Assassin's Creed, (2h 20m, 12A)

 
The road of cinematic adaptions of videogames is littered with terrible adaptions, from the tonally bizarre, Dennis-Hopper-as-Bowser Super Mario Brothers, to the underwhelming Doom to the never-ending cavalcade of Resident Evil/Silent Hill/Alone in the Dark sequels, to the extent that "videogame adaption" is essentially a death-knell to any of these films proving popular at the box-office. Assassin's Creed is a step in the right direction, but it's a small step, largely made in the wrong time-zone, and with a great deal of mid-air parkour thrown in.

Here, I must confess, I, (unusually for someone who plays more than their fair share of games) go in entirely blind; I've never played any of the wildly successful Assassin's Creed franchise, and what little I do know is largely about the second, Renaissance-set instalment, rather than the first, Crusader-Era set game (although the film moves most of the action to 15th Century Spain). Nevertheless, the film happily explains the main premise (Templars bad, Assassins good, free will...kinda important?), introduces our protagonist Aguilar, and then merrily kicks us into the mid 1980s, introducing us to Calum Lynch, and his rather dark past, before another thirty year time skip brings us up to the present.
One faked execution later, Calum finds himself in the unwilling employee of Abstergo (the most blatantly evil organisation since, well, Resident Evil's Umbrella), who are searching for the Apple of Eden (MacGuffin of the film, and source of free will), in order to get rid of violence. In order to find the Apple, they need to go back into the past. Literally. By convenience, Calum is the descendant of Aguilar, and through the Animus Project, half Matrix, half time-machine, he can relive his ancestor's past, find the last known location of the Apple, and complete Abstergo's project.

Calum is thrown into his ancestor's past; and here begins one of the biggest issues of the film. Not in the scenes with Aguilar-in fact, these scenes, all leaping over rooftops, climbing sheer walls, quick,  well cut hand to hand combat, and even truly jaw-dropping death-defying leaps, are easily the best thing about the film. They're visually arresting, well paced and had the film concentrated upon these, or even played itself as a straight 15th Century set film, this would have been a much better film. The issue is in this film's consistent cutting back and forth between Calum, copying and reliving his ancestor's every move, in his projector/robot arm VR reality dome, and Aguilar making these same moves. Compare, for example, if Neo et al were consistently shown in the Matrix responding to stimuli; not once or twice in major scenes, but every single time they do anything.
I'm not against, for example, Aguilar making a particularly difficult jump and showing Calum plant both feet into the ground and straighten up, before cutting back to Aguilar, but even the cutting of these sequences seems lacklustre. If you wanted to show how close Calum and Aguilar are becoming across the centuries, matching cuts or very quick cutting between the two time periods would have done this far more effectively. As it is, it's like someone occasionally poking you in the ribs and leaning across to whisper "this isn't real. Hey, this isn't real either. Hey, look, 2016 Michael Fassbender's climbing up a poorly rendered projected wall."

Indeed, this is the problem with Assassin's Creed as a whole-its weighing of Calum and Aguilar-one could easily have made a far more Aguilar-centric film, exhibiting far more of this character, his motivations, and indeed how much he resembles Calum-as it is he is barely more than a cypher, barely speaking throughout the film, little more than an avatar for Calum rather than a living breathing person, and the film itself spends far too long with Calum, in long winded discussions of self-will, the workings of the Animus system, and indeed the way in which DNA and genetic memory works-it's slightly concerning that the sections often derided by the fans as the worst part of the games are given so much focus. Not only are these explanations complex, wordy, and seem only to bulk out the film they fall into that "Hollywood Science" section of "flickery images of brains! EGG readouts! Something about DNA that makes no sense, probably isn't real, or is poorly explained!"

Moreover, the 2016 sections of the film are, up until the film's final third, overly talky, overlong, and basically serve to repeatedly yell, in increasingly loud tones "TEMPLARS BAD (we think). TEMPLARS BAD (we think?)"-and even here, Assassin's Creed seems a little tonally confused-for a series which writes the Templars as pure evil (to the extent they canonically kill Jesus, JFK and back the Nazis in WWII in the expanded universe), the idea of the loss of free will is painted remarkably matter-of-fact-ly, with Sophia (played by Marion Cotillard) trying to frame the Project as dealing with violence, and a positive thing, whilst her father notes it as the newest in a long line of movements from consumerism to religion. Moreover, for great sections of the film, both her and her father are painted, unequivocally, as positive figures. Up until the film's denoument, the modern day Templars never do anything violent, and most of their named members are even kindly, and surprisingly nuanced compared to the growling, glowering single-dimensional Fassbender.  

Assassin's Creed's cast does, at the very least, have a certain level of gravitas-Fassbender plays both the modern Calum and the 15th Century Aguilar with panache-Aguilar is the silent, dedicated warrior, a veritable killing machine that stomps and rolls and leaps and stabs his way with grim determination through his predicaments, whilst his female sidekick Maria is far more kickass than many of the female protagonists of other action movies (and, given than this is a film based upon a series where one of the game's designers cited the lack of playable female characters on them being "too hard to animate, this is certainly progress). -Calum meanwhile is a man conflicted by his father's death, by revenge, and indeed his seemingly long incarceration, who slowly realises there is more connection between his ancestor and himself than blood. Jeremy Irons chews scenery, but certainly at least tries to be more than a one-dimensional figure, whilst Cotillard is a surprisingly sympathetic figure. However, the other subjects in the Animus project are barely touched upon and reduced to little more than "Black guy", "girl" and "boy"-even to have a little of their story, or the story of their ancestors touched upon would have been helpful to flesh their characters out.

As it is, Assassin's Creed is certainly a step in the right direction-it is largely faithful to his source, whilst making a decent fist of its 15th Century escapades; where it falls down, however, is in its 21st Century apple-hunt, which is over-wordy, over-talky, drags, and leads to a sub-par third act and pay-off. Creed is not terrible, and certainly is perhaps the best videogame adaption of many years, but it fails to shake off the stigma of the genre as a litany of mistakes. I would argue this was for fans of the series, but even they may simply prefer a couple of hours in the company of Ezio, Altair and co.

Rating:  Neutral