"Your destiny is in your blood.
Your blood is not your own. It belongs to the Creed."
Hello everyone!
A regular movie review for you this week, and I picked one of the newer ones I watched, though even this one couldn't exactly be called BRAND NEW, either.
That is to say, I picked it because I very recently watched a trailer for another movie entirely and the wordplay reminded me of this one. But I can't help myself - I accidentally stumbled across Dylan O'Brien and his trailer, saw a glimpse of David Suchet in it, and watched until the very end to try and figure out why, specifically, all these names and happenings are so familiar to me.
Of course then it turned out to be American Assassin, which, for those who don't know, is the first in the series of Mitch Rapp novels written by the deceased Vince Flynn.
At which point, I squealed.
I'm not ashamed to admit it! But that being said, I will share my endless enthusiasm for Mitch Rapp at a latter point, as right now we have a movie to review. Namely, Assassin's Creed.
Now, I sat down to watch this one while I was away on vacation, and as I prowled through it I came to one startling conclusion: there are three reasons, and three alone, for this movie to have been made. Here's what I think they are:
1. To give us Michael Fassbender shirtless scenes;
2. To explain to us that, regardless of action taking place in modern times, so-called scientists have never heard or seen flicks such as Jurassic Park or Deep Blue Sea;
3. To scientifically prove that the assassins' hoods will stay in place over their faces no matter that they do backflips, building flips, or any other clothing-harassing movement that should, by all accounts, jar everything out of proportion.
So that's where Arrow figured it out! Should have known he got lessons all over the place even before he was inducted into the League of Assassins.
But anyway.
The movie is told from two different time points: it begins with murder and ends with murder, but it does show us Cal Lynch, on the chair for manslaughter, be supposedly killed.
Only, he isn't, and wakes up in this weird facility in Madrid with La Cotillard bending over him and telling him that, no, this isn't some weird Macbeth interpretation, he's part of some sort of experiment where they're trying to figure out what makes criminals criminal and how to cure it all.
Actually, this is all a front really for sticking people whom they believe to be descendants of the Assassin's Creed lines into a memory machine and letting them live it out.
What I mean by this is they get hooked up and actually RELIVE the past lives of their ancestors with the help of the machine. This is exactly what happens to Cal, because, lo and behold, he's the last living descendant of the most famous Assassin of all times, Aguilar, who was apparently a rather important chap way back in 1492 (remember the significance of this year, please): it is said that he was the last in possession of the Apple of Eden, Man's first sin and the key to Man's free will.
Apparently, that thing exists, and the Templars have been hunting it for centuries. The Assassin's, naturally, have been hiding it for just as long. Now, with Cal's help, they want to see what happened to it ...
Which is how we find ourselves in 1492 when Aguilar is inducted into the Creed (and can I just say I find it kind of funny they had to chop off their ring fingers to enable those wrist-blades, when it wasn't a problem later ...) and entursted with an important task: save the Sultan's son, because at that moment, the Spanish Inquisition is laying siege to Granada, and if they have the son, the father will cave and hand over the Apple of Eden.
Aguilar is on it, and through a series of death and gravity-defying moves, he and the other Assassins manage to temporarily free the boy before ending on the scaffolds themselves, which is where Aguilar's story officially ends.
What the victors (that is, the Templars) DIDN'T write, however, was that Aguilar escaped his own execution that day, and went off with another, female Assassin, to try and get the Apple of Eden before it fell into the wrong hands. They succeed, but not without great cost: his companion (whom I suspect he loved but considering love was prohibited for them, kind of like for the Jedi come to think of it, I couldn't say for sure) dead, Aguilar ends up finally killing their pursuer, and getting his hands on the Apple of Eden. Then he performs what's called a Leap of Faith, and, apparently, disappears from history.
Note: Leap of Faith being precisely what it is, this means tossing yourself off an incredibly high location into the unknown, trusting you'll somehow figure out a way not to become a splatter by the time bottom starts showing up. I swear, even Ra's al Ghul could learn things from these guys.
But does he?
Cal has been an unwilling guinea pig, proven by his body and mind fighting what the machine is telling him - but also unconsciously becoming more and more like Aguilar every time he comes back out again.
Now, here's the part where I remind readers to think about Deep Blue Sea or Jurassic Park, whichever strikes your fancy: remember what happened there? A bunch of scientists thinking they knew it all, doing things they thought they could control?
Well.
What THESE scientists don't know is that there's a bit of a side effect to their memory machine: every time someone goes in, less of that someone comes back out. In their stead, their ancestor starts gaining hold.
Which frankly means this: the first time Cal went into the machine, he came out more or less normal (by his standards), if freaked out.
The second time, he came out half-okay. The last time he goes in?
It's not exactly Cal that comes back out.
Learning the truth about the Apple - Aguilar, heavily wounded, but alive, passed it on to Christopher Columbus, who was in the end buried with it, in service to the Creed - and also the truth of his family - that they have always protected the Apple and his mother, contrary to what he believed, actually asked his father to kill her before the Templars came for her - Cal accepts his heritage and his birthright.
And unleashes Aguilar.
Sofia, who initially brought him here, is horrified but unable to stop the system purge her father orders of the facility, but what neither of them know is that the "resurrected" Assassins are taking back their own, despite heavy casualties. Aguilar and two others succeed and hightail it to London, where Sofia's father is just presenting the greatest Templar triumph: the Apple of Eden, which will now help them control humanity so that no one ever commits a crime again.
Or, basically, taking away everyone's free will.
And just at the triumphant declaration that there are no more Assassins, surprise! doctor gets his throat slit as Aguilar steals the Apple, leaves the place in chaos, and disappears.
Sofia vows revenge for her father's death and recovery of the Apple, promising more movies in the future.
Meanwhile, Aguilar and the rest regroup and perch up high, committed once again to their cause, and leap off the building into the unknown.
What can I say, I love movies like these with characters who appear to defy both death and reality. And honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn't too complicated, it followed a fairly straight timeline, and it was concerning enough to think some might even truly be willing to take away the people's free will for their own agenda - which they believe to be for the common good.
Playing God, however, is never good for anyone.
I hope they make more movies about the Creed in the future, I think it's a fascinating prospect and the stories and possibilities are endless!
Plus - let's face it, we all like the mystery around the Assassins.
Or a shirtless Fassbender. That works, too.
xx
*images and video not mine
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