An ancient order lurking in the shadows.
A supernatural mcguffin and loads of Parkour
influenced stunts.
What more could you want from a big summer blockbuster?
When it was initially announced, Assassin's Creed
sounded great, with star Michael Fassbender pulling together
an A list production.
Nothing could go wrong.
You did well, Cal.
And yet, the 2016 Assassin's Creed film failed.
Despite the fact that the game had
been released only four years prior in October of 2011,
Sony Pictures signed a deal to partner up on the rights
to the franchise from the newly formed Ubisoft Motion Pictures
wing of the behemoth gaming company.
In July of the next year, it was announced
that Michael Fassbender, star of X-Men and the Alien prequels,
would join the project as star and co-producer.
And yet the project would flounder for a few years.
Initially Fassbender's considerable heat
seemed like enough to push the film project through.
One thing was certain for everyone involved.
The project they were working on was
sure to be a franchise starter if they
could get it onto the screen.
Today there are 12 Assassin's Creed games.
With Assassin's Creed Valhalla pulling in a $1 billion alone,
everyone knew that this project could be a cash cow.
There was only one problem.
The complexity of the games.
This wasn't something like Mortal Kombat or Super Mario
Brothers.
This game series might have started out life as an attempt
at making a Prince of Persia spin off,
but it had developed into something much more.
How could they respect everything
that had come before but still make
something that was digestible to the average moviegoer?
The answer to this question would
be the big swing that would ultimately
doom the franchise to failure.
If you listen to me, everything is going to make sense.
And you need to trust me.
After multiple rounds of development,
it was finally Macbeth director Justin Kurzel's involvement
that pushed the film into green light territory.
The story would follow Callum Lynch, a new character not
appearing in any of the games, who
was the great, great descendant of a man named Aguilar,
a member of a secretive order known only as the assassins.
At one point in the distant past,
the assassins were in possession of a device known
as the Apple of Eden, a piece of technology that can
rob anyone of their free will.
The film follows Cal as he is captured
by a company named Abstergo and conscripted
into using a device called the animus in order
to relive memories of his ancestors
to discover the true resting place of the Apple.
This story, the characters, and the overarching direction
of the film franchise is not an adaptation
of any of the games directly.
Aymar Azaizia, the head of Assassin's Creed content
at Ubisoft, had to issue a public statement
to clarify this point.
He posted on Twitter, "This is a brand
new story with new characters set in our universe."
Could this be a bold new move?
Could this be an interesting development
in the way transmedia properties handle adaptations?
Possibly.
There's only one problem.
It was awful.
Assassin's Creed the film feels like an extended
prologue of a video game, a $125 million two hour prologue.
The film opens with Callum Lynch witnessing his mother's death
and then ultimately being blamed for her murder.
30 years later, he wakes up in a facility
run by the previously mentioned Abstergo.
He's introduced to a scientist named Sofia Rikkin, who
explains to him that he needs to use the animus to obtain
the Apple of Eden.
Aguilar was the last person known to have had it
in his possession.
We need you to find out where he hid it.
After Cal meets multiple other people
who are purportedly descendants of assassins,
she pitches him the idea of helping
her find this piece of technology
in order to quell violence and anger across mankind.
And here's where everything gets bumpy.
Cal as a protagonist is less than enthralling.
Stay in sync with him or it could be dangerous.
(SINGING) And I'm crazy for loving you.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist
to realize that maybe helping the evil corporation that's
running the weird genetic assassin prison
and trying to find a literal mind control device isn't cool.
Why is he helping her?
Is he angry at his father?
Is he angry about being blamed for the murder of his mother?
For being someone who has been imprisoned for 30 years,
none of this is really explored in the film.
They just gloss over his personal motivations
in favor of very expensive set pieces,
which basically just amount to the equivalent of Michael
Fassbender playing a photorealistic VR game.
Nothing works in this movie.
The basic rules of the universe are never set up.
The entire movie is basically just people
watching Cal do a playthrough of an Assassin's Creed level.
When creating a story, it's a general truism
that the protagonist should make choices that advance the plot.
And this will reveal aspects of their personality.
In Assassin's Creed, the whole film our protagonist
is a henchman for the villains.
The film is so poorly structured that it just
stops at the two hour mark.
There's no massive showdown, no big confrontation.
The movie just stops after Cal and his fellow assassins
escape from the Abstergo facility.
He has a minor conversation with a remorseful Sofia Rikkin
and then wrestles the Apple away from the clutches of Professor
Rikkin after killing him and then disappears into the night.
It's a clumsy, messy stumble of a film.
It feels exactly like what it was,
a movie made by a video game studio.
And everyone involved knew it.
The film was delayed for release multiple times.
When the film finally did debut in theaters,
it pulled in $10 million the weekend of its release.
Today Assassin's Creed is sitting
at a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Obviously this is not the response
that Fassbender and the team at Ubisoft were hoping for.
When asked about the project during the Alien Covenant press
circuit by moviencouk, Fassbender said.
I would make it more entertaining.
The feeling of the film, I think it took itself too seriously.
Will we ever see Assassin's Creed 2?
No, probably not.
The fact that the film franchise chose
to not adapt anything from the games was a big mistake.
And the idea that films and video
games could exist in the same cinematic universe could work.
But in this case, it very much didn't.
Which begs the question, why?
Why was the film structure so strange?
Why was so much focus placed on the present day timeline
instead of how the games do it, where we spend
more of our time in the past?
Was it a production issue that caused these issues or studio
interference?
It doesn't seem that way.
It was the fact that Ubisoft specifically
didn't want to eat up too much narrative real estate
in the first entry of the franchise.
And how crazy is that?
They simultaneously killed their main villain
and didn't actually have a showdown at all.
This film serves as an example of the simple fact
that some franchises don't need a cinematic universe tied
to them.
The film should not have been a new story that doesn't really
go anywhere.
It should have been a film starring Desmond
Miles and his ancestors.
It should have done what all great comic book movies do.
They take the source material, choose the best aspects of it,
and then generate a fully fleshed out singular film.
Iron Man 1 is a perfect example.
It's a great standalone story that's
based on some of the most iconic stories ever created
about Tony Stark.
Look at the difference between the original Terminator, which
was just a single story, and Terminator Dark Fate.
Dark Fate had a writers room behind it
and it was desperately attempting
to launch a new franchise instead
of just focusing on telling one good, clean narrative.
Assassin's Creed never had that chance
because it was never an auteur driven piece.
It was never going to be a single film that
could tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Why?
Because having an end scares companies.
They want to be able to milk these properties for years
to come.
You'd think having the video game company involved
in the making of the adaptation would be a good thing,
but you'd be wrong.
Their priorities muddied the waters
and forced the film to turn out compromised.
From day one, Assassin's Creed was
going to be a film made by a video game company.
And that's why Assassin's Creed failed.
Well, that's all we have for today's episode.
What do you think?
Will we get a new Assassin's Creed film soon or maybe
a TV show?
Let us know down in the comments below.
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