Big adaptations are rarely meant to be one-offs. Be it popular books or video games, when something that is popular in one form of media gets the big screen treatment, it’s usually with the intention to start a whole new franchise or series. Sometimes the strategy works and we get things like the first six films in the Resident Evil franchise, but for other video games in particular it doesn’t quite go as planned. Now, fans have just days left to catch one disastrous video game adaptation that had big plans but fell very, very short as it’s set to leave HBO Max at the end of the month.
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When it was released in 2016, the live-action Assassin’s Creed was supposed to be the start of a feature franchise for the popular Ubisoft video game series of the same name. Starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, and Michael K. Williams, the film version had no shortage of star power and even took the approach of not simply directly adapting the video game but creating an original story set in the same universe. Going into things, there were already plans for two sequels, one of which had entered development while Assassin’s Creed was in production. Unfortunately, the failed to impress critics or fans — it has a low 18% score on Rotten Tomatoes — and it performed badly at the box office as well, ending any hope of a franchise.
Assassin’s Creed Failed Because It Was Too Different From the Iconic Game
While Assassin’s Creed had a solid cast and the general idea of a story that was more original were definitely benefits for the film, ultimately the movie was far too different from the iconic game to ever be successful. One of the big issues with Assassin’s Creed was that the film spent far too much of its time in a modern day setting as opposed to the more historical setting that is prominent in the game. By removing the story from the Spanish Inquisition era setting and putting it a modern era prison setting, the movie stripped away most of the action and what makes the game so exciting.
The movie also suffers from confusing lore. In the film Cal (Fassbender) is sentenced to death for murder but is kidnapped by the Abstergo Foundation because he’s a descendent of a member of the Assassin Brotherhood sworn to protect the Apple of Eden. The Abstergo is the modern-day Templar Order and they want to acquire the Apple and are using Cal to help them do so. While that’s somewhat straightforward to explain here, the movie does a poor job of explaining the motivations of the Abstergo Foundation, the Templars in general, or even what the Apple is all about. Given that those elements (and others) are key to the story, the lack of solid explanation and world building leads to a confusing story that even the most devoted game player ended up scratching their head a bit over. It made for a boring movie that was confusing and not even in an entertaining way. A decade on, it’s up to you to decide if the film has aged well or if initial thoughts about it were too harsh, but you only have a few more days left to make that call before it departs streaming.
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