Justin Kurzel on Assassin’s Creed: ’A big film like this is like an ocean liner’

Those familiar with Justin Kurzel’s cinematic output may have raised a quizzical eyebrow when it was announced that he would direct Assassin’s Creed. Having made his name with savage serial-killer biopic Snowtown (2011) and an extraordinary, elemental version of Macbeth (2015), it might seem strange that a filmmaker of such severity would turn his hand to a video-game adaptation.

The big screen has traditionally been a place where computer game franchises flounder. From the egregious career-low suffered by Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins in Super Mario Bros. (1993) to Duncan Jones’s recent Warcraft (2016) via the Resident Evil series (2002-), something vital often gets lost in translation, despite the obvious wealth of thrills, noise and action to be found in the most exciting games.

Still, the 20 games bearing the Assassin’s Creed name have sold more than 100m copies since the first one was released in 2007, and the lure of making of a big-budget film is a seductive one for any director.

Kurzel hails from a small town in South Australia (Gawler, pop. 23,957), and his three successive features to date have seen both scale and budgets increase exponentially. The devastating Snowtown won two awards in Australia and was heaped with critical acclaim, yet it was an intimate, character-driven piece with no big names, made for $2-3m. Macbeth was a leap forward in every direction. The $15-20m Shakespeare adaptation was led by a pair of major stars (Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard) and replete with thunderous action sequences and some exquisite location shooting in the Scottish Highlands. Kurzel reveals his budget for Assassin’s Creed in the interview below.

The plot of Kurzel’s latest is ridiculous: murderer Cal Lynch (Fassbender) is given a reprieve from execution by shadowy corporate megalith Abstergo Industries, a modern-day front for/incarnation of the Knights Templar. Lynch is hooked up to a scary-looking machine called the Animus, which forces him to relive the memories of Aguilar de Nerha, an assassin ancestor of his who lived in the times of the Spanish Inquisition. Soon, the medieval fight between the knights and the assassins seeps into Lynch’s contemporary life and battles commence in the past and present…

If that sounds baffling and complex, it is. But Assassin’s Creed keeps the attention with its crackling action sequences (shot on location in Spain and Malta, as well as at Pinewood’s 007 soundstage), impressive cinematography and the breadth of acting talent on screen. Aside from Fassbender and his Macbeth co-star Cotillard (the latter playing scientist Sofia Rikkin), Charlotte Rampling, Brendan Gleeson and the ever-reliable Michael Kenneth Williams all make an appearance.

When we caught up with Kurzel in a dimly lit room at swanky Mayfair hotel Claridges, the Australian director’s easy chat was peppered with bonhomie and laughter. When asked about his own recent viewing habits, he declared a fondness for Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic (2016) and acclaimed Netflix TV doc Making a Murderer (2015). Below he talks about why he took Assasin’s Creed on and how Michael Fassbender likes to spend his days off.

Why adapt a video game?

Well, Michael asked me to do it (laughs). I was in post-production for Macbeth, and he said: “I’m producing Assassin’s Creed.” He started talking about the concepts and ideas in it, genetic memory and experiencing your ancestors’ past. I was opened up to it through Ubisoft and was genuinely blown away by the depth of the world and the work that had gone into it. It completely changed my opinion of video games. I saw an instant film there. It felt as though there was a lot of meat on the bone and that it was more than just a one-dimensional story told through action.

It’s a stunning film to look at. What were you hoping to achieve visually?

A reality. Right from the beginning Michael said he wanted to do a lot of the action sequences himself, and that creates a domino effect where you suddenly went, “Well, let’s try to do everything for real and get the best stunt guys in and see what was humanly possible for an assassin to do.”

We thought “let’s not do any green screen”, because we were all gonna get sick of that, so we shot in Valletta in Malta and Almería and Seville in Spain, and that was a huge part of trying to make the film feel grounded, especially in the period sequences, not feeling as if the world was an appropriation of the period but that it actually felt like a period film where you could smell and feel a sort of time difference between the past and the present.

The film looks really expensive. I read that it cost $200m…

It didn’t cost $200m. I wish.

Can you tell me how much it cost?

It was around $120m. It’s a lotta, lotta money, but I think for the sort of film it is, it’s not a huge amount of money. We were very resourceful, and we were very respectful of the money that we were given. It’s expensive to make a film this way for real. You can camp out in the studio, and you can save a lot of money because you’re not carting the crew around to different locations, and that became the real challenge with the resources that we had. How do we create all this for real when you go to all these exotic places and get the smell of Spain in the film but at the same time keep under budget? That was definitely a bit of a challenge.

Aside from the budget what’s the difference between making a film like this and making a film like Macbeth or Snowtown?

Macbeth and Snowtown are more intimate films, and it’s like you’re sailing on a camera and you can turn the boat very easily and quickly. With a big film like this, it is an ocean liner: it’s heading towards its destiny, and you can kind of sway it a little bit. I think that’s something that was really new and different. You’ve gotta be very, very organised and also try to work out how you’re gonna be spontaneous within it.

But you’ve just got so many people working for you. You can’t get to know them all. You have to be very trusting to your heads of department to follow a particular vision you have.

How was it working with Michael and Marion again?

It was fantastic that there was a familiarity there that I was doing a big film like this and I had a couple of people there that were my friends that were winking at me for encouragement. Also, Michael was producer on the film so there was a lot that we were sharing in terms of pressure and responsibility.

Are there any amusing anecdotes you can give me about working with them on the set?

We were in Almería where Sergio Leone did all his westerns, and there’s actually a kind of western town there that’s still there. Michael took us all out for paintball, and we spent a whole day playing paintball on a Sergio Leone western set, drinking vodka. That was probably the most memorable day.

Was Michael Fassbender any good at paintball?

Michael’s pretty good at everything (laughs). He’s brilliantly, frustratingly good at everything.

What do you bring to this film as a director?

I bring the same crew that was involved in my other films, so obviously there’s a kind of language that’s passed over.

I don’t sort of sit down and go: “This is my style, and this is who I am, and this is the auteur I’ve become.” It’s very interesting. We all start from a neutral kind of place, and I think we all organically get to a certain style and familiarity, which is defined by our natural DNA of what we love about cinema.

What can you tell us about your next film, The True History of the Kelly Gang?

I’ve been developing it for a while, and Shaun Grant (who wrote Snowtown) has been adapting it from the Peter Carey book. It’s a pretty raw look at Ned Kelly and that sort of period in time in Australian history, which was pretty badlands. So it’s something that I really love but that I’m really conscious of getting right, so we’re just still in development.