The one movie Michael Fassbender regrets making
Most video game movies released to cinemas are already in for an unfair uphill battle. After the original interpretation of Super Mario Bros in the 1980s, film studios have treated almost any video game-to-screen adaptation as box office poison, with only a handful of films turning over a profit when they get a widespread release. Although more lighthearted takes on Super Mario Bros and Sonic have provided family fun to their audiences, Michael Fassbender was never a fan of his take on a video game character.
For the past few years, Fassbender hasn’t exactly been a stranger to some of the more challenging roles in Hollywood. From amazing dramas to some of the most operatic superhero movies playing the younger version of X-Men’s ‘Magneto’, Fassbender has always brought integrity to the roles that he has played, always rooting them in some semblance of reality.
Although it might be easy to play something fairly straightforward, Fassbender also knows how to reign in the subtle details of performance to ensure it can leap off the screen during the final product. In his drastic turn as the famous Apple CEO in Steve Jobs, Fassbender adopts the man’s spirit throughout different iterations of his life, from his mild-mannered demeanour when talking about his product to the infamously short temper that’s only reserved for the most drastic moments.
Once Fassbender started to gain traction for his chops in action movies, his dramatic turn as a part of the 2016 film Assassin’s Creed was one of his first major bombs. Although the gaming franchise had seen a surge in popularity in the 2010s, the movie failed to make a splash at the box office in its opening weekend.
Though Fassbender has always spoken fondly of his past performances, he tends to look back on Assassin’s Creed as a bit of a missed opportunity, telling Indiewire: “I would make it more entertaining; that’s really the main note. The feeling of the film, I think it took itself too seriously, and I would get to the action a lot quicker. I think there’s three beginnings of the film, which is a mistake”.
Granted, what Fassbender is alluding to is one of the trademark problems with any video game adaptation. Since the director is trying to rope in casual movie fans and fans of the source material, playing it super seriously tends to be a tactic to ground the movie in some form of reality instead of putting real gameplay in the film.
Given the serious subject matter, fans were left underwhelmed by the story they were handed, replacing some of the greatest elements of the game with by-the-numbers action that would have suited any other action film that came out that year. It wasn’t until years later that video game properties would start embracing the silly elements again, with this year’s Super Mario Bros being a welcome piece of cinematic fun just a few years later.
Fassbender didn’t let the sales affect him that much, either, continuing his work in the X:Men franchise and working on the science fiction reboot Alien: Covenant. In an attempt to try a buck the trends of most silly video game adaptations, Assassin’s Creed was a hard lesson that the tone could go too far in the opposite direction as well.
