So I think I've seen enough fragments of "Assassin's Creed" (2016), directed by Justin Kurzel, to have a sense of the whole. I'm impressed that they spent $125 million making this, some of it, no doubt, on the A-List cast, but much of it on artwork, CGI, and special effects, all of which are fairly impressive. As is so often true, the problem is in the writing. I gather the video game, in its various iterations, had a rather complicated story, so trying to capture it in a two-hour movie was probably unrealistic in the first place. There was too much exposition, and teven so the exposition was inadequate in clarifying what was going on. The best news: Kurzel did a fine job making the movie as much like a video game as possible. The bad news: Kurzel did a fine job making the movie as much like a video game as possible. I mean, watching someone else play a video game can be entertaining, but then you start to think: But wait, why aren't I playing this video game myself? I suspect this was the purpose of the movie: to encourage people to play the video game(s). But if only the people who are already playing the game(s) can understand the story, how does this encourage new people to get on board?
Review of Assassin's Creed
