Assassin's Creed

I think a movie set in a new era different from the ones the games have explored is the prime option for an AC Movie. If you adapt one of the games directly, you'll either remove a lot of material which made the game unique, or you'll have a ten hours movie. Plus no conflicting characterization and plots.

Setting it in a new period allows them to pick their battles when it comes to the story and historical accuracy, and instead of concerning with faithfulness to the games, it can show new unexplored parts of the AC canon.

I always thought AC was a great franchise for a movie, because it's so story-heavy.

Well the problem with doing Assassin's Creed in movies is that the stuff that makes AC unique for a video game, the heavy Historical Fiction is fairly conventional by movie standards. Its a big deal for fans to ask developers for an AC game set in Ancient Egypt/Feudal Japan but there are dime-a-dozen movies set in that era.

The only unique story is the Asasiyun, the historical Assassins during the Crusades. Ideally they should have gone pre-Altair and make a movie about the first Assassins founded in Iran.

Well movies with the level of historical detail and accuracy contained in the AC Games is something I've very rarely seen. The type of painstaking attention to detail and complex historicity is what the movie could profit from.

15th Century Spain isn't really overused, I think, as far as movies go. They can still tell plenty of unique stories in that time period (Hell a more accurate look at the Inqusition is pretty much unheard of in cinematic history).

edited 29th Aug '15 12:01:15 AM by Gaon

If no one will do the joke, I will.

NOBODY EXPEXTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

We all know that the chief weapon of the Assassin is surprise...

edited 29th Aug '15 1:22:21 AM by JulianLapostat

Amongst their weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, suprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Order, and nice white uniforms.

Well bear that in mind, the AC approach to accuracy is still far below the norm of the best historical and biographical films. The AC games are only a little more accurate than popular versions set in that era, but at its core its very much Alexandre Dumas or Walter Scott, they basically take an era, find popular stories in that time and do something a little more accurate and deconstructive but not something essentially different. These are adventure stories primarily. Like AC 3 is maybe more accurate than The Patriot but its less accurate than Gore Vidal's Burr, his novel set during the American Revolution (and which was clearly a source for the writers). The Ezio games are essentially the classic and cliche look at the Renaissance but without any complications, so we have Medici=Good, Borgia=Bad.

Likewise it has to be noted that these games don't really deal with complicated issues of the medieval era, which for instance movies have done. Like there have been what five games set in Europe and the Middle East and we don't have a single on-screen acknowledgement of anti-semitism or Jewish characters of any sort. That was an essential part of the social fabric but we never find out how the Assassins stand vis-a-vis the true minorities of the era and the fact that many of the major historical figures in the games actually tackled it. Like Pope Alexander VI was the most religiously tolerant pontiff of his era while Maximilien Robespierre played a key role in giving Jews the vote in France. In the games, they are Templars and these facts are conveniently unmentioned because if the developers brought it up, then the Assassins automatically stop being good guys. So on some level they are a little accurate but on another they are kind of chickens—t about it as well.

The only AC games that I think are genuinely interesting historically are AC 1 and Black Flag, you can make decent historical films based on the content of these two games. In the case of Black Flag, simply remove all the Assassin stuff and make a movie about Edward, Adewale and the Jackdaw and it would make an awesome movie. But the others are stuff that work as games more than they do as individual stories.

Well there are excellent historical films that deal with it. Any Martin Scorsese movie for instance, like say Gangs of New York, or recently you have Spielberg's Lincoln, before that you have David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. There are also many foreign films on The Criterion Collection that you can look at to see how movies have gotten history right.

The early Inquisition was definitely the worst and most bloody part of the era, involved in purging Jews and Moors out of Spain, so no revisionism there I'm afraid. The Inquisition only moderated itself after Torquemada.

The fact is the whole random grouping of some historical figures as Assassins and others as Templars works for a video game but it won't work for a movie because that kind of childish grouping is hard to take seriously.

edited 29th Aug '15 1:46:36 AM by JulianLapostat

Why would you go over ground that's already been covered way more extensively by a game that's nearly a decade old than a movie could ever hope to cover?

I made that joke a year ago when the first rumours that the movie would be set in Spain were coming out. :P

Also, for anyone interested, the movie is going to be canon to the games.

