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Michael Fassbender leaps into action in new 'Assassin's Creed' movie clip

This year’s Game Awards honored some of the biggest and best video games released in 2016, but it also highlighted at least one noteworthy moment from the movie side of things.

During the awards show, 20th Century Fox debuted a new extended clip from the upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie that’s based on the hit game franchise, and it featured a pretty impressive action sequence, with star Michael Fassbender navigating a fast-paced chase sequence as only an elite assassin can.

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Titled “Carriage Chase,” the 80-second clip begins with Fassbender’s character, Aguilar, dispatching a group of soldiers with some help from a fellow assassin before pursuing a carriage ferrying a young child — in a cage, for some reason — away from the battle. As the chase rapidly nears the edge of a cliff, Fassbender’s character cuts the rescue as close as possible while battling the child’s kidnappers.

Directed by Justin Kurzel (MacBeth), Assassin’s Creed also stars Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises, La Vie en Rose), Michael Kenneth Williams (12 Years a Slave), and Ariane Labed (Before Midnight). Fassbender plays a dual role in the film as both a modern-era character named Callum Lynch and Callum’s ancestor, an elite assassin named Aguilar.

In the lead-up to the film’s release this month, the studio has unveiled several videos that put the spotlight on the “Animus” — the fictional device that allows Fassbender’s character to access (and essentially relive) the life experiences of his ancestor. The movie’s plot revolves around a mysterious organization’s attempts to unlock a terrible secret using the ancestral memories of Fassbender’s character and other descendants of a shadowy guild of assassins.

Encompassing nine major titles and a long list of spinoff and tie-in releases, the Assassin’s Creed franchise sold more than 93 million copies as of June 2015. The movie features original characters created for the big-screen franchise instead of characters from the game series, but is based on the same core concepts of the franchise.

Assassin’s Creed is scheduled to hit theaters December 21.

Rick Marshall
Former Contributing Editor, Entertainment
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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Tera
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