Assassin’s Creed

In 2016 two films illus­trat­ed the fun­da­men­tal prob­lems inher­ent in bring­ing video game sto­ries to the big screen. In the­o­ry Dun­can Jones’ War­craft should have made an easy tran­si­tion. The game’s sto­ry of con­stant war between rival clans is the stuff of adven­ture movies and fan­ta­sy epics. Yet gamers love the world of ​‘War­craft’ not so much for its fan­ta­sy ele­ments, but for the free­dom it gives them to play with strategy.

With­out the game’s two sell­ing points – the men­tal thrill of tac­ti­cal work paid off by the vis­cer­al enjoy­ment of com­bat game­play – view­ers are left with a sub-Tolkien set­ting and a poor, rather clichéd sto­ry. Craft­ing a straight­for­ward nar­ra­tive film out of ​‘War­craft’ was always mis­guid­ed pre­cise­ly because it mis­un­der­stands what makes the game so popular.

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, Hard­core Hen­ry pre­sent­ed anoth­er seri­ous issue. As a first-per­son shoot­er with a pix­el-thin plot hold­ing togeth­er an end­less stream of actions sequences, the film plays out like a live-action recre­ation of ​‘Doom’. While there is much to admire in the film’s ded­i­ca­tion to its cen­tral con­ceit, many view­ers quick­ly grew tired of this gim­mick. It sim­ply failed to con­nect with audi­ences, who evi­dent­ly pre­ferred to play ​‘Doom’ them­selves or else were alien­at­ed by the film’s visu­al style.

Assassin’s Creed occu­pies the uneasy space between these two films. A film ver­sion of a game which is osten­si­bly a third-per­son shoot­er, it doesn’t ful­fil its action poten­tial and is bur­dened by a need­less­ly com­plex sto­ry. Cal­lum Lynch (Michael Fass­ben­der), a crim­i­nal on death row, is saved by the mys­te­ri­ous Abster­go Indus­tries, an organ­i­sa­tion led by Alan Rikkin (Jere­my Irons) and his daugh­ter Sophia (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard). Sophia’s per­son­al project, a device called ​‘the Ani­mus,’ allows Cal­lum to relive the mem­o­ries of his ances­tor Aguilar de Ner­ha, an Assas­sin fight­ing the Span­ish Inquisition.

The goal of this vir­tu­al time trav­el is to locate the Adam’s Apple, an arte­fact thought to be the ori­gin of free will and which Sophia believes con­tains the key to end all vio­lence on Earth. This rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple set­up is com­pli­cat­ed by Abstergo’s more devi­ous inten­tions, and none oth­er than the Tem­plars get involved.

Although this sto­ry of mul­ti­ple time­lines pro­vides some inter­est­ing moments, the cryp­tic, exces­sive, often extreme­ly muf­fled dia­logue makes the film excru­ci­at­ing­ly hard to fol­low. Per­haps the team behind this adap­ta­tion feared explain­ing the obvi­ous there­by patro­n­is­ing the film’s built-in gamer audi­ence. For non-play­ers, how­ev­er, the expe­ri­ence proves a baf­fling and frus­trat­ing one.

Aside from this major fail­ure there is much to enjoy here. Best of all is Jed Kurzel’s aston­ish­ing score which – just as in Snow­town and Mac­beth – lends a pul­sat­ing, often breath­less­ly excit­ing feel to pro­ceed­ings. The loud, per­cus­sive sound­track ele­vates the mate­r­i­al and hints at what could have been: an epic per­son­al and his­tor­i­cal jour­ney through time and space with reper­cus­sions for the whole of human­i­ty. Sam­my Shel­don Differ’s cos­tumes mean­while are sim­i­lar­ly beau­ti­ful and classy, while cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Kurzel reg­u­lar Adam Arka­paw brings out the best in every­thing, adding atmos­phere to breath­tak­ing sets and lav­ish pro­duc­tion design.

All this is taint­ed by the film’s rushed edit­ing. Indeed, it feels as though Kurzel’s vision was too big for the project, his ambi­tion seem­ing­ly curbed by exter­nal forces. Cru­cial to any under­stand­ing of the cen­tral con­ceit of the film is a clear sense of geog­ra­phy and time. Yet both are ren­dered con­fus­ing by chop­py cut­ting. And much of the heavy gore and vio­lence appears to have been cut out, no doubt to bring down the age rat­ing and allow younger audi­ences to see the film. The result is some awe­some action sequences that lack a basic pay-off.

Char­ac­ters who may have had real nar­ra­tive arcs in ear­li­er drafts of the script are now paper thin and super­flu­ous. The won­der­ful Ari­ane Labed is crim­i­nal­ly under­used as anoth­er assas­sin, though a sin­gle look, frown or smile from her adds immea­sur­able depth to pro­ceed­ings. We can but hope for a longer, ​‘hard­er’ cut of the film which might restore to it some­thing of the bru­tal­i­ty that Kurzel’s work typ­i­cal­ly promises.

As it is, in its attempts to reach a com­pro­mise between nar­ra­tive and action, audi­ence and mate­r­i­al, Assassin’s Creed fails on all fronts. For a more suc­cess­ful adap­ta­tion of a com­pa­ra­ble video game, the two Tomb Raider films spring to mind. A sense of humour about the scale of the enter­prise allowed those films to burn nar­ra­tive bridges while retain­ing excit­ing action sequences and nar­ra­tive ten­sion. Assassin’s Creed remains to the end thor­ough­ly com­mit­ted to its own seri­ous­ness, but its com­pro­mis­es tru­ly hin­der the intend­ed effect.