Wow, I’ll be shocked if we see another video game movie adaption for awhile.
Not surprising at all. Even the biggest AC fanboy I know (me) thought the trailers and reviews were horrifyingly awful.
Also as an AC fan I’ll probably see it as a rental, eventually. All the big name actors must have added some oomph, right?
cricket sound
The studios and game publishers are doing a great job of snubbing out any perception that videogames are a viable movie properties for Joe and Jane Q. Public. With this movie, Ratchet & Clank, and Warcraft, 2016 was the year that videogames got a drubbing at the movies. Critically and financially.
Good luck, Tomb Raider. And whatever deal is in the works for an Uncharted. And any other projects from game publishers who have this misguided idea that they should participate in the creative process of making movies.
-Tom
With this movie, Ratchet & Clank, and Warcraft, 2016 was the year that videogames got a drubbing at the movies.
The Angry Birds Movie made as much as those three combined. :)
When somebody in Hollywood thinks they can make money on “The Emoji Movie” I suspect things like Tomb Raider are the least of their concerns.
I am sure another Lara Croft movie will do fine, she has an appeal to a much larger demographic than say Assassins Creed or Warcraft.
I am sad Angelina Jolie went all anorexic, else she could easily do a 3rd movie.
Warcraft actually wasn’t a big bomb because its international take, mainly China. Seems they really like CGI orcs and robots that turn into cars.
I thought I had read somewhere on QT3 that very fact. While it may not have made money here it made a great deal in foreign distribution.
The Warcraft movie was still a financial failure. It certainly didn’t make enough to guarantee a sequel, which is what Legendary must have been hoping for. Since they’re a Chinese-owned studio, it’s possible they’ll make a sequel targeted at China, but that would be something new. As far as I know, Western productions aren’t being greenlit because they’ll do well in China. They’re being adjusted and rejiggered to appeal in China, but they’re not being made because they’ll play in China. That’s what would have to happen for Warcraft to continue as a franchise. So maybe as a Chinese production for a Chinese audience with a tentative release in the US?
I’m guessing it partly depends on how well their Great Wall movie with Matt Damon does when it comes out in the US in February. I don’t anticipate anyone’s going to see that thing. Can Matt Damon’s celebrity get Peoria to go see a movie about Chinese people?
-Tom
Nope I dispute it was a financial failure. It bombed in the US but made over 400 million internationally. Whether that made all the money back who,knows but you,can’t call it a failure financially.
Yep, who knows! It’s ineffable! Oh, look, studio finances are enough of a big deal that entire publications are built around following them. :)
Warcraft did not make its money back. In case you don’t want to click the link, the headline reads “Box-Office Analysis: ‘Warcraft’ Avoids “Utter Failure” But Will Still Lose Money”. Personally, I find “failure” an acceptable shorthand for a movie that loses money, but perhaps you’d prefer “concussion”.
“Warcraft is a strange box-office beast and unlike anything the industry has seen,” says analyst Jeff Bock. “If China didn’t end up grossing what it did, this would have been an utter failure. Now it’s only a mild concussion. In fact, sequels have been OK’d with less — just look at Legendary’s Pacific Rim.”
But what do I know. I never would have thought we’d get a Prometheus sequel!
-Tom
Wow…a film can make over $400 million and still be an utter failure. Who would green light something like that?
The money spent on marketing can sometimes equal the production budget of the biggest movies. Plus the studios don’t get all the box office. Think Ive read before internationally the studio may get 50% at best in most cases. Hence why many of these moves need to do so much just to get in the black.
Well it didn’t make Hollywood Reporters list of biggest box office bombs this year so that’s something.
I think American blockbuster productions are greenlit because they will do well everywhere.
With China poised to equal US box office numbers in 2017, and with very few (if any) blockbusters being profitable just with the US market alone, China might become the most important market for Hollywood productions in a couple of years after box office equality, if numbers keep rising. At that point you will see American movies made primarily for the Chinese market, but we are not there yet.
However I do see blockbusters being cancelled because they will do bad in China. It’s already the second market.
I think you are a little harsh here. A lot of techniques in story telling is used in video games as well as text and cinema, like “show don’t tell”. So I would think there can be cross pollination across different medium. The modern/history dichotomy in Ass crack Creed IMO is a nice story telling device.
