Assassin's Creed

The history of video game movies has been a rough road to witness. The concept itself can be a good way to draw into audiences, but the execution always ruins the experience. It has been that way from Super Mario Bros all the way down to the Uwe Bowl video game movies. This past year, however, progress has been made bringing an actual effort to creating a successful video game movie. While I found Ratchet & Clank and Warcraft enjoyable, they were held back by similar issues such as lack of character development/ chemistry and pacing issues. Even though these entries weren't great, they are better improvements over the sins of the past not worth mentioning. Then Ubisoft stepped in with a movie adaptation of Assassin's Creed, a franchise I'm very familiar with having played the games. Hope was presented for video game fans and critics that this movie could break the video game movie curse. But since this is 2016 and a video game movie, the divide between audiences and critics has struck again with this film and I went to judge this for myself. I entered the theater with an open mind and left it satisfied with what it did, even though it hasn't defeated the video game movie curse.

Plot: This film follows the concept of the franchise while doing a new original story in the lore of the game. There are two warring sides, Assassins and Templars (good and evil respectively), that have the same goals for mankind such as peace and freedom but have different methods to reach those goals. A tipping point usually comes when trying to find a mystical object from an ancient civilization that came before that can turn the tide in their favor. The plot follows our main character having been captured by Abstergo Industries (modern day Templars) and is put into a machine called the Animus to live in memories of his ancestors life to find the object for them. The movies story does a good job in utilizing the convoluted lore of the universe into a story that's just as confusing of the games themselves. It takes the silliness of the science of the Animus pretty seriously but what they do with it is interesting and visually awesome. Another interesting thing to note is most of the plot is in modern day and less in the past, which is the reverse of how it's typically done in the franchise. Overall the plot of the movie makes use of the convoluted nature of the Assassin's Creed lore into a story that can confuse and intrigue simultaneously.

Characters: There are three main characters in Assassin's Creed are Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender), Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard), and Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons). Callum is a criminal captured by Templars and forced into using the Animus to accomplish their goals. Fassbender does a great job with the role given to him, despite the fact that his limited characters growth is somewhat abrupt at times. Sophia is the leading scientist of the Animus project for the Abstergo Industries. Cotillard also does a great job with this character as she builds a rapport with Callum while keeping an eye on his health during the project as well as providing information for Callum (and the audience). Alan is Sophia's father and CEO of Abstergo. Irons does a great job with this role to the point of being a cartoon level villain that you can predict what will happen (if you've seen him as Scar or any other villain roles he's done before that's basically him) as he does actions from behind the shadows, despite his limited screen time. Overall despite limited development on these characters, their casting choices are very well done to help bring the seriousness needed for the silly complicated universe of this adaptation.

Overall Consensus: Despite issues with character development, Assassin's Creed brings a good (but not great) example of adapting a video game into an entertaining movie as the main cast performs well with great action and visuals the franchise is known for. ⭑⭑⭑1/2

Reasons to watch it: You want to see a video game movie with a lot of effort put into it. You are a fan of the Assassin's Creed franchise and want to see how it respects the source material. You like Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and/or Jeremy Irons. You want to appreciate how far video game movies have come compared to the earlier movies. You want to judge this movie on your own instead of the Rotten Tomatoes score (this movie doesn't deserve to be bashed that hard). You want to see Michael Fassbender kill people with assassins skills and perform 95% of his own stunts. You want to see the awesome action, parkour, and the leap of faith being performed. You can keep up with the exposition details of the Assassin's Creed lore (which isn't too much compared to that of Warcraft). You want to see more Assassin's Creed cosplay ideas.

Reasons to avoid it: You don't like any of the aforementioned actors. You don't like video game movies. You don't like movies with complicated stories. You don't like Assassin's Creed.