Movie Month: Assassin's Creed (Part 1)

Looks like we have a theme this month: Movie adaptations of franchises I’ve never played. Max Payne, Ratchet & Clank… Assassin’s Creed. Hell, I do have two games from the series on UPlay, but with all the horrendous news stories about the unwelcoming work environment at Ubisoft, I’m not even sure I want to play them. I did get them for free, so perhaps playing them will be guilt-free…

I know little about the games proper; you play an assassin and venture through open worlds inspired by real-life historical periods and events. And thus, the assassin you play winds up embroiled to some degree in these significant events of human history. As is the case for open-world games, you can follow the main quest, or stop at every ten feet to do something completely unrelated. I have some awareness of the overarching storyline in the franchise, but since I’ve never played an AC game, I can’t really speak on it. However! The film isn’t an adaptation of any game in the series, but rather a separate story that fits within the greater AC canon. As a result, I can only hope that the movie, released to theaters in North America in December 21st, 2016, is faithful to the general idea of the franchise and its concepts, and will serve to explain the franchise's overall story to me as I watch. My research for this review will do the rest.

Image from the games, because it's more
interesting than text.

The movie begins with a text scroll that gets everyone up to speed. Yes, I needed that, but it’s still a boring way to start a movie. The brotherhood of the Assassins is locked since the dawn of time into a struggle with the Order of the Knights’ Templar, who seek to retrieve the Apple of Eden – a mysterious item that is said to contain the seeds of man’s first disobedience, but also the basic genetic code of mankind. By getting their hands on it, the Templars seek to create a world without free will, a world they would control. Oh, they’ll make you believe they just want to “eradicate violence and hatred”; nah, the fuckers want power, plain and simple. And thus, through the ages, the Assassins have worked to keep the Apple away from the Templars’ grubby mitts.

This is a fancy place to become an Assassin.

"Necesitamos más luces aqui."
("It's friggin' dark in here!")

We open in Andalucia, Spain, 1492. Time of the Spanish Inquisition… Oh dammit, someone stop me, I’m gonna quote Monty Python! Take a deep breath… Okay, obvious joke avoided. Sultan Muhammad of Granada is in possession of the Apple; however, the Inquisition plans to kidnap the prince to force the Sultan into handing over the artifact. This is exposited as we meet Aguilar de Nerha, about to be sworn into the brotherhood. He pronounces the oath and, as part of the ceremony, gets his ring finger cut off (Jesus! Wouldn’t that be a dead getaway of Assassins?). His first mission? Protect the prince of Granada.

Cut to 1986. The young Callum Lynch comes home, to find his mother dead. Bleeding. The culprit? His own father, wearing an assassin’s robe and the wrist blades, reciting the enigmatic lines of the brotherhood of assassins. Callum’s father moves forward, as if to kill his son, but instead tells him to run away and live in the shadows. The kid can do nothing but flee as several cars arrive on the scene.

Props to the film for having pretty great cinematography.

The hero dead so early? That was a short film.

Thirty years later, Callum (now portrayed by Michael Fassbender, who also plays Aguilar) is a death row inmate in Texas spending the time in his cells drawing horrifying images and putting them up on his walls. After the mandatory priest visit, Callum is taken to the execution room, under the supervision of Dr. Sofia Rikkin, portrayed by Marion Cotillard. As the liquid is injected into his veins, the inmate has final visions of himself with his mother. The sweet release of death comes…

Not quite dead yet. He has a movie to star in, dammit!

…and he wakes up a day later in an unknown place. Sofia is again by his side, explaining that the execution was actually faked, and he has been brought to the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Madrid. Callum tries to walk out, but weak as he is at that moment, he falls to the floor. He still tries to flee through the center’s corridors, eventually finding an open area filled with vegetation, several floors above ground, with other patients observing him. He stands on the edge, pondering for a moment on whether he should jump down and escape this creepy place, but Sofia talks him out of it. This situation is completely bonkers, and so is that woman’s claim that this center aims to eradicate every trace of violence in mankind… though before he can say anything, he gets a tranquilizer dart to the neck.

How BIG is this place?!?

This should be an amusement park ride!

