Hollywood: Assassin's Creed Movie Is Doomed

JdaS

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This was so funny to me when I first read it. Both the blatant and rightful distrust of Ubisoft in Hollywood and the studio asshats' transparent reaction to the aforementioned distrust.

Ubisoft being French and all, should give this to a French director. Those guys don't disappoint. Mostly.

irishda said:
It'll still be a terrible movie. The biggest audience for a video game movie is the people that played the video game. And, with fanboyism, it's impossible to live up to the expectations of the video gamer audience. They've already got a vision of how the movie should be in their heads and are really just looking to reaffirm that vision. If it's not that vision, then they won't like it. The biggest thing will be if Ubisoft is willing to tell an original story within the game's setting, or if they're just going to rehash a story.
I respectfully disagree. All that you'd be need is for whoever is in charge of the movie to stick to the source material. Most of the video game adaptations Hollywood has thrown up are simply tragic. It's like the writers look at the game and go "Pffft. Fuck this shit! Let me snort another line and get to work."

Nah. Adhere to the Creed (see what I did there?) and you'll do just fine.
 

Ulquiorra4sama

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Feb 2, 2010
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I think they pulled of Movie Realm quite nicely in AC: Legacy and Hollywood might've taken note of that.

I'd like to end with a simple: "Hollywood. U jelly?" But i feel that wouldn't be in the spirit of the forums.

I guess it's true you shouldn't undervalue what each studio does, but even if i hadn't seen Legacy i'd still have faith in Ubisoft on this. I think they're fully capable of making a full length movie. The movie making studios are probably just jealous 'cause someone else might do their job better than them.
 

zombieshark6666

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Game movies suck because film makers don't realize that gamers watch movies too. They think they'll make a movie-movie for simpletons and add an obvious reference (DOOM FPS scene *shudder*) and it will be enough.

Let Ubisoft fail on its own, they probably can't pull it off either. :/
 

Sphinx86

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I feel that this movie will either work or fail depending on how Ubisoft use their powers. If they are involved in the stages but let the studios do what is necessary then there's a very good change things will work. E.g. they are involved in making the short list of directors, and possibly sit in on some of the interviews, but generally let the studio handle the mundane stuff.

Also considering this is Sony I wouldn't be surprised if there are going to be a few Playstation exclusives from Ubisoft around the corner. Given that they have already done a PSP of AC before, it may even be a PSP Vita exclusive - something Sony will need to make it succesful. Stretching things a little further it may even be the Movie tie-in game. And given that Ubisoft have a level of creative control over the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a decent movie tie-in game. They've proven they can make a compelling game on the engine, and since they should know the main plot early enough there's a good chance they can tie something in pretty well.

Now wouldn't that be something: the first really good game-based movie along with the first good movie tie-in game.
 

Avaloner

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irishda said:
It'll still be a terrible movie. The biggest audience for a video game movie is the people that played the video game. And, with fanboyism, it's impossible to live up to the expectations of the video gamer audience. They've already got a vision of how the movie should be in their heads and are really just looking to reaffirm that vision. If it's not that vision, then they won't like it. The biggest thing will be if Ubisoft is willing to tell an original story within the game's setting, or if they're just going to rehash a story.
I disagree here, that would mean every movie ever would jsut pull in whoever is into the "matter" how many people saw the recent captian america, without being a comic fan..or thor or Spiderman?
The same goes for movies that depend on a book, how many people saw the Lord of the rings and never have heard of the books before?
So to assume that Videgamemovies will just be seen by the players is probably just a wrong assumtion.

Just watching some of their AC Trailers makes me pumped up for the games, I'm sure those guys could pull a Movie off, after all making an interresting game is 10 times harder than making an interresting movie.
 

NinjaDeathSlap

Leaf on the wind
Feb 20, 2011
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Therumancer said:
I tend to think this movie was dead before it even got started, whoever even considered this was pretty dumb to be honest.

It should be noted that irregardless of your personal politics the first game which laid the groundwork for this series was basically an attempt to be offensive to a lot of the western world on the war on terror. Ubisoft being a french company, france having opposed The War On Terror for reasons of personal gain given it's breaking of embargos hidden behind the "Oil For Food Program" and still being interested in that money, and also seeking appeasement over their own riots and such.

What your looking at in the final equasion is a game about an Arab largely killing off westerners, in one of the more politically touchy periods of history. The timing of this did not go unnoticed in certain circles, nor did the creators and the politics involved in where they were operating for a lot was written about it.

