Assassin's Creed Medium
Assassin's Creed: The Movie
About: Ubisoft had plans to make an Assassin's Creed movie since 2011, which is about the time Assassin's Creed: Revelations came out. There were several conditions that were made during the developmental process, one of which was that Ubisoft had final say on nearly every aspect of the film. Video game adaptations never really had a good reputation when coming to the big screen. After several developmental changes, Justin Kurzel - some director I have never heard of - decided to pull together a band of people and spend $125 million to help film a movie based on our beloved series for a total of 5 months between August 2015 and January 2016. Although it was tore apart by critics, the movie still managed to reap in $240 million worldwide. Despite the sales, it has been speculated that the expenditures of everything that went into the film actually cost them roughly $75 million in the long run.
Setting: I think the saddest part of watching a 2-hour movie is that you tend to miss out on the backstory. The modern day portion is, of course, taken place in 2016. Callum Lynch meets Lin (Shao Jun's descendant), Nathan (Duncan Walpole's descendant), Emir (Yusuf Tazim's descendant), and Moussa (Baptiste's descendant). Of course, you wouldn't know all of this unless you dug into "The Official Movie Novelization" book that supplies all these details for you. You could have also seen these ancestors during a deleted scene where Cal would have met a patient named Lara (Maria's descendant).
But what era does our protagonist dive into? For a brief moment, you can hear some exposition of the time and place from the computer geeks upstairs. It is 1492, during the Granada War, when Aguilar de Nerha is assigned to protect Prince Ahmed de Granada from Templar Grand Master Tomas de Torquemada. The Templars plan to kidnap the boy and exchange him for the The Apple of Eden relic. There is a brief scene where you can see the assassins being placed in the auto da fe during the Spanish Inquisition. That's about all we get from the film.
Only One Film? Interesting enough, Ubisoft had planned to make it into a trilogy... because I guess that is what every film director is doing nowadays whether we like it or not. But good old Disney had to cancel it when they bought out 21st Century Fox in 2019. I would have really liked to see a Mega Man and Sims movie too. I guess we will never know what Sofia Rikkin was going to do to the assassins. The only thing we can probably look forward to now is the animated television series.
Parallel Story: There are a lot of things in the movie that fans of the series will instantly recognize. The "Assassins versus Templars" fight always has some level of betrayals, espionage, traitors, sacrifices, and convergence of power. The "Bleeding Effect" effect is shown slightly different. Instead of a bright glow or highlighted silhouettes of everyday items popping into the background, they chose to use fellow assassins appear in a dark shadowy fog to actively haunt and advise the protagonist of what he should do. One amazing thing the producers did was have Michael Fassbender's stunt double Damien Walters perform a real 125 feet Leap of Faith.
Remembering back to how producers "remade" The Thing, I realized that much of the movie was sort of a retelling of Desmond Miles experience with Abstergo Industries. A scientist is given billions of dollars in order to stick a man into a machine and retrieve an ancient memory from a guy's ancestral DNA so his bosses can find an ancient relic (the same type from the series) and gain control over the populace.
Who's The Audience? As much as I adore the movie for what it was, I have to ask - who did they have in mind to watch the film? If they had planned to make it for their fans, did they have to choose a new character? That was perhaps one of the biggest head-scratchers from the gamers. I understand that they had planned to connect the story to a future game. But there were a ton of people that would have been perfectly happy for you to revisit any of the awesome characters we all know already developed in your games.
I also understand how you didn't want to "copy" the Matrix, but the "new" Animus made absolutely no sense within the confines of the games. Not only was the chair already established in multiple games, but Abstergo Entertainment already developed a form of head-visor that fulfills the same goal by digging into someone else's memories. Your guy won't be on the brink of dying and you won't be "teaching him the Assassin way" by having him replicate the maneuvers in real life. You already established the year in the movie, so don't be trying to say that this came "before the chair." Maybe it's that weird trailer that made people not want to watch the movie.
Hollywood Treatment: Another huge complaint of mine is perhaps the entire tone of the film. Wait, I'm getting flashbacks of my review of Prince of Persia. Oh my word! Ubisoft did that movie too in 2010 from their very own game! Do you guys learn anything? There is this "darkness" that is consistent throughout the whole film - the faded lights, the black floor, the giant dust clouds, how hard it is to see people fight, the robustness of the facility, those really old computers they are using to access the Animus, and all those stupid "moments" where we see plants and animals in the background without proper sunlight. It wasn't cool in Batman versus Superman and it isn't cool now! And why did the Apple of Eden glow green? That bad boy shined yellow and should have been used to show its full potential! What I'm saying is that if a fan of yours was confused with what was going on, a non-gamer is most definitely not going to know what is going on. It would have been wise to dump some of the emotional flashbacks of the main character and expounded a little more to what these "organizations" were.
Review: Ubisoft used another form of medium to tell a story that barely connects to the series. They do an amazing job replicating the feel of an assassin by using various weapons and techniques fully established within the games. Their choreography, costume design, and choice of actors were all splendid to watch. However, the rest of film suffers dramatically from instituting a giant void of information regarding anything important enough outside the long, drawn-out emotional backstory of a character that doesn't help resolve what exactly is going on around him. The dark filters that were applied to the camera and sets contradict the type of setting that people would be familiar with in a modern day environment. I would only watch it if you are a fan of the games.
Assassin's Creed: The Comics
Disclosure: I'm not a big fan of comics. Characters feel very static to me when their actions and emotions aren't properly defined in such a confined space. However, there is a lot of information that you'd miss out on if you bypassed the comics. I figured it might be wise to read them now - or at least skim them - considering Assassin's Creed: Origins will be going "back in time" and rebooting the series.
