If anyone was concerned that the Assassin’s Creed movie wouldn’t at least look like it was being faithful to the source material, they can put those concerns to rest now. The Assassin’s Creed trailer debuted on Kimmel last night, and it features all the parkour, building-diving, secret-knife-wielding, leaping combat and mysterious hoodies that made people fall in love with the original game. For Assassin’s Creed fans, I can’t imagine this looking any better. Of course, fans of the game won’t be enough to push this movie to the box office heights it hopes to climb to, like an Assassin climbing the highest building in the city just because it’s there. Fortunately, the games translate to film fairly well and has a strong chance of luring in a wider audience. Sure, there’ll be copious exposition regarding the whole Animus concept, the history of the Assassin’s and the Templars, and if they dare to get into any of the ancient alien craziness we could be looking at a Matrix: Reloaded level of momentum-stopping explanatory dialogue. But that’s a worst case scenario, and honestly, Michael Fassbender’s inherent intensity can probably carry a “Neo meets The Architect” type of scene much further than almost anyone else could.
Here’s hoping that the movie lives up the exciting potential on display in this first trailer. Assassin’s Creed will leap, stab and sneak its way into theaters on December 21st, just in time to be in the shadow of Rogue One.
