A lapsed Warcraft fan and a complete Warcraft newbie walk into a cinema, to watch the new Warcraft movie. If you’ve read any other reviews you’ll probably guess what happened next. If you’re not a hardcore fan of the series, able to forgive more than a few flaws, you’ll probably be either a little bit confused or a little bit disappointed.
Warning: spoilers within!
NB: Chris Jager, editor of Lifehacker, and Campbell Simpson, editor of Gizmodo, aren’t hardcore Warcraft fans — most importantly, they haven’t played World of Warcraft. If you have played WoW a lot and you’re a fan of the series, remember your experience is probably different to the majority of cinema-goers that might see the film. And, of course, feel free to share your own thoughts about the film in the comments below. Thanks!
CJ: So I went into this movie not knowing much about Warcraft. My exposure to the property has mainly been through half-read game reviews, gushing testimonials from WoW-playing buddies (which I’ve clearly ignored) and that massively overrated South Park episode from ten years ago.
In other words, I wasn’t an invested, die-hard fan. On the one hand, this means my expectations weren’t impossibly high but it also meant all the in-jokes and Easter eggs were completely lost on me.
Cam, you’ve had a bit more experience with the Warcraft mythos, particularly the older strategy war game titles. What did you make of the movie?
CS: I went into Warcraft having played and loved all the RTS games — from the original Warcraft in 1994 to the Frozen Throne expansion for WC3 a decade later. I never really got into WoW, but I’ve mucked around a bit in Hearthstone too. So I knew the bulk of the history at one point in time.
I’ll freely admit that I’m a bit out of touch with the universe from not being a WoW fan, but I remembered the backstory — and it’s worth mentioning that Warcraft is an origin story itself. It’s act one in what is meant to be a multi-act play, with characters that any player should know and love.
The movie is pretty much tailored to that in-crowd, though. There were plenty of moments where I didn’t really know what was going on, and that’s with my existing memory of the series already onboard. I can see why anyone with zero background knowledge would struggle to understand the backstory, which makes following a slightly convoluted movie even more difficult.
I really feel like Warcraft didn’t know exactly what it wanted to be. Is it a Lord of the Rings fantasy epic? Is it a bit of a comedic poke at the Warcraft world? Is it something in between? You’re a fantasy movie nerd, even if you’re not a Warcraft nerd — what did you think it was?
CJ: It was basically two-plus hours of underdeveloped characters whaling on each other for reasons that weren’t always apparent.
From the very beginning, the film throws the viewer into the action without properly explaining who any of these characters are or why we should care.
This is especially apparent on the Alliance side. Lines like: “Your majesty, we must summon the Guardian at haste!” serve as character introductions. This is just poor storytelling.
The first act is literally “humans react to orc attack”. We don’t get to know these guys before the action starts, which is very problematic: everything from their personalities to their actual role in the kingdom feels rushed and improvised.
This is something Lord Of The Rings did well – we spent a good twenty minutes hanging in Hobbiton with Frodo and the gang before the shit hits the fan. In Warcraft, there are no quiet moments before the storm.
Okay, so let’s treat it as a straight war film with no room for character development. Even then, it fails pretty badly. We’re never shown the orcs attacking villages in detail, so the stakes feel incredibly low.
Again, this is something Lord Of The Rings did well: by briefly focusing on a few fleeing peasants and their weepy, armour-clad sprogs, you really felt engaged in the fates of the humans. Warcraft has none of that. It’s just a bunch of lords in castles arguing about the need to respond to the invasion. Ho-hum.
I suppose we should talk about the effects, which is a big reason to see a movie like this. What did you think Cam?
CS: I thought the character development was OK, in terms of them becoming more fleshed out and real, but it started from a very abrupt point. Like, hey here’s the king and he’s a bit pretentious and self-assured, and hey here’s this other guy and he’s apparently a famous knight who is also self-assured? You knew who the characters were by the end, but you didn’t get much of it at the start.
Even with my memory of the games, I had no idea who the Guardian was. When we were introduced to him, I genuinely thought that the golem was the Guardian for a second. I also thought the movie’s treatment of magic was really lightweight — it just suddenly entered the piece that a couple of guys could throw blue and orange stuff at orcs, and teleport around and occasionally get tired.
