1994 saw the release of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Since then it's spawned countless novels and games, including the online RPG phenomenon, World of Warcraft. And I haven't played any of these games or read any of these novels. In fact, for a while, I thought it was just WoW. I never even played that. I'm not a big RPG guy, I perfer games that end at some point. However, when I heard that Duncan Jones was the director who's taking on the film adaptation, I thought "Okay, this seems promising". When I saw the trailers, I thought they lookrf pretty good. When I found out that Uwe Boll tried to direct at some point and the studio told him to **** off, I became beyond excited. But is it good? I don't want this year to end with me saying that the best Video Game movie of 2016 was Angry Birds. And I doubt this will be on par with the worst VG film of 2016 *coughRachet&Clankcough*. But does Warcraft live up to the hype?
CONS
When you make a video game, you can make the story really good or generic. Usually, the main focus of the game is the gameplay itself. Sometimes, the story doesn't matter as much. HOWEVER, when making a movie, the story is the main priority who should have. Now, it's that there's hardly any story. It's that there's too much. There's a lot of stuff going on in this. It goes back and forth between different subplots, to the point where I forgot about certain characters until they showed back up. I know it's been revealed that 40 minutes were cut from the film, but this is the theatrical cut. It's so jumbled that over an hour into the movie, they start introducing new concepts and subplots, like a pointless romance or a character being possessed by a demon. I know a lot of Warcraft fans will say "Well, there's been 20+ years worth of Warcraft lore, so how did you expect them to fit all of that into a 2-hour movie"? To that, I say this...*ahem*... NOT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED IN YOUR LORE!!!
Now, despite there being a lot going on in this film, it can easily be fixed by some good pacing. Warcraft doesn't have that. The movie rarely takes it's time to explain it's world and develop the characters. It has a couple scenes where they decide to do that. But most of the time, it feels rushed. Like someone working on this movie kept saying "Okay, let's just this thing going. Hurry it up".
This movie has the same problem with another video game movie that came out this year, Ratchet & Clank. Where the film rarely explains it's world and makes the audience feel lost, unless you've played the games. If you're a Warcraft fan, that's great. More power to you. However, as a newcomer into this franchise, I felt a bit lost. Throughout the whole movie, I was asking myself stuff like "Who are these people? What's that? Why is this happening? Where is this character?". There are things that show up late in the movie, that they hint at once. But when they show up, they just except you to know who they are.
Onto the characters, there are some characters I liked (I'll get to them in the PROS section). But most of the characters are just underdeveloped and bland. They try to give some development to Gorona, orc/human hybrid, and Khadgar, an appertice of Medivh. But Gorana just comes across as the "Strong Warrior Woman". And Khadgar just comes across as annyoing, with how much they try to make him the comic relief. As for the restof the characters, with the exception of a few, they just come across as bland adn generic. Medivh is "the wise wizard". Blackhand is "the big warrior who works for the villain". Llane is "the king who's also a fighter". Draka is "the good wife". Callan is "the son who's eager to prove himself to his father". And so on. But, there are some nice things to say about Warcraft.
PROS
I mentioned that there are some characters I liked. I really liked Lothar, the main character for the human side and Durotan, the main character for the Orc side. Lothar, at first, seems like "the stoic warrior". However, it's shown that he does seem to care for the kingdom and the people in it, such as his son or Llane or even Khadgar. Durotan is also pretty cool. Not only is he a badass, but he's also trying to save the Orcs from falling into war and following Gul'dan. Both characters come across as very likeable. However, the film's best character is the villain, Gul'dan. On paper, he's just "the evil warlock". In execution, he proves to be a very menacing threat. It's shown that he will do what ever it takes to have his plans succeed. Whether it's killing an entire race, destroying an entire world, or even killing members of his own race. Near the end, he also proves to be a physical threat, in a fight between him and Duroton.
The acting is pretty good, too. It's nice to see Toby Kebbell do more mocap work and he's great, as with the rest of the mocap actors. Daniel Wu, Clancy Brown, and Robert Kazinsky do great jobs as the orcs. Dominc Cooper and Ben Foster are good, of course. I've heard people criticize Paula Patton as wooden. But I think she was fine. I also like Travis Fimmel, who I've never seen in a movie before.
The effects and design are really good, too. While nothing groundbreaking, the mocap work is great. Also, the costume design are props are rather good. They didn't make it look like your average fantasy movie. They made it look distinct. The action scenes are pretty good too. They managed to mix the practical and CGI effects pretty well.
VERDICT:
I didn't want to be too hard on this. Duncas Jones is a great director and his father just passed away (#RIPDavidBowie). I've heard him talk about how his father saw Warcraft and was so excited for his son and I feel talking bad about it. Unfortunatly, despite some good effects, fight scenes, acting, and two or three good characters, Warcraft suffers from bad pacing, a crowded story, dull and underdevloped characters, and a much too heavy reliance on you knowing the lore. I've been told that 40 minutes were cut from the film, so I wonder if those extra 40 minutes would flesh out the story or not. I wanted this to be the first really great Video Game movie and I hope Assassian's Creed is the one. So if you want to see a good video game movie this summer... go find a copy of "Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva", that was pretty good.
5/10