Will 'Assassin's Creed' Live Up To The Hype?

The wait is almost over for the big screen adaptation of the hugely popular video game ASSASSIN’S CREED - but can it possibly live up to expectations?

- James Evans

In the world of the movies, there are some long-held, universally accepted ‘truths’: odd number Star Trek movies were franchise-threateningly crap, Jaws began the summer blockbuster, and video game adaptations make for lousy films. In reality, most of those odd Star Trek movies have their merits, and Jaws alone didn’t change the face and focus of summer cinema. However, even though almost every flick based on a computer game has its fans somewhere (the Resident Evil series is heading for its sixth film next year, after all - despite no one making an argument for it being great cinema), there’s more than a kernel of genuine truth in the argument that games make for poor translations to multiplexes. Starting with the misjudged catastrophe of Super Mario Bros. in 1993, a film that has little chance of ever being subject to critical reappraisal (indeed, star Bob Hoskins noted in 2007 that he still believed it was the worst thing he’d ever been involved in), these films have routinely met with poor reviews, disappointing box office, and little respect.