I have been quite late in the recent few weeks in catching up with premiere of the newest movies. Just like this movie which premiered on Wednesday, I could only watch it yesterday. And it seemed that pattern might continue until next week when I am more able to juggle my work schedules with my after office private activities. Anyway, this movie seemed very interesting, especially from the trailer, the main actor and also the adaptation of the hugely popular action adventure game in various platforms. My wife who is a fan of Michael Fassbender was interested in seeing this movie as well since the action sequence looked cool. So yesterday she bought the ticket for our usual 7 PM show at Lotte Avenue. Well, what's the story all about? Let's find out.
Brief Story Line
The first few minutes of opening scenes were showing the ancient secret societies named Assassins in the year 1492 in Spain. It seemed to be an initiation of some sort to a member named Aguilar (Michael Fassbender - X-Men First Class trilogy, Prometheus etc). Scene moved to the year 1986 where a young Callum Lynch was instructed by his father (Brian Gleeson) who seemed to be a member of the Assassins as well, to run away as far as possible, since he was going to be captured.
In the year 2016, Callum who was a grown man now (also played by Michael Fassbender) was going to be executed after found guilty of murder. However, he later woke up in a strange facility called Abstergo foundation in Spain where the first face he saw was of Dr. Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotilard - Allied etc) who told him that he was "recruited" to help find cure for aggressiveness.
Cal who was confused tried to escape, only to realize that the facility was located very high above ground. There were also other "patients" there such as Moussa (Michael K. Williams - 12 Years A Slave etc), Lin and few others. Cal later on was told that he had to follow the experiment done by Abstergo in the Anibus project. This project was supposed to be able to (in layman terms): make people experience and see what happened to their ancestors from their DNA since these people were direct descendant of their ancestors. In this case, Cal's DNA matched the DNA of Aguilar, the Assassin from 1492 Spain.
This would be where the story became interesting since we could see what Cal was experiencing while he "transformed" and "synced" his body just like what Aguilar was experiencing then. The machine was also able to show the experimenters including Sophia's father Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons - Dead Ringer, Reversal of Fortune etc) who was the CEO of Abstergo, whatever Cal was experiencing. It was revealed also that Alan was part of the ancient society named the Templars who were the long time enemies of the Assassins.
However, this experiment was not without its risk as Cal would be prone to sickness and possible paralyzed condition if he was pulled out too son or if he was forced to go into the machine. The film would be shown in like 2 timelines, which was the 2016 year where Cal was being experimented for Anibus project by Sophia & Alan, and the year 1492 where Agular accompanied by another Assassin Maria (Ariane Labed) working together to complete their assignment.
So could Cal survive the experiments? What was the assignment that Aguilar and Maria doing in 1492 which made the experiment became so valuable for the Templars? And what were the other patients in the Abstergo foundation doing in the facility? Find them all in this interesting movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I honestly have not played a single game of Assassin's Creed before, despite my hobby of playing games in PC and PlayStation. I know it was a very very popular game from Ubisoft (who created some of the very famous games such as Far Cry, Prince of Persia etc), and sometimes I saw the cinematic sequence from the games which looked very cool, especially the trademark jump from very high ground (called "Leap of Faith"). Therefore when I watched this movie, I did not have any idea what the story would be at all. And I believed that some (or maybe majority) of the movie audience were like me and my wife who never knew about the story.
So for the first half hour of the movie, I tried my best to understand the story line which was a little bit challenging and it made me having difficulty in enjoying the earlier part. However, the movie became much more interesting once the experiment was started where we could see the world in 1492, especially those cool moves done by the Assassins. The fight scenes, jump scenes, and the scenes from point of view of the eagle (or was it a hawk?) flying above the grounds were very nice to look at. And these were where the neutrals (people who had not played the games at all) would have probably wanted to watch the movie, i.e. an old fashioned action adventure movie with just 1 timeline in the year 1492. Although, that would mean the story would not be too similar with the story line in the games/novels (written by Oliver Bowden).
My personal view of this movie was that, perhaps it would be a bit easier to enjoy if we had played the game first, or alternatively to have the part of Anibus project immediately explained in the beginning and we could jump right to the moment of "syncing" so the story line in 1492 would be the major part of the movie, while 2016 was the additional background. Again this is only my personal view. Please do not get me wrong though. I am not saying this movie did not entertain. It certainly did in term of those fighting, special effects and oooh, the sound (musical) effect which were absolutely breath taking. They added the elements of suspense particularly during the chasing & jumping scenes of Aguilar and Maria.
Some movies adapted from popular games were having difficulty in achieving very high commercial success, which was why it is quite uncommon to see sequels to these movies, except maybe Tomb Raider or Mortal Kombat. Even a successful one did not translate into sequels either such as Prince of Persia. So when you see that this movie had an ending that hinted sequels (and probably hoping to see them), a gentle reminder that it would require a huge amount of success to make this one becoming the new movie franchise.
Anyway, if you are a fan of this popular game, I believe that you would be entertained with the story line and also the fighting scenes since they were quite honoring the games sequences. But whether this movie would suit the general audience, it would remain to be seen. Let's wait for a while longer before we can come to a conclusion.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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