Episode
Badlands Story Hour Ep. 167: Assassin's Creed
- Podcast
- Badlands Media
- Published
- May 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 6792
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
Chris Paul and Burning Bright dig into the 2016 Justin Kurzel film Assassin's Creed, based on the long-running Ubisoft video game series and starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, and Charlotte Rampling. Both guys agree the movie underdelivers on its concept but is way better than the brutal reviews it received at the time, and the conceptual material gives them plenty to chew on. The conversation winds through how open world game engines build only what the player can see (a great metaphor for our own constructed reality), the eerie 2013 trailer for Ubisoft's The Division that predicted COVID with unsettling accuracy, and how Xbox lobbies and 4chan were quietly red-pilling young men years before MAGA existed. From there they dig into the philosophical heart of the film: the Templars chasing the Apple of Eden to eliminate free will, the assassins as imperfect guardians of human sovereignty, and whether a secret society fighting for the people can ever really be on the people's side. They close with the surveillance state as a counterfeit god, JFK's warning about secrecy, and why morality has to be inherent rather than coded by law.