Sputnik (2020) Review

Sputnik (2020) Review

In Soviet Russia, the illegal aliens are inside you all along. There’s a deliberately languorous pace to “Sputnik”, a storytelling approach which seems endemic to Russian cinema and its science fiction in particular. That’s not meant as a criticism by any means. It’s simply a fundamental...

Spirited (2022) Review

Spirited (2022) Review

The haunted becomes the haunter. Finding new spins on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a tradition as old and as played out as the novelty Christmas tie or a satsuma at the bottom of the stocking, often as welcome as that awful jumper from your great auntie who has knitted her way...

Playing With Fire (2019) Review

Playing With Fire (2019) Review

Playing With Fire produces plenty of smoke but never catches alight Although "Playing With Fire" suffers from the same problem which blighted the 2016 “Ghostbusters” – every supporting cast member is competing to one-up each other in a game of schtick – once things settle down a...

Fury (2014) Review

Fury (2014) Review

Fury is full of sound but signifies nothing. War is Hell. “Fury” is very clear on this point and it goes out of its way to show you just how raw and primal it can be in an attempt to be a significant film. Set during the final months of World War II in Europe, “Fury” follows the fortunes...

Treehouse Of Horror XXII

Treehouse Of Horror XXII

It's another long-form 'short intro' for 2011's Treehouse Of Horror XXII beginning with the kids coming back from trick or treating to be met by Marge's latest wheeze: the Switch Witch who takes candy and swaps it for healthy items. Lying to Marge that he will donate the confiscated...

Midnight Special (2016) Review

Midnight Special (2016) Review

Great acting puts the special in Midnight Special There’s a vaguely timeless quality to Jeff Nichols’ first studio film, a sincere and almost reverent call-back to the spiritual sci-fi of the 1970s. When a determined father takes his son and goes on the run from the sequestered...

The Big Short (2016) Review

The Big Short (2016) Review

There’s nothing sub-prime about true-life satire The Big Short It’s a very good thing that “The Big Short” tells its story in such a humorous way because if you weren’t so busy chuckling, you’d be crying. Or possibly howling with rage. The story of the downfall of the American housing...