During a Facebook Live Q&A session on December 13, Ubisoft's Aymar Azaizar boldly declared the upcoming Assassin's Creed film adaptation to be "a milestone movie," concluding defiantly that "there's going to be a before and after Assassin's Creed movie for sure."
Aymar's declarations tapped into a decades long conversation over movies based on video games not turning out all that great, and Assassin's Creed was set to turn that trend on its head. Unfortunately, now that we have finally seen the film the only thing we can conclude is that Assassin's Creed has affirmed the contention that Hollywood is still yet to make a good movie based on a video game.
Assassin's Creed had all the ingredients to be a potentially great film. The source material contained the bones of an exciting premise (time-traveling assassins) and the behind-the-scenes talent was strong. Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel was coming off an impressive Macbeth adaptation, recruiting much of the same cast and crew, and actor Michael Fassbender was stepping into a producer's role for the first time, signaling a serious business approach to making this a genuinely good film.
Yet the final result was a mess. Dull, over-complicated and ultimately extraordinarily boring despite some exciting set-pieces and an engaging visual approach. If anything, the only "before and after" scenario relating to Assassin's Creed we can think of is that the film makes it clear that even with a strong creative team, Hollywood cannot make a good video game movie.
