The new trailer for the Assassin's Creed film has landed, giving audiences a first look at Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and director Justin Kurzel's first film together since last year's adaptation of Macbeth.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"94790","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]
Fassbender plays Death Row inmate Callum Lynch, who hooks himself up to a machine called the Animus to unlock his genetic memory and experience the memories of his ancestor, the assassin Aguilar de Nerha.
You don't have to be a fan of the game to understand the premise, says Sam Byford at the Verge.
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"The movie doesn't appear to take too heavily from any of the games in particular, but it's very much in line with the series' usual tropes," he adds.
The new trailer shows Lynch wake in a hospital bed, only to be told by his captors, the shadowy figures behind the Animus machine, that he has been executed and that he is "officially dead".
The group is intent on tapping into their subject's genetic past, which means swashbuckling and time-travelling aplenty as Fassbender jumps between Lynch and Aguilar in an effort to protect whatever it is his captors are seeking.
"The one thing the trailer makes painfully clear is that Fassbender's virtual journey to 15th-century Spain will be rendered with all the verisimilitude of a video game," says Matthew Dessem for Slate.
"The buildings and landscapes of Spain literally look like they were drawn and animated by a video game console. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to look so terrible!"
But ScreenRant is more positive, praising the film's interpretation of the Animus machine and highlighting the trailer's feature of the iconic "leap of faith" from the video game.
The trailer shows why Kurzel has been keen to stress that the film is nothing like a straight adaptation of the games, says The Independent.
"I spent most of my time with the story and the real history," he told the LA Times. "That was my main focus – not so much forensically going through every aspect of the game. It was: how do you make this into a piece of cinema?"
Will Assassin's Creed buck the trend of video game films?
26 February
Films based on video games have had limited success, but can Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed buck the trend?
Based on the hit game franchise, it stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, who also lead in Kurzel's critically acclaimed version of Macbeth, along with Jeremy Irons, Ariane Labed and Brendan Gleeson.
The film is set in the same universe as the video games but drops the protagonist Desmond Miles in favour of Callum Lynch (Fassbender), the descendant of a 15th-century Spanish assassin who, through unlocking his DNA memories, is able to relive the experiences of his ancestor. Armed with this knowledge, he must take on his age-old enemy, the Knights Templar, in the present day.
Principal photography has wrapped and early shots have been released - so what can viewers expect?
The "striking" images reveal Fassbender in his twin roles as assassin Aguilar and today's Lynch, writes Mikel Reparaz at Ubi.
Shots include Aguilar raging mid-battle, Lynch sitting in a creepy cell with a priest and Aguilar with his companion Maria (Labed), "who sports even-more-impressive facial tattoos than he does".
Fassbender told the Wall Street Journal: "I think we've got something special," adding that the film does "something original in this genre".
His character, he added, is an outsider, institutionalised from his early teens and so a "bit of a lost soul". Reliving Aguilar's memories and connecting with his ancestor helps him begin to "identify [his] lineage and where he comes from".
He also compared Assassin's Creed to The Matrix, reports The Independent. "This idea of DNA memory elevates it from a basic fantasy genre," he said. "You have something an audience can actually believe in. Then the journey becomes so much more elevated, because you're on board in a different way."
And he assured fans that there is plenty of "incredible physicality" and limited use of green-screen.
The film may even revive the fortunes of the languishing video game franchise, says Max Nicholson, on Collider. Players have been suffering "Creed fatigue" after the recent stream of releases, he says, noting that creator Ubisoft has put their most lucrative series on hold this year.
An onscreen version "could help reinvigorate the franchise and give that project room to breathe between games", says Nicholson. "Then there's Scholastic's young adult book series, Last Descendants, which will hopefully drum up even more exposure in 2016."
The film is set for release in the UK on 26 December.
