It’s Another Video Game Movie
Okay so let’s start off by getting one thing straight: I’m only really blaming myself. Not the person I saw it with (sorry man), not the studio, just myself.
As We All know, Video Game Movies are great right?
Ahem….
Pixels
Warcraft
Doom
And we’re not going to even talk about this one.
Okay maybe they’re not great. But maybe they’re not all bad, right?
At Least That’s What I Thought
When I first saw a trailer for it, I saw the Ubisoft logo and immediately thought, “Oh god, they can’t be….” But they did! And given that my lovely hometown has such a plethora of activities to partake in on Friday nights (read as: it doesn’t), I saw a movie. When I first planned to see it a few days ago it had a nice 22% on rotten tomatoes. Pretty special. Then I checked later to see if more people seeing it would change the rating. Annnd… down to 18%. I guess more people had to see it to outweigh the fanboys.
Now that there should have been enough of a sign of how it would be. Now I’m not a die-hard Assassin’s Creed fan or anything by a long shot. I’ve finished Black Flag twice and that’s it. Maybe that just means I didn’t get some of the intricacies. I’m going to leave it up to you all to keep your opinions about whether or not movies like this should have enough backstory to inform viewers of what’s happening or not. My friend had played none of the games and didn’t know any of the backstory for reference.
Keeping that in mind. In a few words the movie was confusing at best, or otherwise utterly incoherent. Let’s ignore for a second that the Animus has apparently no fail-safes that keep it from literally breaking on impact with the floor. The hilarity started when the Ubisoft logo came on the screen at the beginning and the theater erupted with comments about having to pay for the rest of the movie as DLC. And honestly that was the easiest to follow train of thought that I encountered at the theater tonight. It just made no sense. You couldn’t tell what was going on, and if you thought you could, you were quickly proven wrong. There was no clapping at the end, only a relieved clearing of the theater as people thought about their decisions.
Maybe That Was A Little Harsh
It was confusing, yes. but I went to see it for two reasons: because it was showing, and senseless action and violence. It fortunately delivered on both fronts. The use of long helicopter shots gets tired after a while but the violence never lacked. They key was that I had almost no expectations of quality going in to the movie.
Am I unhappy I saw it? No. Should you see it? Maybe, as long as you have zero expectations. Was it any good? No. Were all the reviewers right when it got a terrible rating? That’s an unassailable yes.