The inmate gets carried by force into a large chamber, the room of the Animus. Callum gets strapped to a machine, has wrist blades put on him, then an epidural is hooked directly into his spine, at his neck level. He barely has time to get any answers; all he’s told is that, through this machine, he’ll get to relive important events in the life of one of his ancestors, who lived 500 years prior. I highly doubt that genetic memory works that way.

Also, I know it’s the basis for the entire franchise, but this idea sounds like someone put the oeuvres of Philip K. Dick and Dan Brown into a blender and pressed “Mix”.

Scratch that, it actually looks kinda painful.

As Callum is raised above ground by the Animus attached to his back, scientists monitor the process, the subject making contact with the genetic memory of his ancestor. Slowly but surely, the room around him gets foggy and cloudy, slowly revealing landscapes and worlds of times past, as if somehow the genetic memories were projected into the room. When he has synchronized, the mechanical arm drops him to the ground, which sends him into those memories.

You’d think he would start immediately seeing what his ancestor Aguilar sees, but no – we get a grand panning shot of an eagle flying above the land. It’s a good thing that these panning shots happen, though – for one, it sets the scene, but also, it allows viewers to take in the grandeur of the historical sets. Also props to the film, it doesn’t pull the usual “everyone speaks English” trope; these scenes are set in Spain, everyone speaks Spanish.

We work in the shadows..
Even in bright sunlight.

This guy was talking too much BS.
It was time to shut him the fuck up.

The Emirate of Granada is falling to the Spanish Inquisition; it’s a war out there. The Assassins, at a distance from the fight, see armed forces of the Inquisition walk into a farm and pull out a boy – the prince, gone into hiding. Before the inquisitors can inflict a violent and fiery retribution on the village and its inhabitants for hiding the boy, the assassins step in. They kill several high-ranking officers, with Aguilar himself killing their mouthpiece. And, in the Animus, Callum accurately repeats the movements of his ancestor. The female assassin, Maria (whom Aguilar is romantically invested with; played by Ariane Labed) steals the horse carriage carrying the cage the boy is locked in. The inquisitors’ field commander, Alonso de Ojeda (played by Hovik Keuchkeurian), steals another to give chase, with Aguilar following both on horseback.

The Animus replicates all of Aguilar's movements
in its room, for Callum. Such weird technology.

The two fight their way through the inquisitors, leading to Aguilar reaching the front carriage headed for a cliff. He frees the boy just in time. Maria also makes it out alive. We don’t get to see more as Callum is then pulled out of the memory simulation. And although he can see the shady walls of the Animus room again and Sofia Rikkin by his side, he seems to see his ancestor in there, too…

Sorry for the dimly-lit scenes, a lot of the movie is shot
like that. It does look a lot better than Max Payne, though.

That evening, Sofia reports to her father Alan Rikkin (portrayed by Jeremy Irons). Abstergo Industries are, in fact, a front for the Templars, and they seek to retrieve the Apple of Eden by viewing the memories of ancient assassins through their descendants, using the Animus. True to the Templar beliefs, the man keeps a façade as a defender of peace when on camera, or speaking at the United Nations, but we know what he really wants; the end of free will, and complete control over mankind. Alan Rikkin wants the Apple fast, and thus tells his daughter to expedite the process, disregarding the risks for their patient’s mental and physical health. Sofia, in return, believes that this will be achieved more easily if Callum Lynch becomes a willing subject, rather than a reluctant one. Alan later reports to Ellen Kaye (played by Charlotte Rampling), chairwoman of the Board of Directors of Abstergo, and an Elder of the Templars.

Wall decorations made out of weapons in a circle
definitely make the Templars look like good guys. /s
One of the lines they say is literally "The modern world
has outgrown notions like freedom." How does that NOT
sound like some sort of supervillain's shpiel?

Here’s my unpopular opinion – I know the entire franchise is about the Templars controlling literally everything and using this power in their quest to find the Apple (or other artifacts), but it feels ridiculous. They say they control religion, politics, and now, all of consumerism. It… It’s so unbearably stupid to me. Alan Rikkin and Ellen Kaye sound like Saturday morning cartoon villains about to start laughing maniacally. Like they’re embracing a level of evil that simply doesn’t exist outside the realm of fiction. It’s so dumb to me that I struggle to take them seriously, killing off much of the dramatic tension these scenes could have had.