In general the gaming community dismissed this because for the most part it tends to have a huge left wing, peace at any price, anti-war on terror prescence, and of course dismissed the criticisms of the game's content or any political or social considerations at all. There were enough people who didn't have a problem with the message or intent, didn't believe it, or whatever else to turn it into a major franchise.

What you might think of everything I just said above, understand that this movie is one that is going to have to be sold not just to the gaming community and the way it breaks down, but to the mainstream. With the US polarized 50-50 politically (despite both sides claiming to have a clear majority) and the what movies need to do to become successful, it really seems unlikely that this is going to be a good financial risk. Whatever your politics might be, or if you see this a-politically, or whatever else, when this hits the market it's not just what you and your friends might think, a movie like this is going to need more people. Chances are even if they spend the money to do this right, even if everyone who has bought the Assasin's Creed games showed up and bought a ticket, the movie wouldn't make enough money to be considered successful. That's a lot of people, but you have to put it in the perspective of the overall cost to cover material like this without creating another CGI-tastic crapfest that would fail on it's own on the merit of being a giant turd.


Understand also that you don't have to agree with the war on terror to find this offensive. See, the actual crusades were fought largely because the followers of Islam decided to ignore the whole bit about "men of the book" and sharing the holy sites with Christians and Jews and to expel the infidel from the Holy Land. You had people spending fortunes to make long and dangerous journies from the western world to Jerusalum, and Muslims started murdering the pilgrims horribly to keep them out. They did things like leave the tortured corpses along the roads to the holy land as a lesson to the infidels. Understand that a lot of the people who died here were nobles (or the children thereof) or connected to major wealth. One of the big things abou the crusades was that as powerful as The Church was, it probably wouldn't have actually united Europe to this cause the way it did on pure faith, the fact that the temporal powers were angry over this was one of the big reasons why all the nobles, kings, and other participants were so eager to throw in with the church, spend tons of money, and go off to liberate The Holy Land. There was more than one cause to this, religious fanatacism played a major role, but it was one of those cases where it was a perfect storm of events that caused somethibng really unlikely to get started (and continue on for a long time through multiple crusades). When you consider the nautical technology of the time and how many ships were lost just getting back and forth (treasure hunters and historians still look for them) it puts some perspective into the sheer scope of the crusades which took more than The Pope deciding he wanted to go kick some butt for lulz.

The stories about atrocities committed against Muslims are pretty much accurate, this was very much a war of vengeance. When Lord so-and-so showed up with an army he didn't just come because The Pope told him to liberale The Holy Land, he did it because he was out to avenge his son/daugher/brother/messenger/whatever. Some people torture your kid to death and hang his body on the side of a road, and yeah your going to get pissed off, and when your a medieval lord this was kind of the answer to someone asking "yah, but what are you going to do about it".

The point of this very basic, and simplistic run down is that a game showing Muslims as simply being oppressed by these horrible crusaders (and in a way justifying their actions) and has a hero running around killing them off as his major enemies (even if he kills some Arabs too) is pretty much asking for it. A lot of people who are very left wing or don't know much about it might not get it, but a lot of people who do know something about it are going to look at this version which might appeal to Muslims, but is very offensive to the Western World which is incidently the core market for this game.

Don't get me wrong here though, before anyone start screaming, I am NOT saying the Crusaders were the good guys. It's one of those cases where like most historical events everyone was basically a self-serving bastard on all relevent sides, Western and Middle Eastern, especially by modern standards of morality. Not that this matters really, what matters is that if they do this movie it's going to make a lot of the key audience go "WTF", and wind up not liking it because of the rather biased portrayals involved.

That's my thoughts as well... of course I'm speaking with the assumption that the first movie would involve the first game. If they decide to start with Enzio, then you've got the whole issue of it's treatment of the Borgias/Popes and similar things to content with.

Assasin's Creed is the kind of concept that can work for a large, but fairly limited audience of people that are open minded or political pre-disposed to think the same way. I do not think it can however hold down a truely mainstream audience. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I imagine the kind of creative control Ubisoft wants as this game's creators is to prevent the kind of re-writs which would make it palatable to the mainstream audience (which would also admittedly ruin part of the point of the game and it's storylines), and that right there means that it's not likely to get approved and financed at the level it would need to be a good movie to begin with.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but those are my thoughts. Time will tell what's going to happen.

