Michael Fassbender: Can He Kill the Video Game Movie Curse With Assassin's Creed?

X-Men: First Class's Magneto signs on to coproduce Assassin's Creed

By John Boone Jul 09, 2012 9:09 PMTags
Michael FassbenderIan Gavan/Getty Images

Michael Fassbender is a man of many talents: He's a superhero (as bad boy Magneto in X-Men: First Class), he's an android (a handsome one to boot, in Prometheus) and he's well endowed (do we even need to say?!). And now he's going to be a video-game character.

Variety reports that Fassbender has signed on to star and coproduce Assassin's Creed—based on the time-traveling, action-packed game of the same name—with those involved in the deal gushing, "[He's] an extremely smart, talented, versatile and committed actor."

True, he might be all that too. But is he enough to save the video-game movie genre?!

We love us some Fassy, but we've also seen what happens to big-name actors when they grab the joystick and jump around a PlayStation (or Xbox or Gameboy, etc.)-inspired romp. And it ain't good.

Take a look at some of his predecessors:

1. Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: While Angelina fit the part perfectly (and all those tight T-shirts even more perfectly), her turn as archaeologist slash hottie adventurer Lara isn't one of the better big-screen adaptations. Just ask Robert Ebert, who dubbed the movie "monumentally silly." And that was a good review.

2. Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Ditto goes for the Disney flick, for which Ebert claimed, "Jake Gyllenhaal could make the cover of a muscle mag." But while his biceps may have been in check, one of the better reviews from this flick claimed it "knows exactly how dumb it is." Hardly five stars, eh?

 And it only gets worse from there…

3. Mark Wahlberg in Max Payne: Not even Mila Kunis (a goddess amongst video game lovers) could save this movie, which scored the lead (Wahlberg) a Razzie and the cheeky review that watching the film was "Payneful."

4. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in Doom: Take it away, Richard Roeper: ""The performances are awful, the action sequences are impossible to follow, the violence is gratuitous, the lighting is bad and I have my doubts that the catering truck was even up to snuff on this project." Need we say more?!

5. Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: The video-game flick might have spawned a million sequels (well, four to be exact), but it earned reviews calling it "completely pointless" with "characters...thinner than cardboard" and "cheapo effects." And people are supposed to love zombies!

So suffice it to say, we're wary. Sure, we can't wait to see Fassbender kicking ass and taking names while donning the über-cool title of assassin, we're just hoping that this time history does not repeat itself.