Assassin’s Creed review: Confusing garbage even fans won’t forgive
I am a cool and popular dude, so I have played pretty much all of the Assassin’s Creed games. From the first one, in which you play a man who runs around on rooftops stabbing popes, to the most recent one, in which you play a man who runs around on rooftops stabbing French aristocrats.
Despite my intimate knowledge of the series (they’re good games, honestly), I’d struggle to recount precisely what happens in this Michael Fassbender-led mess.
He plays a death row inmate, spirited away by a mysterious government cabal who are under the control of the ancient order of the Templars, who have been at war with the Assassins since whenever.
They want the Apple of Eden, an ancient artifact that resembles one of your nan’s Christmas decorations and contains, in some really hand-wavey bit of non-science, the genetic code that dictates all human free will. Still following? Good.
In order to discover the whereabouts of this Apple and take over the world, the Templars strap an unwilling Fassbender into a kind of virtual reality sling and have him re-enact the memories that are contained within his DNA.
The film is essentially this kind of nonsense for about two hours. Historical Fassbender does parkour in 15th century Spain while in the future his descendent lurches about in an empty room like a flailing idiot, a bit like that time you made your dad try out an Oculus Rift.
“What the fuck is going on?” Fassbender’s character mutters during one especially bemusing scene, unwittingly echoing the sentiment of the entire theatre.
Videogame adaptations are rarely much good, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. But Assassin’s Creed is the kind of trash that will inspire you to leap from the nearest rooftop.