I can’t say much about AC because I haven’t seen it, but I have seen Warcraft and it ended up as generic Tolkien copycat movie rather than anything fresh. The problem probably is because the source material is pretty much generic Tolkien fan-fic to start with. OTOH AC has a lot of potential as a historical fiction, like a more actiony Wolf Hall. That is a critical part of the game’s appeal as well, you fight and meet historical figures who turned out to have some secret agenda, like meeting the Borgias and Machiavelli in AC2, or dealing with the Patriots in the American Revolutionary War in AC3.
Ok finally watched it last night. It was a mess, mainly because they make things so bloody obvious. The opening text crawl sets the standard.
The plot would have been much more interesting if it were something like this:
Callum Lynch is on death row. He is executed. Next he ends up in an unknown location. Then Lucy Sofia tells him that he has been put on a science project, involuntarily, to cure violence. He was an excellent candidate given his history of violence. Explain that history of mankind is history of violence, and her goal is to find a better way. Says nothing about Animus, just says he will be put in a VR simulator to relive the memories of his ancestors. Then put him thick into the past.
Sofia stops after a short period. Then Callum starts to experience hallucinations. Sofia explains these as side effects of the Animus. That’s why he didn’t have to sign a medical wavier (because he is officially a dead man). Sofia explains these as just hallucinations. Now he gets to “integrate” into the prison population, and his first encounter he had with the Assassins is someone trying to kill him (instead of having a baffling chat) because they don’t want him to lead to the Apple, but to Callum it is all raving mad talk. This reinforces Sofia’s explanation that the other people in the Animus had similar hallucinations, and other candidates are also very violent, so it is not surprising.
So he goes into Animus again. This time ends with a seizure. Sofia explains that the subject has to go into Animus voluntarily (the irony), otherwise there is a risk of further seizure. Sofia has the conversations with her dad Jeremy Irons (can’t remember his name in the movie…) about how she is a scientist first and Templar second, and she wouldn’t risk Callum’s life.
Now Callum becomes uncooperative, not just because of the seizure but because these hallucinations are so real. So he meets the other Assassins in the prison population while Sofia let him make up his mind, and the Assassins tell him that he is being used as a pawn to get the Apple (the big old McGuffin), which can control free will, and Templars will use it to oppress. He doesn’t buy that, but then his hallucinations supports this interpretation.
Now Jeremy Irons gets the final notice from some mysterious woman (make Charlotte Rumpling more mysterious!), so he goes over Sofia and he introduces Callum to his dad. Now the movie reveals that his dad killed his mom. And Irons will tell the reason why he is put into Amimus in the first place (which Sofia hid from him): to retrieve the Apple, and use that to cure violence. And Irons would argue that Callum’s participation would stop similar killings to her mom, for all times. Now Callum is having a philosophical debate about free will with old Jeremy Irons (a favourite subject of Chinese Communist censors): can life without freedom be a good life? Irons says yes, and that a life of luxury, albeit without free will, isn’t oppression but a good life. Callum at this point kind of agree with him, given that Callum has been living free his whole life and he is miserable, his freedom led to his crimes; but he lives a very comfortable life in the Templar prison. So he goes back to Animus voluntarily.
Finally Callum relives the memory long enough to lead the Templars to the Apple. At the same time the Assassin’s in the prison starts a riot, so the Templars just leave Callum in the Animus while the they escape, and his hallucination/memory shows that his mom died because she asked to be killed by his dad in order to not be put into Amimus, and his mom is also an Assassin. Just like Maria in the memories. So Callum finally embrace his Assassin’s heritage. And after the Assassins fight off all the prison guards (a gratuitous action sequence), they go to London to stop Irons. They succeed. The End.
Instead of putting everything on a platter, the movie should have drip feed plot points to the audience. And for the real mind bender it should always leave the interpretation that the Assassin’s Creed is simply a hallucination, that there could not have been a secret society throughout history protecting humankind’s freedom from the Templars.
Rented it yesterday, it was indeed so bad. And such amazing casting tied to it, also why make the Animus so over the top, a simple bed like in the first game would have been fine. Someone must have wanted a huge CG budget in past and present day.
What a total waste of Brendan Gleeson most of all. At least I knew it was gonna be shit going in, the movie lived up the the low standards I expected.
This was one of the worst films I have ever managed to see all the way to credits.