Also for the record if your thinking not many people know much about the crusades, I think you'd be wrong. Political spin matters, but a lot of people know how those wars got started, and with all the referances to the "Templars" in popular culture recently via Dan Brown and authors like that, I think you'd be surprised.
You would have a point apart from one thing. The Assassin's in Assassin's Creed aren't 'Fighting for the Arabs against the infidels', rather they are 'Fighting for peace and equality against all the turds who are trying to gain from human suffering'. In the first game, 4 out of the 10 bosses you face are Crusaders, that means that the majority of the people you fight are actually native to the Holy Land. I see very little evidence for the main theme of the story to be anti War on Terror, or anti American. Just because that was the French governments stance at the time doesn't mean that it was an opinion reflected by anyone who was French. If there was supposed to be any kind of message to the story of Assassin's Creed I'd say it was more likely 'Do not turn the War on Terror into a war of revenge, or even worse, a race war' which is not the same thing as just saying 'America sucks'.

Near the end of the game, after Altair has killed Robert De Sable (A Frenchman) and has just found out that he's been played by his mentor (An Arab) he has a conversation with Richard 1st. Now, if the game was really trying to say what you think it was, surely Altair would have just killed Richard, ended the Crusades and been done with it. I mean, it's not like there was anything to stop him from doing that, he's just killed all of Richard's guards. But instead, he talks to him about the value of peace, and of not demonising, or making assumptions about your enemy just because it makes things easier for you.

Of course, this is all assuming that the majority of the movie going public will actually recognise and care about any kind of moral message in the movie, which they most likely won't. Let's face it, how many people who saw The Matrix d'you reckon actually knew what it was about?
 

The Wykydtron

"Emotions are very important!"
Sep 23, 2010
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That's a win! That's a "Ubisoft sticking it to Hollywood" win! Roll the next clip Steven!

*Ahem*

On Topic: Wow i'm glad Ubisoft managed to keep 100% control, maybe this film won't suck after all...
 

Terramax

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Earnest Cavalli said:
Hollywood: Assassin's Creed Movie Is Doomed


"It's [Ubisoft's]"But they're not moviemakers, and the only way to make sure it's a bad movie is to undervalue what movie studios do -- and this is a deal that totally undervalues what movie studios do."
On the contrary, if history tells us anything on pretty much every other Friday preview screening, moviemakers are the most inept at making decent films these days.

I can't say how good the directing and acting in the AC games are, as I haven't played any of them, but I must say the voice acting, writing and directing in many games over the last decade have been surprisingly more solid than most Hollywood outings of today.

Anyway, am I right in saying the writer of Harry Potter had a pretty high demand on the movie franchise, from deciding who plays the lead roles, who directs, etc?
 

MarsProbe

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Dec 13, 2008
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Well, normally I would say that anything that stops an Assassins Creed movie getting made is fine with me because being a game to movie adaptation, it would invariably suck to a certain degree.

However, it would be a nice turn up for the books if the company who made the original game(s) had the majority of control over the films production had the end result of the film actually being quite good.

Plus, it may stop the film being advertised on the posters as "It's Inception meets The Da Vinci Code!".
 

GaltarDude1138

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I still have a bad feeling about this. Whoever directs this thing needs to have his/her shit together. They need to recognize that the movie will have to be part historical drama, part 'Source-Code-esque' sci-fi, part stabby-action movie.

And there's never really too much blood in the games, so whoever decides if it needs 300-level blood spurts or Lord-of-the-Rings-fast-paced-action-but-not-really-much-blood-type-movie is going to have a tough job.
 

PunkRex

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What are they doing? Just look at the smashing job Hollywood did with Prince of Per... oh wait.

Honestly, Prince of Persia wasnt completly bad but it was still bloody boring for over half of the film. Im not really into Ubisoft games but this could be interesting, even if it does undermine Hollywoods artistic side abit (it IS there, just hard to see past the explosions some times).

As a side question, did the Assassins Creed francise actually make Ubisoft a BILLION dollars? That seems pretty good... I think.
 

Shaoken

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Therumancer said:
Nickolai77 said:
Therumancer said:
It should be noted that irregardless of your personal politics the first game which laid the groundwork for this series was basically an attempt to be offensive to a lot of the western world on the war on terror. Ubisoft being a french company, france having opposed The War On Terror for reasons of personal gain given it's breaking of embargos hidden behind the "Oil For Food Program" and still being interested in that money, and also seeking appeasement over their own riots and such.

What your looking at in the final equasion is a game about an Arab largely killing off westerners, in one of the more politically touchy periods of history. The timing of this did not go unnoticed in certain circles, nor did the creators and the politics involved in where they were operating for a lot was written about it.
Really? Only you would come up with an interpretation like this :/

1) France did not oppose the USA on the "War on Terror", in fact it's been a very active supporter of NATO and agreed (to my knowledge) to implement Article 5 after 9/11. It opposed the war in Iraq however (that's where your getting confused), largely because most of the world viewed it as an illegal war, and France is not afraid to criticise US foreign policy.

