For almost 30 years we’ve become conditioned to expect mediocrity from the video game genre, with the genuinely good ones so rare (and few and far between) that they register as genuine surprises. That being said, even non-fans of the source material were excited when Assassin’s Creed was coming together, a testament to the top-tier talent involved in the project.
Director Justin Kurzel was hardly the obvious candidate to helm a $125 million effects-driven action blockbuster, but that’s what made his hiring so curious. Throw in one of the best actors of their generation playing the lead role and producing, and there was every reason to believe Michael Fassbender would single-handedly drag the film to greatness.
That’s without even mentioning Academy Award winners Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons lending support, with acclaimed veterans Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling along for the ride. In the end, though, we should have known better than to expect anything different from Assassin’s Creed, which fell into many of the same traps as its spiritual predecessors.
Overlong, bogged down by inane exposition and uninteresting mythology, too reliant on inconsistent CGI, a misjudged decision to abandon any sense of fun or lightness of touch in favor of self-seriousness; these are all problems the console-to-screen translation has been defined by since its inception.
However, the 20th Century Fox title has been making a splash on Disney Plus over the weekend, as per FlixPatrol. A sequel may have been abandoned, and a Netflix reboot is on the way, but subscribers are nonetheless giving the widely-panned Assassin’s Creed 115 minutes of their time.