I don’t know – maybe it’s better in the games because we’re fighting the Templars and they’re a more believable threat. Maybe the film is missing that spark. Either way, that’s a mark I have against the film.

Also, if these Templar fuckers already control everything, why do they want more?? Why the fuck would they need more? To flex their superiority?

I don't know what they put in the food in this place,
but it's some strong stuff.

This office has more pieces on display than a museum.

In his room, Cal suddenly envisions Aguilar coming at him. A surprise visit from Sofia teaches him that it’s a bleeding effect, a result of spending time in the Animus, reliving someone else’s memories – he’ll hallucinate elements from these memories into the current time, and might also pick up skills that his ancestor had. Intrigued, he follows her to her office, a museum of historical books and items, tracing his geneealogy; that's how they got to him. It’s even implied that they’re the reason he was sent to death row for killing a pimp; so there was an easy way to take him to Abstergo. And he’s not alone; the other subjects held within the Foundation are also descendants of assassins from across the globe.

Okay, let me add an exception to my critique of the Templars and their ideals; contrary to them, Sofia genuinely believes that violence can be eradicated forever from the human psyche, and that her goal is virtuous. It’s a shame that her own father left her out of the loop about his true intentions… She promises that Abstergo will free Cal if he leads them to what they want.

Moussa is the most interesting of the other 'subjects'. It
helpes that he serves as a sort of leader figure for them.
That said, if he could stop acting so enigmatic...

He’s taken to the inmates’ quarters and meets some of them, also descendants of assassins. They seem unsure whether to trust Cal, and set about testing him, right there, in the cafeteria. There’s Moussa (Michael K. Williams), Emir (Matias Varela), Nathan (Callum Turner) and Lin (Michelle L. Lin), among others. They want to see whether he’s learning the way of the assassin from his time in the Animus, or if he’s about to give control of the world to the Templars on a silver platter. And, of course, there’s those hallucinations, plaguing him every now and then… but, they’re teaching him some impressive fighting moves, so it seems like it’s not all bad.

Aguilar is blurry, due to being a hallucination.
It's intentional from the movie's part.

Those moves are good enough to let him defend himself against guards of the Foundation when they come for him, but they overpower him and take him into the Animus again. His off-key rendition of Patsy Cline’s Crazy doesn’t faze them, and he sings even as he’s attached to the mechanical arm and Sofia attempts to knock some sense into him. He’s then sent into his ancestor's memories.

I'm not sure if he's singing Crazy because he genuinely
thinks he's going nuts, or just to further piss them off.
I think the second possibility is funnier.

How many witches are we burning today?

And not to very happy ones, either. Aguilar has been captured by the Spanish Inquisition and is about to be publically executed, to burn at the stake with his colleague/lover Maria and his mentor Benedicto. All under the watching eye of Tomás de Torquemada. You know how he is; do not implore him for compassion. Do not beg him for forgiveness. Do not ask him for mercy. Let’s face it, you can’t Torquemada anything!

…I avoided Monty Python, and then I quoted Mel Brooks. Oops.

Time for a magical escape act!

Mind you, if the film tried to be accurate, these executions would be horrific and used to terrorize the population into obedience, it wouldn’t be some sort of spectacle with costumed dancers, and a cheering audience. The three assassins are attached to the stakes, a flammable liquid poured onto the wood below their feet… Using what little resources he had, Aguilar manages to free his feet, just as his mentor goes up in flames. It’s too late to save Benedicto, but he still has time to save Maria – after freeing his hands, Aguilar fights the inquisitors, and once she’s free, Maria joins the fight as well!

Magical escape act, part the second - running away!

And in the Animus, not only is Callum reproducing all of the movements, but he’s doing so with an increasing precision. He’s synchronizing. Do… do the people at Abstergo realize that they’re pretty much turning him into a trained assassin? That sounds like a winning strategy. “Yeah, let him get all the tools he needs to kill us all, so long as we get the Apple in the end. What’s the worst that could happen?” The scientists manning the Animus watch as Callum climbs upwards in the air, brought up by the mechanical arm, in sync with Aguilar climbing towards freedom, with Maria following closely.

What follows is one of the series trademark – an action-packed scene involving a lot of parkour. We’ll see that in Part 2.