I think there wasn’t enough exposition during, really. There was that RTS-style pan over some burning villages, but not enough of that middle-ground where you see individual people getting captured and killed.
But the effects were fantastic, I thought. The CGI of the orcs — including Durotan’s close up — is some of the best I’ve seen, and the blend of live action and CGI was great. The costumes, too, were almost LOTR-grade in how true to the games they were and how realistic they looked. I think that’s probably where Warcraft is strongest; if you treat it like Avatar, as a technical demonstration with a bit of cinema attached, it holds up well.
CJ: Yeah, all the orc stuff was the best part of the movie. I get they needed to focus on both Horde and Alliance to appease fans of the series, but did the human characters have to be so boring? The principle cast ranged from annoying to entirely forgettable – hell, even Travis Fimmel’s maxed-out charisma couldn’t save his character.
By contrast, I found the orc characters really interesting (even if it wasn’t always obvious why different factions were fighting each other.) The orc plot line also contained some genuine surprises. For example, in the beginning of the movie the main character’s pregnant wife unexpectedly goes into labour while travelling between dimensions. This seems like a classic tragedy/revenge setup via disposable characters. Instead, she successfully gives birth unscathed. This expectation-dodging happened several times during the movie and it made the orc characters more compelling.
The same can’t be said of the Alliance unfortunately: their motivations and ultimate fates are pretty predictable from the start.
In conclusion, I think there were enough elements in Warcraft to make a pretty good movie. But something went awry in the execution. It didn’t do a very good job of explaining itself which made it difficult to care about what was happening.
Having said that, I’ll give it props for keeping the “franchise building” to a minimum. Unlike most modern superhero and fantasy films, it was content to tell a self-contained story. It just happened to be a confusing and inaccessible one.
CS: There were a few orc storylines that Warcraft really missed out on exploring, which is strange because the movie felt long. Why were the Frostwolf clan slightly lighter in colour than the greenskin orcs? Why was Garona a half-breed — she looked very human, but I thought there were no humans in the Orc realm?
Let’s hope those are explained a little more in the next movie, if one eventually happens. I think we’re agreed that somewhere in the world, and somewhere throughout the two-hour film, Warcraft had some great ideas that just needed to be made a little clearer. All it needed was some more world-building.
I agree that the (mostly) self-contained plot of the movie was good. But there were a few ways that it could have been more fleshed out, without leaving threads hanging, that would have made it more enjoyable to watch. With that said, with all Warcraft‘s minor flaws, I’m looking forward to where the series goes.
It took a while for the game series to hit its stride — the one with the fondest place in my memory is Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, which came out eight years after the original. I don’t think we should judge the movie too harshly; we should see it as a pretty reasonable first act in a longer saga.
CJ: Except it failed to make us care about any of the characters. If the sequel picks up directly after the first one, you can count me out. The further adventures of Wimpy Magic Guy, Fantasy Gamora and Aragorn (With Swagger) is something I have zero interest in.
I also feel like the other races in Warcraft got serious short thrift. The dwarves and elves were little more than extras and the other races didn’t make a single appearance. How much cooler would it have been if the Alliance formed a Dirty Dozen-style fighting force comprising all the major races? That would have been way more interesting than the feckless troupe of white dudes we got.
If Warcraft manages to make enough bucks for a sequel, they should skip ahead a generation or so. And add some of those panda guys.
Have you seen Warcraft? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
58 responses to “Is The Warcraft Movie Really That Bad?”
the one thing that ive seen from non critics that have seen the movie is that the eiditing and cutting in first 20-40mins is all over the place, and according to Duncan Jones there was about 40minutes worth of scenes that were cut from the movie in order to drop it down to its current running time of 2hrs.
I honestly wouldnt be suprised if a Directors cut DVD comes out which would fix that problem.
Edit: im might add as well that the movie is a retelling of the first war (wacraft 1) and in that war there were no dwarves, high elves, or trolls. They never entered until the second war (Warcraft 2) and well Night Elves and Tauren never appeared until Warcraft 3 so that is why the other races were not given much screen time.