The "very best of historical and biographical films" are few and far in-between, so that really doesn't change much.

I find them to be reasonably accurate. The games bring great a wealth of detail in clothes, architecture, society norms and general time period feel. While evidently a lot of it is sacrficied for adventure plots, the games still have things like a decent portrayals of Machiavelli, Caterina Sforza, Savanarola, and leonardo da Vinci (the Ambiguously Gay undertones are particularly creative). AC III points out George Washington's (and the American Revolution's in general) darker side and flaws, the plight of the Indians and blacks at the time, and even some of the British concerns. It's a fairly good showing.

While AC II is very black-and-white, I don't think its bad enough to be particularly disconcerting or erase the goodness of all the other historical details.

The games do have flaws, that is evident, but I think their historical qualities overweight the flaws (except maybe in Unity). But I would like to observe I haven't seen any movies talk about Alexander VI's kindness to Jews (though the Borgias had a brief moment of this, but that show was a lot more wildly ahistorical than AC) or Robespierre's.

It's curious you should mention that because Black Flag also whitewashes the everliving shit out of Blackbeard to make him a more straightforward heroic figure.

Yes, it's because of those movies that I'm saying attention to historical detail is something the movie would profit from.

Of course it is the bloodiest part of the era, I'm not stating the Spanish Inquisition wasn't bad, I'm stating some aspects have been since clarified (for example the death rate, now thought to be somewhere amongst the 3.000 during the organization's entire existence, a much lower number than previous historical accounts suggested, and the use of torture being limited to a one-time-only use of 15 minutes and designed not to leave any lasting damage, or the fact many of the executions were eenacted by public trials rather than Inquisition itself, and so forth).

The Spanish Inquisition was of course, a brutal affair of intolerance in which innocents perished for little reason (and they fit as megalomanical villains in the AC verse), but I'd be interested in a portrayal that explores its complexities rather than going with the same old Burn the Witch! shtick. As far as I can tell, no movies have ever done so, so there's an opportunity for the AC movie.

edited 29th Aug '15 5:14:52 PM by Gaon

Well it does change things. The fact is Assassin's Creed in video games is unique because nobody else had done Historical Fiction with that kind of ambition before, unless you count Sid Meier's works, which is not quite the same. In games, Assassin's Creed has provided genuine standards for historical representation when before there was none. In movies, they have had several competiting traditions and styles for historical representation over the ages, of varying levels of accuracy and importance.

Really? If we are going to talk about clothes, then you have the Assassin outfit and their fondness for hoods that is out of touch with period detail, you have Sofia Sartor's decolletage in Ottoman Istanbul. As for society norms, Connor in AC 3, the idea that a Native American can be in the same room as the signatories of the Declaration, threaten George Washington to his face and walk out is a huge stretch of the imagination. Connor in AC 3 as a Mohawk who generally supports the Revolution is a huge huge stretch too. BLACK FLAG with Edward and Adewale is a lot more realistic in showing how a white man and black man could interact with each other in that time and place with some amount of equality, and even that has an element of hypocrisy. There's also internal inconsistencies, like Machiavelli is a republican and statesman as the games show but Ezio is friends with the Medici who in real-life tortured Machiavelli in 1512. None of this is touched on at all.

Well its not a Blackbeard biopic, its a portrayal of an entire period and time and place and that overall view is accurate. As for sidelining some of Blackbeard's coarser details, well the game shows Blackbeard killing a man when historically there is no evidence he killed anyone before his final stand.

Connor DOES somewhat have reason to support the Colonists cause; Davenport Homestead and Juno's Quest have inaccurately colored his world view. That's one of the major plot points come the end of the game. He DOESN'T know all the details and he's been played the fool.

I personally found AC 3 to be absolutely facinating just simply for how accurate a number of parts of it are. Sure, a Native American Man would be unlikely to do those things, but I can accept it for fiction similar to how I can accept other historical inaccuracies. Namely, there would be a number of very boring details if Connor was restricted to perfectly historically accurate plot points for him. I think its fine that he can do that if it means he can witness and do the things he does.

I think its also worth noting that, despite what I know of the setting, AC 3 is the first time I actually found it interesting.

