Assassin's Creed (2016)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Now, I will state that it has it's weird moments especially from being someone who plays the games, but it honestly isn't that bad. I throughly enjoyed it, did have some confusing scenes but it's a movie based on a game and you really need to take the game aspect out when you watch these types of movies. Most of these bad reviews are from gamers which I can understand, but it's a movie, it's not aimed for just us gamers it's meant for others as well. I know this will probably never get it's sequel, which is sad, but I would really love to see one with all these actors, like they know what went wrong with this movie, so give them a second chance to fix it. I'm actually curious and excited to see where they could have taken this.

Based on the hugely popular video game franchise, "Assassin's Creed" is the first time an attempt has been made to transfer the concept to the big screen. Transferring video games to the big-screen is a very tricky dark art, not many have been successfully or even enjoyed cult status - so from the get-go, making an AC film was always going to come under scrutiny from games fans. So, Assassins Creed - I had to try and explain it to my girlfriend as best as I could so I think that explanation will probably work here. A secret society's science division has worked out a way to immerse distant blood relatives of long dead historical figures, into the memories and experiences they had when they were alive. Say what? It's like if, say, if Christopher Columbus's great, great, great, great, great, grandchild (or another distant relative) could put on a virtual reality headset and see and experience everything that Columbus saw and experienced. By doing this to people, the secret society hopes to learn things from the past, to shape the future. That's the techie part done with. Throw into the mix a secret struggle between two opposing factions, the Templars and the Assassins Creed. The Templar's, throughout history, have wanted to control society and dictate their rule. The Creed on the other hand, opposes them and wants people to live free. Still with me? So, in a nutshell - Michael Fassbender's character is rescued and put to work in this techie VR, to experience something that his distant relative experienced, to help the secret society who owns the VR kit. He has to figure out who he's working for, what they want, and who he is. Did I enjoy the film? From purely a film fan stand point, yeah it was ok. From a fan of the games, well, it wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible enough to sully the reputation the games have created. In my opinion there is a lot of good source material available - but let's not forget, this is an introduction to the situation on film, something more in depth may have been off-putting. The pace of the film was good; it was constantly on the move, which owed itself well to the pace of the games sequences. In moving at a good pace though it didn't allow much for character development or depth. So while everything was going on, I didn't really care if people were going to be killed off. In regards to the cast, Fassbender was OK, but I didn't find him that believable as an ex-con, especially not one that has to grow a conscience by the end of the film. I don't think he fitted that well for the parts of the film set back in time in central Europe. Saying that though, he wasn't terrible - but I don't think this is one of his strongest rolls. Marion Cotillard doesn't ignite things enough to be a thrill-a-minute, but she's adequate for the fairly emotionless scientist she's meant to portray. Jeremy Irons on the other hand, well he does know how to play a villain quite well, and he absolutely fitted his role. Nice locations, with some nice action and some exciting parkour sequences. I'd give this a 7 out of 10.

I'm not hating on Micheal Fassbender he's a great actor but this has got to be by for his worst movie. The timeline is all over the place. Does not stay true to the game. He was NOT the last person to touch the Apple because Desmond was.... The female lead was poor and everytime they explained something I cringed and questioned why? This movie is worthless.

Quite a few movies based on video game cherry pick from the source material to make a film that attracts a wider audience, with the intention to get them to try the games they're based on. They're not going to go into detail in a two hour film in the same way they would a multi faceted video game that wants to keep you coming back for more. I'm not sure, based on this film, I'd want to play the games. Here, a large organisation, with massive resources, has developed a device (that wouldn't look out of place in the Matrix series) which can tap into an individuals ancestral memories and project them for all to see, with the intention of finding something those ancestors hid.And it's that split - between current time and past time - that spoiled the movie for me. The scenes with Aguilar are well shot pieces of action; life and death scenarios that puts you in the center of the action, wondering how they're going to escape. The atmospheric eagle swooping shots give this over view of how vast the situations are that these characters exist in. And then it pauses and the we return to Cal Lynch in the present, with some dialogue about why he's in the situation he's found himself and meeting other subjects of this procedure. It's like you're watching the game and then watching the person playing the game, resulting in a weakening of the characters, as none really get fleshed out. It's got a decent cast - Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling - yet it's the action that takes center stage and none of them really gets to perform. I mean, IMDB lists Brendan Gleeson (Joseph Lynch) above Rampling, though if you look away at the wrong moment, you'd probably miss him! A younger version of Joseph - played by his son, Brian Gleeson - gets more lines (though the film does touch on why that happened).