Trust me, should a sequel get made the movie will show the Dwarves, High Elves, Trolls and Ogres a lot more.
This. You see the Dranei briefly, and you meet some dwarves and elves in the movie briefly, but this, like the first game is solely ORCS VS HUMANS. I had a great time with the movie personally but yes, it does feel like there’s footage missing, especially stuff to do with the king…
I’ll probably try and see it then to throw some money their way. I’d like to see this developed in the future and feel people are being overly harsh due to the usual ‘oh but video game movies are ALWAYS bad.’
if i may ask, how have you seen the movie doesnt it open next week or did the release get a last minute change
There were some “launch” screenings earlier this week (Tuesday) in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. May have even been one in Adelaide or Perth.
ahh gotcha
Bingo.
There was indeed one in Adelaide, there were a bunch of Wow cosplayers around when I saw The Nice Guys on Tuesday.
Duncan Jone not only didn’t get respect for translate cartoonist graphic game into live action movie, and tried his best squeeze lore on lore into one movie enough so it would make sense and still feel complete, but instead he ran into disadvantage getting his movie chopped up in pieces by studio. I bet the Director Cut will fill in all the gaps.
It’s just ridiculous how the author complains about other races not in the movie. Clearly he either didn’t know what he was writing about or just completely missed the timeline.
It looks like garbage. The Vikings guy is a horrible actor. The half breed chick just looks like Rihanna or Zoe Saldana or some other token black who’s been shoved into the limelight, God knows why. BORING story.
You are a fucking gross human being
Yeah well, he is on Kotaku. It’s not like there are decent people here, as your comment so helpfully demonstrates. So when in Rome, yeah?
key word “looks” well…somebody prematurely joined the hate wagon.
The movie undoubtedly sits in a weird space.
Disclaimer, I’m a massive Warcraft fan. And as a fan, I loved it. But that was only because I already knew the world and the characters. There’s some great fan service in so many of the shots.
On the other hand, while I think the reviews saying it’s “worse than Battlefield Earth or Super Mario Bros” are being overly harsh on it, I can completely understand why people won’t like it.
It drops you into this universe/world and does a poor job of explaining a lot of things. The first 20-30mins is “establishing shot > introduce character > end scene > establishing shot > introduce character > end scene”. It’s doesn’t establish the geography of the world at all. Characters motivations are generally not well established. Characters will throw around terminology, names, and locations around, some of which are explained but a lot isn’t.
I don’t think it’s completely inaccessible though. The person I saw the movie with had next to zero knowledge of Warcraft, aside from knowing it was a video game, but they loved it as well. They did have a lot of questions about things such as who the Kirin Tor were, what exactly Fel was etc. They actually want to know more about the lore since seeing the movie.
On a ‘technical’ level the film is great. The effects are (mostly) stunning. Magic looks fucking badass. The production design is great and the aesthetic is very true to the style of the games. The music is so-so, but there are some great little nods to the music from the game.
It’s not the savour of video game movies, but I do think it’s getting an unfair wrap.
Duncan Jones has mentioned that there’s approximately 40 minutes of cut material, and I hope it gets a release one day, because I feel like an extra few (or extended) scenes of character development would really help the movie.
Honestly, I feel like this movie needs 2 scores.
As a Warcraft fan: 4.5/5
As a normal filmgoer: 2.5 (maybe pushing 3)/5
I think I can agree with this. I sit in a weird middle ground too. I played all the originals (warcraft – W3) and got into WoW for a while. Never made it past lvl50 and was in and out a couple times later. So I was never a die hard fan, but I did enjoy a lot of the story. The movie sits at a 2.5/5 for me. As I was watching it, I was thinking about how lame bits of it were and overall how I didn’t care about the characters. But the more I think back on it, it really wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t horrible to watch. It just wasn’t… great, or even… good. to watch. For me, it’s a hungover movie… something I’d watch on a lazy hungover day. Nothing I would go out of my way to recommend to anyone.
A completely fair assessment.
I can’t help but think that the Lord of the Clans storyline would have made a much, much better first WC movie.