Well as this historian said in this article: “If they wanted to get it right they should have made the hero from one of the smaller tribes in the south where fighting for the Americans was more common. But ‘Mohawk’ is a better sell." The reason Connor was Kanienka;haka is that geographically the Mohawk Valley is close to the "central events" of the Revolution, the stuff people want to see.

You are quite right that AC-3 gets a lot of basic stuff right. I am not arguing against that, but I am saying that only really compares well if you don't compare it to the really great Historical Fiction in novels and movies. Compare AC 3 to Gore Vidal's Burr the best and most accurate fiction of the American Revolution and the generation of the Founding Fathers. The game's version of Washington is kind of flat and a little timid whereas the one in Burr is shrewd, cold and ambitious, someone you can buy as the First President. AC 3 does look really good simply because there are not a lot of good movies about The American Revolution for some reason.

That is true. A lot of people thought that the American Revolution won't be an interesting setting. But it turned out to be a pretty compelling one in the game.

I still think AC 3 was the best in the series and where they really hit their stride. They had solid character arcs that, unlike a lot of games, have closure but don't feel completely resolved. Its Time Period plot reflected events in the Modern plot. IT ACTUALLY HAD A MODERN PLOTLINE. Desmond was an interesting character who actually did stuff and had character development. The game wasn't afraid to have themes and try new perspectives; When was the last time people took a serious big budget look at a Native American person in the American Revolution???

AC 2 was good, but it had the flighty bouncy feel of an Action Movie with its quick witty dialogue and action set pieces every level or so. As well as a more common an easily relateable plotline ('Revenge for your family'). AC 2 is where they refined the ideas of AC 1, but AC 3 is where they Grew the Beard and took some risks and I think they payed off pretty well. Everything after kind of has felt like a step back...

For me AC-3 is this really beautiful game. I just love the Frontier, the mountains, the crevices, the fields and meadows. I also think Boston is underrated, its one of the best cities in the games. The great thing about AC-3 was that it took some of the stuff that had become the Franchise identity, (climbing famous monuments, urban Parkour) and did away with it completely, I mean there aren't monuments in the Revolutionary Era (they would come later), this is America "under construction" and I love the sense that it gives of that. The Altair games and especially the Ezio games are the urban games par excellence, you had seven different kind of cities with unique architecture (Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre, Florence, Venice, Rome, Istanbul) and Altair's games had this immersive sense of crowded bazaar and city life. But then the developers took on a challenge on making games which are rural and pastoral with not as many buildings and rooftop fights and they did it brilliantly.

For me AC-3 as flawed as it is is the last game in the series that really tried to do something special. All the games after that reuse and recycle its assets or in the case of UNITY are so pathetically streamlined and gutless, that its not worth mentioning. I mean UNITY did not bring anything new in terms of gameplay to the franchise, whereas AC-3 pioneered like crazy. And now with Syndicate, you see even more streamlining. I am starting to think there won't be another game in the franchise with that same innovative and experimental spirit.

As for whether its the best I don't know, for me until Rogue-UNITY, I don't think there was a bad AC game. I like AC 1 and Black Flag best of the games. But I respect AC-3 the most and the Ezio games are the most fun.

edited 30th Aug '15 1:07:27 AM by JulianLapostat

Actually, one of the things I very specifically hated about AC 3 was how little of the map got revealed by Viewpoints. Not to say EVERYTHING should be revealed, but the view range of Connor was pathetically small that I fondly remember running across empty fields for hours just to clear up my map. And THAT was dull.

That got fixed with the later patches and its not an issue with the game I re-played recently.

The main thing about the AC movie is that a lot of people say that this could be movies but actually AC's real appeal is entirely gameplay. Like the main appeal is the open-world movement and grappling of terrain, actually climbing the buildings to the top, the sense that you are climbing Campanile di San Marco or Notre Dame. In movies, about the only thing that comes close is Tom Cruise climbing that Dubai Hotel but when we see that, we see Tom Cruise doing it, there's no fantasy of us doing that. And that's about the only appeal Historical Tourism is a part of. Likewise, there's the excitement of Been There, Shaped History but you know in a movie you can watch actual historical films to do all that. Because in the games, having Ezio interact and pal with Leonardo and Machiavelli works because we are Ezio. In a movie you would have an actor be Ezio and that ruins it, and Ezio becomes not some agent of historical change, but another bloodthirsty Renaissance Patron of the Arts. In AC-3, the real fantasy is Connor being this tree-runner and Lord of the Forests and Seas or Edward Kenway being the Greatest Pirate of the Nassau Era.

