Brow Beat

Watch Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the Trailer for Assassin’s Creed

The trailer for Justin Kurzel’s Assassin’s Creed movie premiered Wednesday on Jimmy Kimmel Live, giving audiences their first look at the upcoming film. Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender collaborated with Kurzel on his Macbeth adaptation. For their follow-up they’re tackling Ubisoft’s successful video game franchise and adding Jeremy Irons to the mix. It’s hard to remember the last time so much talent was thrown at something so goofy-looking.

Maybe the script is Shakespearean, and maybe everyone delivers the performance of a lifetime; it’s too early to tell. But the one thing the trailer makes painfully clear is that Fassbinder’s virtual journey to 15th-century Spain will be rendered with all the verisimilitude of a video game—not in terms of historical accuracy, because who cares—but in the sense that the buildings and landscapes of Spain literally look like they were drawn and animated by a video game console. Here’s hoping these are preliminary effects or a deliberate aesthetic choice; audiences will find out for sure on Dec. 21. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to look so terrible!