Assassin's Creed the Movie: Crashed and Burned - dodged a bullet there and missed Razzie noms

  • Thread starter JKgo
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...Added new links in OP. If you're too busy to care, I'll just stick in some photos here instead...

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sems4arsenal
unleash the trailer already.
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...There's this rather interesting article that ran back in December, on EW.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/12/2...n-rikkin-business-card-voicemail?iid=sr-link2

On its own, the article's nothing more than a publicity stunt, but there's an interesting tidbit hidden within - a date is mentioned, and it's March 25th, 2016. The author of the article speculates that's when the teaser might drop.

Guess what movie opens on that day.

batman-v-superman-poster-ben-affleck.jpg

If indeed that's the date for when the teaser drops, will it be attached to this not-so-insignificant event of the year?
 
I've been playing Assassin's Creed Unity for the past couple of days, and I think I have worked out why film adaptations of video games like these don't really work - film is the wrong format.

A film is two or two and a half hours long, but I will sink a hundred hours or more into the likes of Assaasin's Creedd Unity, Fallout 4 or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Even if you cut the superfluous stuff, it's still considerably longer than any film. To make a film adaptation of a game would be like trying to condense an entire season of Game of Thrones into two hours. You just can't do it.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, that brings me to what I think is the ideal format for a video game adaptation: television. I just finished a mission in Assassin's Creed Unity where you infiltrate a hotel and eavesdrop on a Templar meeting. That, to me, would be an entire episode for a television series.

Typically, the budgets for television series are lower than films, but we are living in the Golden Age of Television - the ability to tell long-running stories, which you cannot do in films, makes it a much better storytelling medium. Producers are much more open to funding big-budget television series; Game of Thrones is a prime example of this, as is Person of Interest.

So if live-action adaptations of video games is going to be viable, then I think television, rather than film is a better way forward. The overall focus of the Assassin's Creed storyline would need much more focus - it only became clear as to what the Templars are actually trying to do in Assassin's Creed Unity - but the format is ready-made for the seasonal approach of a television series: season one in the Crusades (Assassin's Creed); season two during the Renaissance (Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood and Revolutions); season three in the Golden Age of Piracy (Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag); season four in the French and Indian War and the French Revolution (Assassin's Creed Rouge and Unity); and so on and so forth.
 
prisonermonkeys
I've been playing Assassin's Creed Unity for the past couple of days, and I think I have worked out why film adaptations of video games like these don't really work - film is the wrong format.

A film is two or two and a half hours long, but I will sink a hundred hours or more into the likes of Assaasin's Creedd Unity, Fallout 4 or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Even if you cut the superfluous stuff, it's still considerably longer than any film. To make a film adaptation of a game would be like trying to condense an entire season of Game of Thrones into two hours. You just can't do it.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, that brings me to what I think is the ideal format for a video game adaptation: television. I just finished a mission in Assassin's Creed Unity where you infiltrate a hotel and eavesdrop on a Templar meeting. That, to me, would be an entire episode for a television series.

Typically, the budgets for television series are lower than films, but we are living in the Golden Age of Television - the ability to tell long-running stories, which you cannot do in films, makes it a much better storytelling medium. Producers are much more open to funding big-budget television series; Game of Thrones is a prime example of this, as is Person of Interest.

So if live-action adaptations of video games is going to be viable, then I think television, rather than film is a better way forward. The overall focus of the Assassin's Creed storyline would need much more focus - it only became clear as to what the Templars are actually trying to do in Assassin's Creed Unity - but the format is ready-made for the seasonal approach of a television series: season one in the Crusades (Assassin's Creed); season two during the Renaissance (Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood and Revolutions); season three in the Golden Age of Piracy (Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag); season four in the French and Indian War and the French Revolution (Assassin's Creed Rouge and Unity); and so on and so forth.
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....While I agree with you, you bring up an interesting point: TV Vs. Movie as a story telling medium.

No doubt as a story telling device, a TV series seem like a great choice, especially with Daredevil serving as a perfect example to draw inspiration from. But I differ that the medium of films is inferior to the TV when it comes to video game adaptations.

We just don't have a succesful adaptation to point our fingers to and say that's how it's done; and that's not because film makers tried to cram a square ten-hour-narrative into a round two hour hole but they were just poorly made films instead, with token gestures by the makers trying to appease the so-called fans of the source material.

The cardinal sin of messing it up isn't just exclusively reserved for video game movies - everyone still tries to wash away the eye-cancer that is The Last Airbender from our collective consciousness. This is the film that commited the very crime you are refering to. And then there's that Dragonball movie... :irked:

For a live-action video game movie to work, the film makers must abandon what works in games completely, and concentrate on what has worked in the past - in the regular movies regardless of what the source material is. This has been said countless times before - a game is an interactive form of story telling while a movie is a passive one so the two is incompatible.

