Over-saturation and repetitiveness may now be the hallmarks of the Assassin's Creed saga, but it never used to be this way. Indeed, even when the franchise what at the peak of its yearly release schedule, the developers at Ubisoft managed to produce a gem of a title in Black Flag - by far the most innovative of AC titles yet. In the role of the game's morally ambiguous Assassin, Edward Kenway, was Matt Ryan. A relative newcomer to the acting scene, Ryan has since attained much praise for his role on the unfortunately cancelled Constantine, where he played the eponymous occult protagonist - himself also an anti-hero. It is his role as Edward Kenway however that marked geek culture's first introduction to Ryan's talent, and with such a brilliant performance being conveyed, it'd be hard to find a better one. Protagonists of the AC series have always been anti-heroes consumed by a questionable doctrine, but the Welsh Assassin in question brought that front and centre to the narrative's progression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cru5cms4_1Q Edward was a pirate more concerned with finding wealth and pleasure than assuming responsibility as an Assassin, but this made his character arc in the title all the more intriguing as a consequence, which is pretty remarkable considering the slew of emotionally bankrupt caricatures the series has conjured up since.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
