I know I should be writing about how I celebrated Christmas this year, I even have the photos prepared, but I just came back from the cinema where I watched "Assasin's Creed. The Movie". A movie, which I have been waiting maybe even more than Christmas itself (as, I believe, most of the AC fans did), not only because one of my favorite game franchises entered the big screen, but also because of Michael Fassbender, who was selected to play the main role of Callum Lynch/Aguilar - the protagonist of the movie. My hopes got pretty high, like that soaring eagle from the AC games, but that, my friends, was a mistake. And let me, avoiding spoilers as much as I can, explain why.
The movie tells the story of a killer named Callum Lynch and how he discovers his ties with an ancient creed of trained assassins, who, through the ages protected the magical Apple of Eden, that contains the power to bend human will and is a one mighty tool to enslave all humans. As you might guess, the assassins have their enemies - the Templars, who want to snatch the apple away. So we have this good and evil fight going on, which is nothing new. The new thing is that the plot is developed in two timelines - in the present (2016) and Middle Ages (1492). Jumping between the present and the past, between Callum and Aguilar (the 500 year old predecessor of Callum), the creators of the movie try to tell the new story of the Assasin's Creed. But do they succeed? Y...no.
First of all, the connection between the two timelines is weak and they are very, VERY unequal. The present's timeline feels so stiff compared to the event-jammed timeline of the past. The dialogues are boring (whereas conversations in the timeline of Aguilar are scarce and if somebody talks, it's because of reason) and some characters tend to repeat themselves. Everybody talks, but you have no idea why they even were given some lines, which contribute nothing to the plot itself.
Second, the characters. Callum/Aguilar, Sofia and the nameless girl assassin were my favorites, because they played their part quite well. Everybody else... They just devoured the screen time and prolonged the movie. I see no logic why Callum was introduced to other assassins in the Present timeline, since he bonds with them on a very superficial level. I know, I know - the movie has a word CREED in it, but shouldn't you make this more believable then, give some more time for them to get to know each and everyone?
Third, the shallowness of the plot. If you make a movie based on the video game that's full of action, you don't pretend that what you just created is full of philosophical insights. I felt that the creators of this movie couldn't accept this so they tried to put something with "meaning" in it, like the dialogues about trying to vanquish the violence in human beings, but it was so hollow, that they just should have sticked to the battle scenes, where daggers were slashing and men (and a woman) were fighting.
And so we come to the forth point of my review - the lack of blood. There were so little of it, although the scenes suggested that the movie was shot with blood spilling with every slash, but in order to get the PG-13 rating (and with that - more audience, and with that - more money), it was made to dissapear. And that's a big, big loss. Assassins ARE brutal, their business IS bloody, so why with this censure? Oh, yeah, because of money, apparently...
There was one good point about this movie (apart from the good performance of M. Fassbender, who, BTW, could have been even more incredible with the better script) - the visuals. It felt like I was again sitting in front of PC monitor and watching assassins (in my case it was Ezio Auditore) jumping from one roof to another, performing all sorts of parcour and leaps of faith... This aspect of the movie gets my thumbs up. But that's all.
The movie has 6,8 rating on imdb.com site, I myself would give it 7 points - just because of the nostalgia, that was revived in me for AC games.
P.S. While getting out of our car, me and my husband started talking, what if they have had chosen to concentrate only on the XVth century part, only with a short introduction to the present events, and continued to search The Apple in the Past's timeline? It would be more interesting to know the ties between the assassins and sultan, Templars, the romance between Aguilar and that girl assassin, Aguilars background and lot more. Callum could discover the Assasin's Creed through the memories of his ancestor without any explanations from the Sofia and make up his mind to do what's right in Spain, not in that laboratory... For me and my husband it took about two minutes to think about the plot that was at least 10 times more interesting than original one. So why those who wrote the script failed to make the movie interesting?
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