Michael Fassbender

Few actors seem to embody the one-for-you-one-for-me approach to the industry quite like Michael Fassbender. While no one doubts the man’s ability as an actor, his career increasingly seems to be split between blockbuster motion pictures  —  such as the X-Men franchise of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed  —  and smaller art films with directors and costars he seems to admire. It seems like a fair trade to me. If buying a movie ticket to X-Men: Days of Future Past meant I played a role in pairing Fassbender with Brendan Gleeson in the same movie, then I consider that to be money pretty well spent.

As far as assassins go, Michael Fassbender is certainly dressed for success in the latest batch of photos from Assassin’s Creed. Fassbender re-teams with Macbeth director Justin Kurzel and co-star Marion Cotillard for the long-developing adaptation of Ubisoft’s hit video game series — which could very well end up being the first genuinely good video game movie ever released.

Derek Cianfrance’s ‘The Light Between Oceans’ might be the most heartbreaking movie of the year. Cianfrance’s (‘Blue Valentine,’ ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’) latest looks at the many sides of grief and guilt, and how one’s joy may come at the expense of another’s pain.

In an interview not long ago, Michael Fassbender promised that the Assassin’s Creed movie would feature some practical stunts, which seemed a bit hard to believe given the increasingly CGI-driven nature of film — not to mention how crazy dangerous it would be to pull off some of the physical tricks depicted in the video game series. But it looks like director Justin Kurzel is delivering on that promise, as evidenced by this awesome behind-the-scenes video, in which a stuntman takes a 125-foot “leap of faith.” 125 feet. That’s beyond impressive.

Looking back, I’m not really sure there was ever a winning proposition for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. The stakes were high enough when we only thought that Prometheus was a big-budget science-fiction movie for one of the genre’s great pioneers; once we learned that Prometheus would also serve as a prequel of sorts to the Alien universe, the film never stood a chance. Of course, Prometheus did not do itself any favors by awkwardly tying together Alien mythology with Interstellar-esque futurism, but maybe in a few years we’ll look back on the film with a little more fondness.

This new set photo from Alien: Covenant isn’t going to blow you away, unless you’re particularly fond of images in which directors do what they do best — you know, direct. But it does give us a blurry, slightly-out-of-focus look at Michael Fassbender, lurking in the background while Ridley Scott calls the shots. And it gives us a new photo to use in articles about Ridley Scott. We all win here.

The X-Men. It’s a simple premise. A genetic fluke gifts (or curses) a select few with special abilities. These people are known as “mutants.” Some of those mutants band together as the X-Men, sworn to protect the society that hates and fears them.

Ridley Scott is currently filming Alien: Covenant in Australia, and while we have yet to see the first official image from the upcoming Prometheus sequel, Michael Fassbender has been offering up a few ideas of what we can expect — mostly in terms of production design, which he’s compared to Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner. But some new set photos have popped up online to give us our first real look at Covenant, and they are somewhat unnerving.

Daniel Craig couldn’t have made it more clear during the Spectre press tour that he was pretty sick of playing James Bond. He even went so far as to suggest he’d pick slashing his wrists over returning as the famous secret agent for a fifth time. And now it looks like the actor is really done as 007, reportedly turning down a ton of money to star in the next Bond film. As big of a bummer as that is, it also means it’s time to speculate!

In news that may come as a disappointment to fans of the Assassin’s Creed video games, it appears that Justin Kurzel’s big screen adaptation of the series is primarily set in present day. As most fans of the games will tell you, the best, most exciting and immersive stuff happens in the sequences set in the past. But the film could still be good, right? Michael Fassbender certainly thinks so, but he’s kind of paid to think that.