10 Reasons The Assassin’s Creed Movie Failed (With Critics, Audiences & At The Box Office)
Assassin’s Creed, based on the popular video game franchise of the same name, is one of the lowest-rated video game movies of all time. Despite having all the ingredients to be a great adaptation, the movie failed to impress both fans and critics, resulting in poor box office performance. The movie follows the story of Cal, an original character, who must retrieve an artifact and stop the Templar Order from using it to enslave humanity.
One of the reasons for the movie’s failure is its lack of exciting visuals. While the video games are known for their lavish locations and exciting visuals, the movie looks surprisingly drab. The fact that half of the film is set in a laboratory doesn’t help the dull visuals. The movie fails to take advantage of the European locations and doesn’t elevate the basic-looking modern-day scenes.
The movie also focuses too much on the science fiction aspect of the narrative, turning it into a run-of-the-mill science fiction flick. The lack of adventure and parkour, which are trademarks of the video game franchise, also contributed to the movie’s failure. Additionally, the movie takes itself too seriously, sucking the fun out of the franchise and making it hard to connect with the characters.
The star-studded cast, which includes Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, and Brendan Gleeson, lacked chemistry, and the movie had bad pacing, making it slow-paced for an action and sci-fi movie. The movie also had major box office competition, as it was released on the same date as Sing and Passengers and just one week after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s release.
In conclusion, Assassin’s Creed had all the potential to be a great adaptation, but it failed to deliver. Its lack of exciting visuals, focus on the science fiction aspect of the narrative, lack of adventure and parkour, bad pacing, and major box office competition contributed to its failure.
Assassin’s Creed is one of the lowest-rated video game movies of all time, and the reasons for its box office reception and the fan response aren’t in doubt. The 2016 release is based on the popular video game franchise of the same name, which is about ancestors of high-profile subjects from various period settings, whether it’s set in 1400s Italy or in Boston during the revolutionary war. Their descendants are essentially sent back in time to retrieve priceless information. The movie adaptation isn’t based on any particular Assassin’s Creed game, but it is set in the same world.
The Assassin’s Creed movie had all the makings to be the first truly great adaptation of a video game franchise. The Assassin’s Creed cast is full of movie stars and Academy Award nominees, including Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, and Brendan Gleeson. The movie also seemed to have incredible production value, being shot on location and having period-accurate costumes and sets. Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed underperformed at the box office and was hated by critics with a “rotten” 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.
10 Assassin’s Creed Lacks The Game’s Exciting Visuals
The Assassin’s Creed video games are beloved for the exciting visuals and lavish locations, and while Assassin’s Creed is set in Seville, Malta, and London, the movie looks surprisingly drab. The fact that half of the film is set in a laboratory doesn’t help the dull visuals either, as those sequences feel sterile and bland. There’s nothing particularly cinematic or vibrant about any of the shots. Assassin’s Creed had the chance to be full of beautiful scenery and landscapes, but the movie failed to take advantage of the European locations and didn’t elevate the basic-looking modern-day scenes.
9 Assassin’s Creed Is A By-The-Numbers Sci-Fi Movie
While the video game series has an element of sci-fi with a number of cutscenes taking place in the modern day, nearly all of the gameplay takes place in the past. However, half of the Assassin’s Creed movie adaptation takes place in the modern day, and the scenes are full of futuristic-looking technology and science labs, and the film gets too bogged down in this aspect of the narrative. By taking this approach, it ignored the most appealing part of the franchise’s premise. The story itself is interesting, as Cal (Fassbender) must retrieve an artifact and stop the Templar Order from using it to enslave humanity. That sounds like an exciting film, but Assassin’s Creed focuses on the sci-fi aspect of the narrative, turning it into a run-of-the-mill science fiction flick.
8 Assassin’s Creed Has No Sense Of Adventure
Not only is the 2016 release’s narrative the perfect vehicle for a modern-day action-adventure movie, but Assassin’s Creed was widely criticized for lacking any sense of adventure. The video game franchise gave gamers such a huge sense of adventure and scope, as players explore huge open worlds with secrets around every corner. Gamers could ride on horseback, interact with NPCs, steal from villagers, and even hide in bails of hay, and most importantly, all of that was fun and immersive. Unfortunately, the Assassin’s Creed movie features none of those elements, and the lack of adventure didn’t help the movie’s box office performance.