Set it between WC2 and WC3 – The Horde is broken after the second war, and baby Thrall is found by an Alliance officer. He grows up in slavery, becomes an orcish gladiator for a while, is involved in an alliance plot to steal the throne, revolts, and reunites the Horde. That way you can focus on a single story that crosses both the Alliance and Horde, which would give you more time for character development. Given the game never got released, it would have given the writers alot more creative license (although they would probably have to stick fairly close to the book). Given the role that Thrall plays in WC3, this would give you a natural path for a sequel as well; introduce Arthas in the first movie, then focus the next movie on his fall and/or the burning legion invasion.
I honestly think that’s where the 2nd movie will end up, it’s opened to 140 million worldwide on its opening weekend without the US boxoffice and now sits on 168. China helped a *lot*. The movie will likely take around 600+ million on a 160 million budget, earning it a sequel at some point. Blizzard knows its audience and won’t care too much about critics as long as the returns are there.
It’s not even fan vs. normal filmgoer. Some complains are just stereotype ridiculous or just straight up short-sight stupid. Like:
1) Too much CGI, I want real Orc, real Troll, practical magic, real Griffin.
2) The tone is not serious like Lords of the RIng.
3) This is nothing like Game of Thone.
4) It’s video game movie, it must be bad for sure
Jesse Cox rated it 7/10. He’s probably the reviewer I’d trust the most for this one, our tastes are quite similar.
CS guy has no idea what he is talking about so his comments are invalid. I saw the movie. There was flaws. I agree with CJ on character devepment to a degree but not entirely. CJ seem like he is pissed off that the movie wasn’t as he expected so he throws rubbish in comparison. That’s not a good reviewer’s attitude so he’s also an invalid reviewer.
Yes the movie was not perfect. It was fast pace and character development was cut short. That needs to fixed. More time needs to be spent on these characters for a better character progression..
Overal 7/10. It’s a block buster hit for sure. It is just not Oscar worthy until pacing and timing is corrected. The scripting also needs help. The orcs storyline and scripting was great..the human sides needs work.
Agreed. The orc stuff was fantastic but the human stuff less so. I wanted far more time with the orcs!!!
dont mind me, im just upvoting you to cancel out the down votes you’ve gotten from a troll
You’re a good person 🙂
Genuinely interested what I have “no idea” about. Nice to know we’re both invalid though! I think your “7/10, it’s a blockbuster hit” is a much more detailed commentary 🙂
Well you admitted you don’t know anything of the lore which means you don’t exactly know what you’re talking about, like Garona for example, she’s half Orc and half Draenei, not half human. A lot of the questions you had watching the movie would be answered if you knew anything of the source material.
So – I stopped reading the article when you started comparing this video game movie to Lord of The Rings. Mainly because you stated that LoTR started in the Shire. That’s just wrong. It started with WAR, sure an explained event as it were told, but still, it gave history. Having not seen Warcraft yet, I’m not going to compare the two, but I just wanted to point out that if you’re going to make a comparison between the two, please cite your sources correctly. In LoTR they show the battle for Middle Earth and we’re not told who all the key players are on the battlefield exactly. And their characters progress over the evolution of THREE movies. So, that being said, most reviews just seem like people wanting to hate on Warcraft for trying to setup a sequel or two. As if a story about gallivanting through Middle Earth to toss a ring into “the fires from whence it came” is that much more compelling or deserving of two additional movies when all Frodo and Gandalf had to do was summon a gryphon/Eagle and fly on over to Mount Doom, toss the ring in and call it a day. By the way… I love LoTR, I just don’t get why people are so ignorant.
Lord Of The Rings *does* start in the Shire. The War of the Last Alliance was a pre-title prologue. (Warcraft has one of these too, albeit much shorter.)
My original point stands: Warcraft did not take the time to set up the (human) characters or show them interacting in everyday situations. I subsequently never felt attached to them.
Sorry Chris, the second you mention LotR in comparison your whole conversation became invalid. LotR is a bar that no other film will ever be able to reach.
Yes, Warcraft didn’t set things up, but LotR had 6 films to develop characters, Warcraft has had one. Again, unfair comparison.
