Just for the record, to anybody saying that critics and fans watched 'Assassin's Creed' wanting to hate it that is an unfounded accusation and to me has very little truth to it.
Saying that says more about the person saying it, further proof that many people on this site have the inability to know the difference between fact and opinion and have to resort to personal attacks and conspiracy theories, which is not just childish but incredibly ignorant too. The "hate" actually comes from people who saw a lot of potential with the premise, which was a very interesting one, and was drawn in by the talent. It is the same as saying that it is cool to hate on films based on video games, people have acknowledged that not all of them are bad and there are decent ones out there, but there are some very bad ones too that it is understandable why they have a bad reputation.
'Assassin's Creed' is not quite down there with the worst films based on arcade/video games. It's better than the likes of 'House of the Dead', 'Doom' and 'Street Fighter', but considering the potential and talent it was a huge waste. Have not played the video games in a while but there is a recollection of them being a lot of fun and having a lot of intrigue value, the film doesn't come close to recreating that or immersing the viewer into the richly textured world or make one care for the characters.
There are strengths here. On the most part, 'Assassin's Creed' looks great, it's often beautifully and atmospherically shot and the scenery is magnificently majestic. Some of the action is dynamic and exciting, as well as efficiently choreographed. The cast generally are not well used and all have done much better.
However, Michael Fassbender is an enigmatic lead and Jeremy Irons makes much of relatively little and it shows his adeptness at playing villains (a prime example being Scar in 'The Lion King', one of the best voiced villains in the whole Disney canon).
Marion Cotillard has very little to do with poor dialogue and a severely underwritten character with no depth whatsoever, and she struggles to do anything with them. A waste of a very good actress. Charlotte Rampling and Brendan Gleeson are woefully underused, particularly Gleeson whose character is basically a plot device that could easily have been written out and nobody would have noticed.
In all fairness, it is hard to do much with what little they were given when the characters are so sketchily written and developed (little more than shallow clichés) and the script being the complete mess it turned out to be with so much being so vague and over-complicated it comes over as confused.
Story is not much better. It is both thin and tries to do far too much, also taking itself too seriously with a dark and bleak tone that just doesn't gel often. Pacing issues are abound, with scenes suffering from real tedium. Some of the editing in the action sequences is so shoddy it's almost incoherent. The music is monotone and intrusive and the direction is all over the place.
In conclusion, falls completely flat and does very little with its talent and potential which is one of the worst things a film can commit. 3/10 Bethany Cox
