Movie Breakdown: Assassin’s Creed
Pre-Screening Stance:
Video game adaptations are rarely good, so that makes it difficult to believe Assassin’s Creed will be a winner. Who knows though, maybe Michael Fassbender will change the tide.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Assassin’s Creed is a tedious mess. The film begins with Aguilar (Michael Fassbender) reciting the … Assassin’s Creed. Then The Black Angels’ Entrance Song starts blasting (the line “rolling fast down I-35” is somewhat jarring when heard during the Spanish Inquisition) and an eventual transition happens where a boy named Cal is introduced and then quickly thrown away for the adult version of himself (Michael Fassbender). Man-Cal is a baddie and is about to receive a big dose of Capital Punishment, but a company called Abstergo swipes him, plugs him into a machine called the Animus and then goes about using his genes to search for a mysterious object called The Apple of Eden. The film then parkours back and forth between Cal as Aguilar in Spain on the hunt for the Apple and Cal as Cal in present day struggling to figure out if he wants to be an Assassin or a Templar. And that’s about it. There are other characters but they have zero depth, the Animus is only ever lightly explained, a startling lack of info on the Apple is provided, and the history of Templars v. Assassins isn’t really touched on. I’d like to think that the lack of hand-holding/world-building was done on purpose since there are so many games in the rather popular Assassin’s Creed series, but because the movie overall doesn’t make a lot of sense, I’m going to go ahead and chalk up the lack of details to poor film-making by director Justin Kurzel. While I’m at it, I’m also going to toss the bland action and the cold, dark and muddled look of the film on his shoulders, too.
Whether or not you’re a fan of the Assassin’s Creed games, you don’t want to see this movie. Skip.
One Last Thought:
These breakdowns of mine are spoiler free territory, but I have to note something about how this film ends. Drag and highlight just below here to see it (if you want).
The film concludes with the Assassins infiltrating a secret Templar meeting and recovering their magical apple. And by infiltrate, I mean they get wanded by security and then walk into the meeting like it’s no big deal. They even do it while wearing ominous hoods! How is this possible?! If you’re a Templar and your mortal enemies always wear hoods, then wouldn’t you find all hooded figures suspicious? Or, you know, wouldn’t at least one person recall the faces of those who just ransacked a Templar facility? So dumb.