Except we’re talking about the beginning of the first movie. Right from the start, you know who the principal hobbits are and have a feel for their personalities. They were given a chance to relax and be themselves. The beginning of Warcraft would have benefited from something similar.
Really? Outside of Bilbo & Frodo who got development? NO ONE! Not to mention that depending on the cut you’re referring to, you have 3 or 4 hours of film time to build a single section as other characters/areas/lore could be developed in the remaining 6-8 hours over 2 more films.
Warcraft had to world build, introduce and develop multiple characters, and establish a hook in just under 2 hours. Could you imagine how much of that establishment and relaxation would have been cut from Fellowship in order to fill in a 114 minute run time?
Again, you’re comparing the impossible standard to something that is developed in a regular standard. If Warcraft had 12 hours over 3 films guaranteed, then things would develop more and have a more relaxed state too. But it doesn’t. They have less than 2 hours in 1 film to do everything LotR did.
Establishing the motives and personalities of the protagonists shouldn’t be cut for screen time considerations. I’m not saying they should have spent a third of the movie chilling at a tavern, but we weren’t really given anything to latch onto.
The movie managed to make the orc chieftain interesting and likeable in a five minute introductory sequence. All I’m saying is that the humans would have benefited from something similar.
Unfortunately the humans don’t really “matter” in Warcraft lore till you hit Arthas’ story, which would be possibly 2-3 movies after this one. I think that the intention of the film was to have you identify with the Orcs and their plight more than the humans for once. Not every film needs to have us connecting with a human character or you end up with abominations like the Transformers films.
Well in that we can agree. The film should have focused primarily on the main orc and maybe the Vikings guy. Too many humans spoiled the broth.
Well said. The goal was to focus on why the Orcs were invading Azeroth which led up to the important decision Garona made at the end, etc. The humans, in every movie are “important”…. Nobody complained that LoTR was mostly about Hobbits and not greedy humans… lol
I think the whole point of it is to allow the viewer to develop their own opinion of the characters and “heroes”, if you will. That’s kind of the idea behind “there’s no good versus evil” or sharing a common enemy, right? I don’t want the director or writer telling me who to like. In the case of Warcraft, we get to choose. There was plenty of buildup for Anduin Lothar, Llane Wrynn, Medivh, Khadgar, Garona, etc. I don’t think the character development was imbalanced at all. I’ve watched it since my original post and I’m still of the opinion that it’s ignorant to even compare it to LoTR. And while LoTR technically starts in the shire, the character development is still very slow. The one thing I will say that could be better in the first 30 minutes of the movie is the timing. They introduce characters a little too quickly and immediately cut to the next scene like aaaaaand here’s Durotan aaaaand…. so on. Feels a bit rushed like Duncan was a bit excited to be directing this movie. Honestly, they should have purchased a trilogy and used the first two movies to tell the story of the burning legion, giving us more insight to Medivh and why he is corrupted, etc. allowing it to build up and into something. The way it ended you’re looking at advancing directly into the burning legion / Illidan, fast forwarding to Thrall as Warchief. I never read LoTR, but the movie did a great a job and is probably the most worthy movie of all time in my opinion. I enjoyed Warcraft, because I played for 10+ years, however, I think it could have been more developed over the course of a couple or three movies. The problem though, is that it becomes like a comic, where you have different villains each time. Gets gimmicky after a while.
I think the next film could be a dual story. First being Thrall’s life growing up as a slave to humans and then forming The Horde. At the same time you introduce and develop Arthas through to him finding Frostmourne and killing his father. Yes, it does skip Illidan for the most part, but that needs to be a whole movie on its own. If anything, it’s a hard job to work out when and how to do the stories. There’s no Aspects, no Dragonflights, no corruption of Neferion, no Onyxia, no corruption of the Sunwell or any elf storyline. There’s a lot of lore that would need to be told.
