Video game film adaptations have not exactly given us many joys. The vast majority have, being generous, very limited interest and seem more designed to squeeze the popularity of the original work than for anything else. Things have improved somewhat in recent years with good entertainment such as ‘Detective Pikachu’ or ‘Sonic the movie’, but there is still a lot of room for growth.
When ‘Assassin’s Creed’ hit theaters in 2016, it did so accompanied by a certain halo that this time it was going to be the good one. A huge budget with an eye-catching cast led by then-rising Michael Fassbender and a three-movie plan. His hit at the box office left us without seeing them and the criticisms were not too positive, but I want to take the opportunity that today is broadcast on Cuatro starting at 22:50 to vindicate it in its proper measure.
Lights and shadows
I’m not going to say that ‘Assassin’s Creed’ is a great movie because it has a series of errors that limit its scope, but it does have enough personality to pose an intense adventure in which the story is never set aside in favor of the overdose of special effects. In fact, visually it shines more generally thanks to the careful photography of Adam Arkapaw, who knows how to define that aura halfway between reality and a dream that constantly accompanies Aguilar’s odyssey.
Where the film suffers the most is in the script, because the attempts to offer something different are noticeable but without being able to move away from what is expected of a blockbuster of this caliber. That introduces some unnecessary confusion in the story that Justin Kurzel tries to nuance at all times through an intensity that never disappears. The bet is clear, the narrative not so much.
All this is also reflected in the drawing of the characters, where you try to play the game by complicating the film in a surely unnecessary way. In return, those temporary jumps help to give more background to the main character, but since this film is still an introduction to his universe, we have to see where exactly everything is going to value it more fairly.
Of course, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ at least does not give the feeling of being a kind of pilot episode of what is to come, an evil that for example did affect the entertaining ‘Alita: Battle Angel’. In addition, you can see the concern in looking for a certain realism in the action scenes that benefits the final result, such as details such as the use of Spanish.
And it is that it gives the feeling that Kurzel seeks certain integrity in a film that is corrupted by its self-imposed starting condition of a franchise. The funny thing is that some of the glitches that happen here were already in ‘Macbeth’ , his much more acclaimed previous collaboration with Fassbender, who here is quite convincing despite the fact that his character could have been presented in a much more clear and stimulating way.
‘Assassin’s Creed’ was a disappointment at the box office, as Fox expected it to be the start of a lucrative franchise but when push came to shove it settled for a worldwide revenue of $ 240 million. Nor something catastrophic considering that the official budget was 125 million, although some raised it to 200, it cast doubt on a sequel that was finally canceled when Disney acquired Fox.