7 Assassin’s Creed Lacks The Game’s Parkour
Another one of the Assassin’s Creed franchise’s best selling points is parkour. Assassin’s Creed’s classic parkour gameplay was totally unique at the time, and while other games attempted parkour, few were as fluid, no other open worlds’ buildings were as interactive, and not many playable characters could move at such impressive speeds. The parkour in Assassin’s Creed delivered such a sense of speed and was so thrilling that a movie adaptation couldn’t have had more potential. An Assassin’s Creed movie adaptation could have been packed with exciting, death-defying stunts, but Assassin’s Creed didn’t deliver on that potential and ultimately featured next to no parkour whatsoever.
6 Assassin’s Creed Focuses On An Original Character Instead Of Desmond Miles
The Assassin’s Creed franchise doesn’t have just one fascinating protagonist, but several of them, as each game follows a different playable character. However, despite having an array of characters to choose from for a movie adaptation, screenwriter Michael Lesslie came up with Cal, a completely original character. This decision was followed by critics complaining that Cal had no personality. This is a common problem for video game movies, as 2021’s Mortal Kombat’s Cole Young is also an original character, and he too was subjected to these critiques. But whereas Mortal Kombat ticked every other box for fans and was faithful to the games, Assassin’s Creed wasn’t able to do the same, and that made the original character of Cal all the more jarring.
5 Assassin’s Creed Takes Itself Too Seriously
The most financially successful video game movies are fun, whether it’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie or Uncharted. While Uncharted took liberties with the source material, it was still a fun adventure movie with humor. However, Assassin’s Creed was such a brooding take on the video game that it sucked the fun out of the franchise and made it hard to connect with the characters. The movie is based on a video game franchise where characters travel back in time in their heads, leap across rooftops, and engage in huge fights, which is meant to be fun, not the overly serious Shakespearean take that critics accused the film of being.
4 Assassin’s Creed’s Dialogue Is Mostly Exposition
One of the most important rules of screenwriting is “show don’t tell,” which essentially means that it’s way more exciting to show an event instead of having a character explain it to someone else. However, Assassin’s Creed is full of characters telling stories that aren’t that interesting or are relaying unimportant science fiction mumbo jumbo. Some characters’ dialogue is entirely expository as well, as they the mechanics of the technology or the science behind what’s going on. The movie seemingly trips up over its own world-building, and the clunky dialogue only further confuses audiences, not to mention how it holds back all the action.
3 The Assassin’s Creed Cast Has No Chemistry
The film has a star-studded cast full of actors that have proved that they’re just as great in genre pieces as they are in award-winning dramas. Fassbender gave an emotionally exhausting performance in Hungerand also demonstrated how wildly entertaining he can be through his performances as Magneto in the X-Men franchise. Brendan Gleeson gave a powerful performance in The Banshees of Inisherin while also hamming it up in the Harry Potter movie series. However, those very same actors seem totally disinterested in Assassin’s Creedwith Fassbender and Cotillard lacking any chemistry in the film.
2 Assassin’s Creed Has Bad Pacing
For an action movie and even a sci-fi movie, Assassin’s Creed is extremely slow-paced, and while a slow-building story isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Fassbender said himself that the movie has three different beginnings. Fassbender’s Assassin’s Creed comments perfectly underscore the issues with the movie, as he explained, “I would make it more entertaining, that’s really the main note. The feeling of the film, I think it took itself too seriously and I would get to the action a lot quicker.” Even Assassin’s Creed’s action scenes fail to pick up the movie’s pace.
1 Assassin’s Creed Had Major Box Office Competition
Assassin’s Creed made just $240 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo). The general rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make 2.5 times its budget to be profitable, meaning that Assassin’s Creed left theaters around $70 million still in the red. However, while all of Assassin’s Creed’s problems certainly contributed to the film’s failure, the biggest issue was its competition. The movie was released on the same date as Sing and Passengersand just one week after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s release. With so many high-profile movies avialable to movie-goers at the time, Assassin’s Creed was fighting an uphill box office battle to begin with. As a consequence of its failure, Assassin’s Creed 2 never happened, with the 2016 film currently remaining the franchise’s only big-screen adaptation.