2)The main bad-guy in the first series is Al Mualim, an Arab. Altair kills Europeans and he also kills Muslims, there's nothing anti-Western about the first Assassins Creed game, basically the game doesn't discriminate between races and religions. Heck, if anything the second and third games lavish praise on the achievements of European civilisation during the Renaissance.

3)The creative director behind Assassins Creed is Canadian, not French. And besides the game is made by a multi-national team anyway. I doubt Ubisoft the publishers spread subversive political messages through their games.

The bottom line is that Assassins Creed is not a French conspiracy to undermine America, it's multi-billion euro historical sci-fi franchise. If it does criticise anything, it's probably established religion, or Catholicism, not the West.
France supporting the invasion of Afghanistan, but opposed the broader efforts that are referred to generally as "The War On Terror", most dramatically in it's vote against the invasion of Iraq, and leading of a lot of the opposition. It was France's opposition preventing a unianimous vote at the UN that made the invasion of Iraq "illegal" so to speak. France's motivations for doing this were that it had been violating embargos preventing trade with Iraq (and other rogue nations) except under specific circumstances. It was using the "Oil For Food" program as a cover for a much broader array of trade, from which it was making billions of dollars due to it was the only ones exploiting the market, albiet covertly. This trade also helping to prop up the regime there because the whole point of the embargo was to try and take it down indirectly by isolating it. This entire situation was a big deal for a while, and also caused a lot of criticism over France's media practices because when this was uncovered you found France trying to prevent it's actions from being revealed to it's own people. They were of course, but not how it should have gone down. At any rate it happened quite some time ago, but look up things like the "Oil For Food Scandal" and so on and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. The bottom line is that France was working against the war efforts for it's own financial gain, and to cover up that it was itself in violation of embargos. It's not as well known as it should be, due to the slant of the media in regards to the ware and international relations, and it can be hard to find a lot of the hard/biting details. At any rate this has a lot to do with how the whole "Freedom Fries" joke got started... because the French were being putzs and then were found with their hands in the cookie jar, making their motives rather apparent. It's also why a lot of people, and not just me, have been making a much bigger deal than usual about not trusting the French.
Incorrect. The French oppossed the War on Iraq because they knew that the whole WMD thing was bullshit, and called Bush out on his bullshit, and lo and behold no WMDs were found and all the documents found in Iraq showed that Saddam was never going to restart his weapons programs while the Sanctions were still in place. So in other words, France was absouloutly correct. A fact they won't let you forget for the next century.
 

Charli

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And yet nearly every video game franchise that has pushed itself over to movie maker hands alone has failed. I don't see your logic Hollywood, if the creators of the game have a say this time it will fail? What... just...stop. Either come up with some evidence to back up that propagandist rubbish or sit down and see if something good comes of it other than you being threatened by a faster growing industry.

And that is a fact, the movie industry does not want to see the video gaming industry doing better than they are. That is the only pillar behind that statement.

Terramax said:
Anyway, am I right in saying the writer of Harry Potter had a pretty high demand on the movie franchise, from deciding who plays the lead roles, who directs, etc?
She did indeed. All British actors only. Same cast all the way through (obvious death being a cause excused). She had demands and she was right to stick to her guns, there has never been another production quite like it. And it will be nearly impossible to top.
 

Cid Silverwing

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Jul 27, 2008
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Fuck this.

I was already having issues with the overarching plot of the games as a whole. Now the money virus is preparing to fuck up this one like it has -every other- game-based movie.

Mark my words, if this movie gets made, it will SUCK. There is NO exception. Ever.
 

Sonic Doctor

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Jan 9, 2010
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TheDarkEricDraven said:
Yeah, the game company shouldn't have anything to do with the game movies. Haven't you seen Super Mario Bros.? King of the Fighters?
It is a very good thing that the creator of the thing being made into a movie gets at least a majority of say on how things go.

Just look at the number of books that have been made into movie, there are barely a handful of them that are okay, and only a few that are good.

The problem with Hollywood is that 98% of the time they buy the rights to a book and pass it onto some unknown writer or somebody that knows nothing about the book, with no understanding of what parts are important and key to holding the thing together.

