I’ll admit to scant experience when it comes to the world of gaming, and what I do know of Assassin’s Creed constitutes that sort of vague familiarity one tends to develop with a lot of pop culture phenomena by sheer force of osmosis without necessarily taking part first-hand, like, say, Pokémon Go, or Instagram nail art. Suffice it to say, then, that aside from the fact that it starred Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard—two people I’m rather inclined to putting my money on—I had very little idea of what I would be in for with the newly-out film adaptation. As it turns out, some light prior research might have been prudent. Assassin’s Creed—directed by Justin Kurzel, who previously helmed the elegant 2015 screen version of Macbeth, also starring Fassbender and Cotillard—works great as an extended promo for the game from which it derives. As a film, however, it is an utter misfire: bleak, humourless and at times just plain incoherent, it is unable to justify its existence, or indeed the efforts of an immensely talented cast. 

It’s been a hard life for Callum Lynch (Fassbender). His idyllic childhood was cut short when his mother passed away under mysterious circumstances, and he has since been on the run, falling into questionable company and passing through prison more than once. But his most recent misdemeanor—killing a man—has finally landed him on death row, and before we know it, he’s being given a lethal injection and pronounced dead. 

Except he’s not. Cal is whisked away by a group of scientists working for the Abstergo Industries, led by Dr. Sophia Rikkin (Cotillard), to their expansive research facility. What do they want with him? Well, it just so happens that our hero is a descendant of a man called Aguilar de Nerha, who—back in the 1400s—belonged to the Assassins, an ancient brotherhood committed to saving mankind from the clutches of the Knights Templar, a zealous Catholic military force that sought to wipe out free will through social control. In exchange for having rescued him from certain death, Sophia and her crew would like Cal to go back in time, or “regress”, by means of a machine called the Animus. Back to the days of the Spanish Inquisition no less, to experience his ancestor’s memories and locate a certain artifact that was last known to be in Aguilar’s possession and that has been at the centre of the battle between the Assassins and the Templar Order for centuries. You see, this object, the Apple of Eden, contains the “seed of man’s first disobedience”, and is therefore key toSophia, who would like to use it to find a genetic solution to the problem of violence. Cal must relive Aguilar’s adventures to find not only this all-important orb, but also answers to all the questions about his past that have haunted him through the years.

You can’t deny the sweeping grandeur of the visuals in Assassin’s Creed, and the artistry that has gone into the action set pieces—the parkour sequences are particularly thrilling—majority of them set in abeautifully-rendered dusty, old-timey Spain. The filmmakers have clearly relished getting to translate the world of the game to the big-screen scale, and the sets and costumes are impressive. But it’s still nothing novel or extraordinary; at a time when big-budget action-adventures are practically ten a penny, it takes a lot more than this to get audiences to sit up and really take notice. 

Ultimately, it is the undernourished screenplay, peddling the sort of hokey, schlocky blend of sci-fi and history that Dan Brown generally dabbles in—to much better effect, I might add—that is Creed’s downfall. There’s such visible effort to invest Every. Single. Word. of dialogue with heavy meaning:we have no conversations here, just super-enunciated sermons. And weighty though all that might make it sound on the surface, the endless, needlessly-convoluted blathering about free will and sacrifice, among other lofty ideas the film tries to tackle, turns out to be as hollow as it is exhausting—it’s hard to know, at any given point, what these people are actually talking about. Take that all-important apple, for instance: How does Sophia plan to use it, exactly? Is it meant to literally be the very same apple that Adam and Eve ate? Why the hell does it look like a Quidditch ball, then? 

The thing is, Creed staggers between either too little and too much exposition, so that even when you do get an explanation about what you’re seeing on screen, these most likely will be so flimsy and so utterly silly that you’ll probably rather prefer to be in the dark. Really, the only bright spot in the entire grim affair is when Fassbender’s character, upon first being shown the ropes at Abstergo, shakes his head at it all and wonders, “What the f*** is going on?”—pretty much exactly what the audience will have been asking throughout the film’s running.

Speaking of Fassbender, even though it’s appeared for a good while now that the actor can’t put a foot wrong, the very fact that he took up this role—despite already being part of a major commercial franchise in the form of X-Men, not to mention a whole lot of other projects—and is even credited as a producer on the film, makes one question his judgment. It isn’t for not trying, of course: Fassbender is nothing if not versatile and he works hard to make us care about his character. But, possibly owing to how the people that populate games are, by necessity, designed with the intent of enabling any player to slide into their skins more easily, Cal—although apparently a new character invented for the film—is still rather unremarkable; he is heroic, for sure, but with none of the sort of specificities of personality that might have made him interesting. The same goes for all the other characters here, donning one trait at the most, including Cotillard, who feels especially straitjacketed. 

Creed ends on the kind of annoying “stay-tuned” note that we’ve seen all too many times before, a clear sign that a sequel is waiting in the wings, even if that has meant being stingy with story in the film at hand. I can’t speak for those who have played the game and are acquainted with the mythology and characters—they would be able to talk more on whether the transition has been well-achieved. In itself, though, the film is not something I’d recommend spending time or money on.