Review: ‘Assassin’s Creed’: good game, bad movie

Once upon a time, the world’s freedom was embroiled in a secret war between the manipulative Templar Order and the liberal Assassin Brotherhood. This war stretches on for centuries, even millennia, across critical events in recorded history. The deadliest weapons in the war were the mysterious objects of power called the Apples of Eden that could mind-control vast swaths of the population. Both sides were on the hunt for these Apples hidden all over the world.

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Now, in the age of technology, the war steeped over into the realm of science. An advanced machine called the Animus allowed users to relive the memories of their long-dead ancestors. The Templars used this technology to discover the locations of the hidden Apples.

Sound simple? The key to making this a great story is to ensure that both the historical story and the modern story are engaging. People will always pay more for an amazing story set in the past, though. Despite all the trailers, the latest Assassin’s Creed movie fails to deliver a good story in either the past or the present.

The movie follows the same pattern as the game series: a modern story broken by brief trips to the Animus, much like the first game. Here’s where it fell apart, though. The series took off because of the second game which delivered the most engaging heroes in Ezio Auditore, an Assassin who lived in the Italian Renaissance. The modern story was good, but it paled in comparison to Ezio’s story, which took us from his first breaths to his last.

As predicted, we fell in love with Aguilar de Nerha through the movie trailers. In just a few minutes, he performed parkour and assassination. We wanted to see more of Aguilar, but the movie had other ideas. It kept pushing Callum Lynch, a character we tried but failed to empathize for.

The Spanish Inquisition story was cookie-cutter Assassin’s Creed in action: Templars are oppressing society while the Assassins are fighting to protect the powerful Apple of Eden. Yet underneath all that elaborate costume and fancy footwork, you can find no background that explains who these characters are or what this time in history means. It was the same-old quest for the unexplained MacGuffin.

Meanwhile, the modern story was a cheap Dan Brown novel in disguise. I admit that the movie’s take on the Animus Project was novel and should be replicated in the game. They tried to make me fall in love with Callum Lynch, they really did. But the story ultimately led to nowhere. For one, the movie devolved the Templar Order into a costume-wearing cult that looks like it was lifted straight from The Da Vinci Code. The games gave us a money-making organization that sought to control society through entertainment, science, and religion. The movie’s Templars were just downright evil for the heck of it.

Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Irons delivered capable performances based on the little that they had. The problem is that the movie was headed by people who didn’t understand the series’s appeal to gamers.

This movie wasn’t unwatchable. It was a decent B-movie, at best. But if you come into the theater with specific expectations in mind, prepare to come away with at least some disappointments. Assassin’s Creed does not break the video game movie curse, but it is the best so far.