That is why Ubisoft has been smart about the way they went with this film: it's not related to any of the games. It's telling its own story, which will (hopefully) fit a two hour story structure better. If you left the AC brand out, it could probably be able to stand on its two feet as any ol' fantasy sci-fi action film Hollywood churns out annually.
 
JKgo
That is why Ubisoft has been smart about the way they went with this film: it's not related to any of the games. It's telling its own story, which will (hopefully) fit a two hour story structure better. If you left the AC brand out, it could probably be able to stand on its two feet as any ol' fantasy sci-fi action film Hollywood churns out annually.
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That remains to be seen. The film needs to supplement the existing franchise - it needs to engage newcomers and fans alike. It can't be too hung up on the lore for risk of alienating newcomers, but at the same time it can't be a re-tread of previous titles because it won't offer anything new to established fans.

In order to be an Assassin's Creed film, it needs to include a few key elements:
  • A leap of faith
  • Conspiracy in both the past and present
  • Some kind of sequence where the Animus creates issues - like Desmond winding up in the boot program, or Arno crossing the server bridges
  • Michael Fassbender attempting parkour and grabbing on to every single ledge or surface except for the one he actually wants
I'm guessing that the plot of the film will revolve around the Spanish Inquisition or the Reconquista.
 
prisonermonkeys
  • A leap of faith
  • Conspiracy in both the past and present
  • Some kind of sequence where the Animus creates issues - like Desmond winding up in the boot program, or Arno crossing the server bridges
  • Michael Fassbender attempting parkour and grabbing on to every single ledge or surface except for the one he actually wants
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....Some people were shown rough footage of the film and the Leap is there, apparently. Jeremy Irons plays Abstergo CEO so the present/slightly future conspiracy bit seems to be there as well. Not sure how indepth the film makers will play off on that idea though.

Not so sure about the Animus issues personally, as that wouldn't be a priority on this film as far as story beats go. Maybe in the already-announced sequel....

As for the last bit, oh you so mean. :lol:
 
JKgo
Not so sure about the Animus issues personally, as that wouldn't be a priority on this film as far as story beats go. Maybe in the already-announced sequel....
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Maybe explore it in more detail later on, but at least allude to the idea that the world is a simulated recreation. Even if it's as simple as having the world fabricated at the start of each sequence. But I do feel that it's something that was missing from the games following Revelations - the idea that you are hooked up to a machine and that things can go wrong. It's creepy running around an abandoned Paris in Unity or playing the glitched memories in Rogue.

JKgo
As for the last bit, oh you so mean.
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No, just annoyed. It happens in every single game - even on missions that are specifically designed for you to follow a single path.
 
So, I have been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed of late, focusing on Unity and Syndicate as Dirt Rally was murder on my hands. While catching up on the plot, I have to say that the film has an enormous hurdle to overcome: really poorly planned-out storytelling in the meta-narrative. Remember Juno? She showed up at the end of Assassin's Creed III and was alluded to in Black Flag ... and then everyone kind of just forgot about her. She appeared again in a minor role in Syndicate and exactly what she is planning is starting to become clear (or at least less murky), but I think that the series has a bad habit of getting caught up in its own subplots. I am finding Syndicate to be a lot like Rogue - a bridging title that only really serves to tie up loose ends; in this case, explain what a Sage is, what his presence means and why this is a problem. But given that the role of a Sage and his relationship to the Templars is at the heart of Unity, it's a pretty large oversight when Ubisoft need to make an entirely new game to explain it (and even then, I find Galina - a peripheral character at best - to be more interesting than most of the stuff that's going on). I didn't even know that Jacques de Molay was a Sage until I read it in the Syndicate database, and to me that's a pretty significant point because it fundamentally changes my understanding of the Templars (and clarifies Germain's motives in Unity):

If de Molay was a Sage, that means the Templars were created as Instruments of the First Will and were intended to bring Juno back all along. They're not simply an evil conspiracy trying to rule the world by controlling new technology; someone at the top of Abstergo has to know what their true purpose is.
The same thing happened with Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations; the three games would have been better as one streamlined title (with Revelations as the middle chapter and Brotherhood the conclusion), but got caught up explaining their own subplots so that the main narrative could be introduced in Assassin's Creed III. That's what I think the biggest challenge that the film faces will be - it has to avoid introducing stuff that isn't necessary and distracts from the complex mythology.
 
Going by that last picture, Callum Lynch is probably Subject 15 or Subject 18. Or I suppose that he could be the unnamed Abstergo employee from Black Flag and Rogue.
 

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