No, not your big screen, well not yet, i mean, well, okay, I’m talking about the report from Variety that Ubisoft is adapting the property for a theatrical release!  Did I play that fake confusion up well enough?

So, the Variety article on this brings up some interesting things.  Ubisoft has created their own motion picture studio to handle production, similar to what Marvel has done.  I am pleased to see this development since it really will allow them to exercise more creative control over the property.

This should help them address one of the absolute primary problems many have had with video game movies in the past.  So often video game movies fail not because they lack acting or directorial muscle, not because they are poorly budgeted, not even because the stories are questionable.  No no, video game movies so often fail because the movie tries to recreate the video game.  No one wants to go and see the video game acted out in live action on a giant screen, well maybe some people do, but they aren’t enough to support a major blockbuster release.

The reason that some of the more successful video game movies have worked at least on some levels, is due to the detachment of the movie from the game environment.  I firmly believe any good video game movie will not try to reproduce game mechanics in live action, they will not follow the story of the game in a slavish unthinking way, but they will incorporate the characters from the games with a reverent respect of who the characters are and what they have done or will do.

Any story adaptation of a video game to film should look at telling a new story with the same or similar characters, or it should tell the story of the game from a different perspective, illuminating details previously hidden or adding depth.

Doing this achieves several major goals; the film does not get panned by fans for being a bad knock off of the game, it lets new fans engage with the fiction, and it expands the depth of the fiction for all the fans.  When a new fan picks up one of the games they wont feel like they are replaying something they have already seen.  Existing fans wont feel like the games are being ruined by seeing a movie.

Obviously people involved in the project have to enjoy the material and want to make something that is good, but let’s be honest, that is most likely the case in at least most of the video game movies that have come before.  I enjoyed Michael Fassbender in “X-men: First Class.”  It seems like he has a passion for sci-fi and adaptive mediums.

All in all, this feels like it has potential to be a good time at the theater.  Will it rival Iron Man and Dark Knight in terms of sheer awesomeness?  It’s hard to say, Iron Man and Dark Knight have quite a bit more source material with a larger legacy, but at the very least it could do justice to and potentially enhance the Assassin’s Creed mythos.  If they ham hand it, it could run the gamut from X-Men 3 to Double Dragon or Super Mario Brothers and I don’t think we have the cultural bandwidth to form cult admiration for another horrendous video game movie.

Opinion achieved…

Stay Safe Out There
~Aten