Movies based on video games have sort of had a long running history of being terrible. From Super Mario Bros. to Prince of Persia, something about taking a video game and making it into a film has just not worked, far more often than it has. Assassin’s Creed was looking like it could change things though, with a lot of talent in front of and behind the camera that could make it really good. The trailers looked great too, promising action and story-telling that fit with the series. Unfortunately the early reviews are out, and so far they are looking pretty bad.
Ten reviews have hit today, according to movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Of those, only two are classified as giving the Assassin’s Creed movie a positive rating, resulting in only a 20% fresh score (more are being added all the time, with the score dropping to 14% while writing this). The other eight are fairly scathing, saying things like “The title of First Great Video Game Movie is still on the table.” And “It’s the Anakin Skywalker of video game movies, a promising project meant to redeem a bedeviled sub-genre that merely leaves it covered in more darkness.”
Even the two positive reviews aren’t too high on the film’s quality, saying “A refreshing (if also bewildering) change of pace.” And “Declaring this to be the best video game movie ever made is the kind of backhanded compliment that sounds like hyperbole, but the description fits the bill on both counts.”
Of course, it is still very early, with many more reviews that will be coming out in the next couple days. The movie hits theaters on December 21st, so that will see a ton more impressions and reviews hitting the internet. We could see a huge swing up for the Assassin’s Creed movie reviews, but so far it’s not looking good. Even outside of what Rotten Tomatoes has gathered, the reviews are pretty terrible, such as The Guardian’s one star review, which calls the movie “an interminable, lifeless mess.”
