YMMV / Assassin's Creed (2016)

• Anti-Climax Boss: All it takes to take down Rikkin is for Callum to sneak up behind him and slit his throat at the end. Though this may be justified considering Rikkin is a Non-Action Big Bad, it still comes across as disappointing for people hoping to at least come across him in person in the games. Then again, the pre-Origins games are known for their anti-climactic boss fights as well, so in that respect, it's true to the text.
• Complete Monster: Tomás de Torquemada. See that page for details.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics and audience scores have been clashing here. While it's generally agreed that the character development and story is difficult to follow for those not familiar with the series, there's a grand divide on whether or not the visuals and action save the film.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Warcraft. The two fanbases clash over which one is the better video game film.
• Genius Bonus: The many Templars saying "It is not to ourselves" is a nod to the actual Badass Creed of The Knights Templar: Non nobis domine..."Not to us, o Lord" which intended to state how each Templar surrendered worldly possessions and vanity to serve a higher calling. Within the context of the film, it's possibly ironic or sarcastic, since Alan Rikkin very much wants to claim the honor of finding the Apple and defeating the Assassins.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In the US, it was a bomb, having only made $54 million out of its $125 million budget. However, its foreign receipts were $185 million, making it the fourth most popular video game movie ever made.^note when counting foreign receipts - most rating sites only count domestic profits when scoring films It earned fifth of that money in China and Russia alone (23.3 and 16.3 millions, respectively). However, it should be noted that the lion share of revenue in almost all foreign markets was generated in the opening week, suggesting a pretty awful word-of-mouth.
• He Really Can Act: Javier Gutiérrez was heavily Playing Against Type when he was cast as Torquemada, as although he had just won a Goya Award in a gritty drama film, he was (and still is) mostly known in Spain for his early comedic roles. As a consequence, there were many people who doubted he could give a convincing impression of such an important villain, and some even feared he could drag down the entire film with his failure. However, after the film came out, even those who still disliked the cast choice conceded he had given a brilliant performance as the wicked Torquemada, or at least that he had done it much better than they expected.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jeremy Irons plays a high ranking Templar in the film. In The Borgias, he played Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander VI, who's the Grand Master of the Templar Order and the Big Bad in Assassin's Creed II.
  • Back when the uber-popular Spanish TV series Águila Roja premiered in 2009, its producers were accused of copying the Assassin look for the title character and the plot of the games for the first season's arc, with some critics being harsh enough to call the series a poor "Assassin's Creed in Spain". Comes 2016, and not only the official Assassin's Creed movie is set on Spain, but its ancestral hero is named Aguilar and a member of Águila Roja's main cast, Javier Gutiérrez, appears on it.
  • Moreover, Gutiérrez's character in Águila Roja was the Bumbling Sidekick of the mentioned Assassin Expy, and they both had to fight The Spanish Inquisition in several episodes. Here he plays Inquisitor Torquemada of all people, who also opposes the Assassins.
  • Moussa and Nathan are very loyal to the Assassins while their ancestors, Baptiste and Duncan Walpole, betrayed the Brotherhood and joined the Templars. It adds an extra helping when you remember this isn't the first time loyalties changed throughout bloodlines: Edward eventually joined the Assassins, Haytham joined the Templars, and Connor rebuilt the Colonial Assassins.
• Memetic Mutation: The choice of setting led to inevitable Monty Python jokes almost immediately. Why? Because NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
• Narm:
  • From the first trailer, Kanye West's "I am a God" is strange and out of place. From the second trailer, Marion Cotillard's line, "Welcome to the Spanish Inquisition!" was seen as way too silly to be said with a straight face due to the Memetic Mutation above.
  • Whenever Callum entered the machine, the film keeps cutting back into the present day segment with Callum mimicking his ancestor's movements. It harms the epicness of the action scenes sort of like seeing the wires in wuxia style movies.
  • For Spaniards or people interested in Spanish culture, Queen Isabella I of Castile sporting Pict-like facepaint and an auto-da-fé being staged with dancers in Pagan-style goat masks by the very Catholic Inquisition can stretch the limits of Artistic License – History the film runs on.
    Andoni Garrido: One question — just why is Queen Isabella covered in tattoos? Rather than the Queen of Castile, she looks like the Queen of the Ruta del Bakalao.^note A Spanish party route of The '90s, infamous for all sorts of drugs, craziness and punk behavior.
  • When Callum finally successfully does a Leap of Faith, the Animus appears to break. Because the Leap of Faith is so powerful, right? Much funnier when you realize that he leapt into water, which instantly desynchronizes the player in the first game; might have been a deliberate reference.
• Narm Charm: Aguilar and María performing simultaneous Leap of Faith poses before inserting themselves in the chamber where the Apple of Eden is guarded. Cheesy? Yes. Awesome? Hell yes!
• Signature Scene: The Leap of Faith scene, which was performed by Fassbender's stunt double, Damien Walters, without any CGI, and it looks stunning.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general opinion between viewers who are neither fans of the games nor professional critics. They usually criticize the erratic pace, boring ending and what is perceived as videogame style over film substance, while in the same time tend to praise the breakneck action scenes, the significantly good cinematography and the fact that the entire cast Took the Bad Film Seriously.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • When Octavia-Selena Alexandru's character of Lara was unveiled as part of the movie's deleted scenes, most fans regretted her subplot was cut from the movie, considering she would have been a great addition as a Little Miss Badass and Oracular Urchin Assassin (though some acknowledge that what we know about the subplot seems to need some work, particularly her Relationship Writing Fumble with Callum and their ancestors's romance).
  • The real Alonso de Ojeda became a conquistador after the battle of Granada and was a personal enemy of Christopher Columbus. In the film, they are respectively a Templar and an Assassin, which presented a wonderful chance to connect with real history and explain that Ojeda actually sailed to the Americas on the chase of Columbus and the Fruit of Knowledge. Their relationship seems so natural that it feels like this was what the writers had planned at some point, otherwise they would have not written in a conquistador whose role in Granada was rather small. However, in the film, Ojeda is killed in Granada and this possibility is never used.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Animus sections and plotline about Granada and the Apple of Eden have much less screen time than the modern-day portions and are less explored, but they were unanimously considered the best part of the film, and both fans and detractors of the final product acknowledged they all would have wanted to see more of it. This is incidentally an echo of the complaints the very first game of the franchise received, which resulted in much of Assassin's Creed II being set in the past.
• Video Game Movies Suck: Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic have the movie sitting at scores of 19% likes (with an average score of 4/10) and 36/100 respectively, suggesting that it didn't succeeded in its attempt to win an audience. The general problem most critics had was that the movie's action scenes could not save the lacking story or characters. On the other hand, its IMDB score is better at 5.6/10 - it's more popular in foreign markets. Also, audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

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