Why is actor Michael Fassbender in this dumb movie?

In Assassin’s Creed, a shadowy organization saves a deathrow inmate because they need him to unlock the memories of his 15th-century ancestor to find the location of an apple that contains the genetic code to free will because Marion Cotillard wants to end violence — or something.

There surely have been sillier film premises, but even in a year that gave us Independence Day: Resurgence, it’s hard to think of anything as convoluted and, in the end, as joyless and unrewarding as this.

Director Justin Kurzel’s film embodies the worst tendencies of modern blockbusters to feel not like a full movie, but a tease for what’s to come — a television pilot on the big screen. It’s become the de facto operating mode for franchise storytelling, where instead of relying on a natural interest, the studios force audiences to want more by simply not giving them a full story in the first place.

Assassin’s Creed tries to give an emotional entryway into understanding the ancient conflict between the Templars, who want order, and the Assassins, sworn to preserve free will at all costs, through the story of Callum Lynch. We meet Cal (Angus Brown) as a kid — a daredevil troublemaker who bikes home to find Patsy Cline’s Crazy blaring over the speakers and his mother dead in the kitchen. His father, sporting a dramatic hooded cape, is there with a knife and tells Cal he needs to get out and “live in the shadows.” Then some government types in black SUVs storm the house as Cal escapes on the rooftops.

Did his dad kill his mom? Was he trying to protect Cal? Does any of it make a bit of sense having never met any of these characters before?

The answers sort of come, but not for a while. By that point you may have forgotten you were supposed to care in the first place.

We next meet Cal grown into Michael Fassbender and on death row for murder (also left largely unexplored). His last words are that he’ll see his dad in hell, but, then he wakes up in an operating room where Sofia (Cotillard) explains to him that her company faked his death and now he’s going to work for her and her father (Jeremy Irons).

They soon hook him up to an insane contraption called the animus that takes Cal back to 1492 Spain — basically into a video game — where he and his fellow Assassins hunt down this Apple of Eden.

In the end, the real mystery has little to do with the Assassins, the Templars or the Apple of Eden and more to do with why so many talented actors thought this was a good idea.