I know the Eragon books don't garner much love in these parts, but I really liked them, and thought it was cool that a movie had been made. But that, oh cool, turned into utter disgust when I went to see the pile of crap. Some people still commented on how it had awesome effects so it was pretty decent, but that matters not. They can cover a turd in pretty wrapping paper, but I'm still going to know it's a turd. Whoever wrote that screenplay and decided what parts of the book would be put in and what would be left out was a complete moron and definitely didn't read the book. Plus all the changes they made didn't make any sense, plus with one big change they made near the end, they can't make the next book into the move, because they killed off the pair of side villains that are a big part of the other books, and they were killed by the guy they killed in the book. The thing was an obvious one time cash grab, wooo, look fans and Eragon movie(they lift up the curtain for the fans to find a big turd, and the film makers are running away laughing with bags of money).

It is stuff like that that makes me believe that Hollywood needs to be shown how to turn literature and other things like game stories into what they actually are, not transform them into things that more people other than the people that know of the story will understand. No cutting of scenes because people that aren't in the know won't understand. No changing of costume look because it will save money, and no casting of people that don't fit the description of the characters.

It would be at least 98% chance that the move will be bad if they left in the hands of Hollywood. With Ubisoft in control, I feel it is a much better 40% that the movie might turn out bad.
 

Funkysandwich

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Jan 15, 2010
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Cid SilverWing said:
Fuck this.

I was already having issues with the overarching plot of the games as a whole. Now the money virus is preparing to fuck up this one like it has -every other- game-based movie.

Mark my words, if this movie gets made, it will SUCK. There is NO exception. Ever.
You are 100% correct. The best thing that could happen is that no movie gets made ever. The best thing about the Assassin's Creed series is the gameplay, the overall story isn't that great. It would not hold up well without gameplay to distract people from the ridiculous plot.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Shaoken said:
[
Incorrect. The French oppossed the War on Iraq because they knew that the whole WMD thing was bullshit, and called Bush out on his bullshit, and lo and behold no WMDs were found and all the documents found in Iraq showed that Saddam was never going to restart his weapons programs while the Sanctions were still in place. So in other words, France was absouloutly correct. A fact they won't let you forget for the next century.
That had nothing to do with it at all, as nobody knew for sure at the time whether they had them or not. France was one of very few nations that did not support the broadening of the efforts, and like it or not they were caught breaking embargos, making their motivations crystal clear.

As far as the rest of the points raised in this thread, I could argue any of the points, but in the end it comes down to the people who think this movie will be made without a hitch will continue to think that, where I will hold to my opinion. We'll see what happens in the long run, what the plot of the movie looks like when it's released (if it's released) and how it's received.

Like most things on these forums this is divided politically, I didn't expect a lot of people to be jumping up and down saying "OMG Therumancer, your absolutly correct".
 

polymath

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It seems that nobody here understands what the issue is. The problem the Hollywood insider has with the deal is that it means that Sony Pictures are paying for the movie to be made, but at any moment for whatever reason, Ubisoft can pull the plug and make them start over. It's basically a deal that says Sony could make a $200 million movie that Ubisoft doesn't like when they see it edited together and so they make them re-shoot.

The deal is an incredibly stupid deal for both parties because from Sony's point of view they just providing the money with no control over what happens to it, and for Ubisoft because it means that you have guys who have no background in movie making calling the shots on a Hollywood blockbuster. There needs to be someone with the authority to stop them wasting money on something that won't work but their contract stops that from happening.
 

Skyy High

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"It's [Ubisoft's] billion-dollar brand, so I get that they're protective," one unnamed studio executive said. "But they're not moviemakers, and the only way to make sure it's a bad movie is to undervalue what movie studios do -- and this is a deal that totally undervalues what movie studios do."

Because Hollywood's done such a great job in the past with movies based on games...

Ubisoft clearly has fantastic artists. If they need a director who knows more about film, they can hire one who shares their vision. Incidentally, these Hollywood insiders just did a whole heck of a lot towards getting gamers more pumped to support this movie, if it ever does get made.

And, uh, regarding the absolutely ridiculous political argument going on above me...how the hell was the first AC supposed to be anti-Western? Because the main bad guys were Crusaders (or really, Templars hiding themselves among the Crusaders, trying to prolong the conflict)? I mean, the final boss in the game was your Arab mentor, who was revealed to have been tricking you the entire time! If AC1 was a political statement, then every game where you kill waves of minorities are racist to the point of a hate crime. You cannot possibly expect me to take that conspiracy theory BS seriously.
 

l3o2828

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A Movie Inspired By A Videogame Failing?

My my, I wasn't expecting this!

/please read this in a falmboyant rich british man voice.