You can maybe do a lot of suspense about Assassins being blade-in-the-crowd but for that you have to take a realist approach and not Fassbender wearing a costume with a Hood. And again that would work best if you go the Crusades and the original context and setting of the games. So for me the games as a whole don't entirely work as movie material.

I'll be completely honest, I never found AC to be a Power Fantasy. I mean, I played as Ezio and Connor and Edward, but I never ever felt like I WAS Ezio/Connor/Edward.

With Ezio, it was because the trilogy had an Action Movie feel to it and I kind of gravitated towards audience. In Connors, I was genuinely very unlike Connor. I do not mean that in a bad way; Connor was one of my favorite protagonists, but I never 'WAS' Connor during the game and I was instead learning about him.

If anything, I feel like a gravitated into Desmond's shoes more than anyone else.

And, let's be fair, there are certain elements of gameplay that define an AC Game but I fully believe they do not define the entire series as we have had numerous adaptations from books to short films to comic that have none of those gameplay elements and a good chunk of those are regarded as highly as the core games. I don't think its fair to single out a Big Budget Blockbuster simply because its not a game.

Also, for all we know, there WILL be a Game based on the film. Knowing Ubisoft and their greedy Production lines.

The point of a power fantasy is to have abilities you do not possess in reality. Most gamers are not Parkourists, killers and masters of physical discipline, none of us are on first name basis with history's greatest minds and none of us can climb these monuments and leap of them in a perfect swan dive via a great height.

Likewise the AC protagonist characters are more than just characters, they are guides and representatives. Ezio is The Renaissance personified, Connor is likewise the embodiment of the American Dream and its compromise and failure, the ideal America that was promised but never made into reality, Edward Kenway is representative of the entire Nassau generation. So on some level we are meant to be these guys. They reflect attitudes we have to the past. There are exceptions like I think Altair in AC 1 is a real character and not a representative figure who stands for an entire period or society.

Well movie tie-ins have generally gone out of fashion in games. If its done its for Mobile games rather than consoles since its cheaper and it has a wider audience and so achieves the goals of the movie's marketing team better. Console releases generally do game-only narratives, especially after Arkham Asylum, which has become the gold standard for license games. Shadow of Mordor comes from that.

I still wouldn't rule it out entirely. Most Licensed Games are adaptations. They are films or books or comics being translated into the video game medium. In this case, it would be almost the reverse. Assassin's Creed the Video Game being translated into Film and then that film translated into Video Game.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility just yet.

There's a new AC comic series.

Seemingly titled simply "Assassin's Creed," it follows a modern-day Assassin named Charlotte de la Cruz. Of course, it wouldn't be AC without an historical character as well, so the ancestor she learns about is from the time of the Salem witch trials.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate London Horizon Trailer

Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Edward Kenway, Environmental Attacks, & More!

Highlights:

• The Kenways and the Indian Brotherhood will get nods in the game. (Latter we already knew, former not so much.)
• One environmental kill you can do involves barrels of dynamite, which existed during the time period.
• Jacob and Evie can't actually take control of the trains, but they can can detach individual carriages. (Not mentioned in the video but in the source article is that the train schedule includes a lesser frequency at night.)

And now we have the name of the mother of the Frye twins

Her name was Cecily Frye, she was an Assassin, and she died in childbirth.

The Kenways? Hmm. I can see here an opportunity here for something interesting.

In 1887, Buffalo Bill and his wild west show arrived in Britain, and they actually presented for Queen Victoria.

Amongst that show there was Black Elk, the Lakota holy man of Black Elk Speaks fame (Black Elk Speaks being a book where Black Elk describes his experiences as a holy man during the downfall of the Native American in the tail end of the 19th century. Quite a emotional read), he met with Queen Victoria (and she's actually described as one of the kindest women Black Elk ever met).

Maybe Black Elk is showing up in this game? Of course it would require a 20 years timeskip, but I'd really like to see Black Elk showing up.

I don't really see that happening.

Same. Especially since they said Queen Victoria wouldn't really play a role. Arguably, itd be worse to show her and do nothing with her instead of just simply never having her factor in.