I’ve never played any Assassin’s Creed games, so forgive my unenthusiastic response to this first photo of Michael Fassbender from the upcoming film adaptation, courtesy of Yahoo:

assassin's creed fassbender

That certainly looks like that guy that’s on all of those video game boxes my little brother has. Apparently, this film isn’t retelling any of the game stories, and Fassbender’s character is named Callum Lynch. …Ok, that’s a pretty fun name, I’ll give them that. From the Yahoo synopsis:

“Lynch discovers he is a descendant of the secret Assassins society through unlocked genetic memories that allow him to relive the adventures of his ancestor, Aguilar, in 15th Century Spain. After gaining incredible knowledge and skills he’s poised to take on the oppressive Knights Templar in the present day.”

Will this be the video game movie that finally breaks the curse of being not-so-great? Before you claim that the cast involved elevates the material (this thing also snagged Marion Cotillard), remember that Fassbender and Josh Brolin couldn’t save something like Jonah Hex. I hope for all the fans of the video game that this satisfies their desires. As far as the rest of us, I hope we just get a decent movie out of this. Heck, even a decent video game movie would raise the bar at this point. Although you may see Street Fighter show up in an In Defense Of… column eventually.