Assassin's Creed "Cycle 1" : This series has 6 issues that are each roughly 50 pages long. Each issue was written by Les Deux Royaumes from Ubisoft's publishing division, one issue per year between 2009 - 2014. They were originally written in French. Titan Books translated the initial trilogy to English in 2012 and every following year after that. The comic isn't exactly "canon" as it tells an alternate series of events pertaining to the events that happen around the characters within the first five games of the series. This is only briefly mentioned beginning in the first two issues and then completely shifts to a new character for the rest of them.
Consisting of the first three volumes, The Ankh of Isis Trilogy tells the search for an ancient artifact through Desmond Miles ancestor Aquilus and the ancestor Accipter from our new character Jonathan Hawk. Taken directly from the wiki, the other three volumes - The Hawk Trilogy - "centers around Jonathan Hawk, a member of the modern day Assassin cell based in London, who relives the memories of his Egyptian ancestor Numa Al'Khamsin, in order to locate the Scepter of Aset."
Review: I'm not a comic person, so the constant references to flying creatures - crow, falcon, eagles, hawk, vultures, ravens, and owls - was probably a bit too much for me. I do like how the series handles the "upper-management" of handling cases from both the Templars and the Assassins in modern day life. Mr. Rikkin, you may recognize from the movie, also contributes to a large chunk of the story. They also play on the notion of being able to relive memories from not only other people but those who have long been dead. However, the series ends on a cliffhanger after the results from "Subject 19" come back to the Order. So I give this series a pass since it barely makes any official connection to the video games.
Assassin's Creed "Cycle 2" Conspiracies & "Cycle 3" Bloodstones: There are a lot of people requesting to see an assassin during a modern war setting. These comics are for you. Assassin's Creed: Conspiraces covers events during the Nazi Era during World War 2 and Assassin's Creed: Bloodstones covers events during the Vietnam War. Since these comics are more recent, it is clear to me that there really wasn't anything that tied them to the video games. If you would like to see Assassins and Templars become a bunch of fools chasing down another Piece of Eden be my guest.
Comic Series: While playing the video games, you may have noticed a ton of loose threads - Erudito Collective that hacked into Animus Visors, the devastating Juno AI that hides in the system, Instruments of the Will cult that support the crazy lady, and the truth behind the Phoenix Project. Unfortunately, not much is explained in the 14 issues of the Assassin's Creed: Assassins series that was published between October 14, 2015 and December 28, 2016. I thought it was supposed to compliment the games. I don't think I recognized a single person in that series. Things moved way too fast for me, there was a cliffhanger with some sort of extensional revelation to shock you at the end of almost every issue, and some of the text in the dialogue bubbles got really tiny for some reason. The only thing I really enjoyed was the story of the Lady and the Spaniard when the protagonist was reliving her ancestor. The only benefit of reading the series is to become familiar with certain characters before checking out Assassin's Creed: Uprising.
On the other hand, Assassin's Creed: Templars was a much more interesting story totally 9 issues. It tells the story of Black Cross, a sort of bogeyman that makes sure all the Templars stay faithful to The Order. He is like some sort of rogue Templar-Assassin hybrid that tracks down corrupt men who infiltrate or take advantage of their high positions. There is no mention of the Assassin Brotherhood and the modern setting with Otso Berg doesn't come into effect until Issue #5. There are several issues, especially the last couple, that barely have any dialogue. The series came out March 23, 2016 to January 25, 2017.
The last portion of the saga combines the Assassins and the Templars from the previous two series into one collective unit against Juno. 12 issues of Assassin's Creed: Uprising were produced from February 1, 2017 to June 13, 2018. The story behind the Koh-I-Noor diamond and how it controls the will of the people was fair enough. We've been exposed to that thing plenty of times. I also enjoyed the comic's thoroughness of Juno's lifestyle in the Early Civilization in Issue #4. My biggest complaint is keeping up with all those characters. The first issue alone lists off 8 members. There is so much chaos that it is hard to become attached to any of them. Things get very interesting in Assassin's Creed: Uprising Volume 3: Finale with their whole cloning lab. I didn't know what to believe after reading the story behind Elijah. In any case, I felt it brought a satisfying end to everything that was brought up in the video games.
Assassin's Creed: Reflections is a very interesting tale of how Osto Berg dives into four obscure stories, each with their own comic issue, regarding the morality of well-established assassins from the video games - Ezio from Assassin's Creed 2 (Issue 1), Altair from Assassin's Creed (Issue 2), Edward from Assassins Creed 4 (Issue 3), and Connor from Assassin's Creed 3 (Issue 4). Although I didn't care too much for Issue #2, I found every issue worth reading. The tale of Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa in Issue #1 is probably my favorite. If you ever wanted to see a picture of Osto Berg's daughter, there is one on his phone at the end of issue #4.
Assassin's Creed: Last Descendents: I'm going to sort of add this here even though I haven't read them. There were three novels that came out regarding a group of teenagers tracking down the Trident of Eden. The first installment was released in August 2016, with the second book, Tomb of the Khan released in December 2016 and the third, Fate of the Gods, following in 2017. However! Between the release of the first two novels, Titan Comics published a little comic book series called Assassin's Creed Last Descendents: Locus. This caught my attention since it covers the shenanigans of Henry Green and Evie Frye after the events in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate but before they went to India (shown in the Jack the Ripper DLC). Sadly, Jacob Frye couldn't participate into their little crackdown. The pretentious cliffhangers at the end of every issue didn't help their cause either. Although the story sort of dead-ends in an unsatisfactory way, I found the adventure and cheeky dialogue to be rather enthralling. I also found the female antagonist assassin to be a rather compelling character. If you are a fan of the video game, I'd definitely give this series a shot.
7-24-2020