Warcraft is a huge saga and would need 7+ films to get everything told, or even set up
@mase when it comes to warcraft 3 and the frozen throne expansion, each races Campaign would best be done as their own movie similar to how the Marvel Movie Universe works. Something we also need to wonder about is how well the general movie going audience would accept a movie or 3 with the “Bad guys” actually winning. I mean Seeing the human movie end with arthas killing his father, the undead movie finishing with legion invading and the orc movie finishing with Grom dooming the orcs again and the night elf moving finishing with Illidan absorbing the skull of Gul’dan and killing Tichcondrias (which would be a bitter sweet ending) and then finally have the last movie be the defeat of the legion but then set up the frozen throne campaign
@zorellion I went into this movie knowing basically nothing about the “Warcraft” world…I was confused a lot during the movie but i still really liked it. I was sad that Durotan died because he was my favorite character in the movie besides the guy from the vikings show(It was hard for me to catch peoples names). All that being said before this movie I’ve always wanted to learn more about the lore of Warcraft, this movie made me want to learn about it even more. Seeing how you seem to know a lot about Warcraft I would highly appreciate it if you could show me where to look to learn this(from the beginning obviously). Thanks in advance.
I agree with you sir:)
agree, any fool who instantly compare this to Lords of the Ring or Games of Thrones has no idea how to review movies and deserve zero credibility. Comparing Warcraft to Lords of the Rings is like comparing Star Wars vs Star Trek just because they are space story related.
Just saw it, the critics can go fuck themselves. Sorry they have no idea what’s going on, but their ignorance doesn’t a bad movie make.
“I really feel like Warcraft didn’t know exactly what it wanted to be. Is it a Lord of the Rings fantasy epic? Is it a bit of a comedic poke at the Warcraft world?”
Any particular reason that it can’t just Warcraft? It was a good movie.
Dude, the movie itself couldn’t Warcraft. That’s the problem.
How dare you have an opinion that is different to someone else’s on the Internet. haha anyway i haven’t seen it yet, but I really want them to have a leeroy Jenkins moment. Just some guy charging in with his sword held high.
I just saw the movie and I absolutely loved it. I think the names and motivations could be a little confusing to those who aren’t familiar with Warcraft, but I think it does a great job of having you leave the theater wanting more. This is probably the harshest reviewed film in a while, critics are just pouring the hate on. The film is not perfect but it’s definitely not worse than Super Mario Bros, and is a really good high fantasy movie.
If you mention the impossible high bar that is LotR, then you’re whole point of view should be considered invalid. LotR had longer production, more guaranteed movies, more money shoved into it and a million other things that will never be put into any other fantasy movie in the same genre. Stop throwing LotR as the “minimum standard” for other fantasy films, it’s really the impossible standard.
but Warcraft has the advantage of fifteen years of Fantasy movies (and fifteen years of technology development making production cheaper) to learn from?
As someone who isn’t invested in Warcraft and who has only other fantasy movies to compare it to, that’s what I want to know- will this film engage me in unfamiliar lore the same way that LOTR did. That’s not a budget thing, that’s a writing thing. From all reports, this film doesn’t do that.
Warcraft has 15 years of lore to draw from, and even the lore is mixed up as there is no proper timeline establishment from Blizzard. They have one film under 2 hours to build a world, introduce and build characters, and hook people into wanting to see more in that whole span. Warcraft 2 isn’t a guarantee without the first one being a success. This is unlike LotR which was given 3 films and 9 hours to work with, Different standards produce different results.
Since you’re a non-Warcraft fan, I’ll put things this way. If you like big pretty looking landscapes, Orcs and humans smashing each other in the face, and a weird storyline involving love, loyalty and a betrayal; then you’ll enjoy this. Otherwise you might want to stay away.
The purpose of the film shouldn’t be to deliver fifteen years of lore. it should be to tell a story that people who haven’t played can still engage with. if it doesn’t do that, I’ve got no real reason to engage. That’s not something that needs nine hours to create- look at the original Star Wars, which establishes a bunch of stuff. A clear narrative with characters you can latch on to is something that doesn’t need a billion dollar budget
Why can’t it just be a movie for Warcraft fans?
Know how to debunk this statement of yours? LoTR spans a few decades. People know what it is and identify with it. I read the Hobbit when I was 12, in school. So some of us were forced to know what it is. Warcraft has been around since 1994, LoTR since 1954. It’s not an evolving story like Warcraft, but still, It was already 40 years old when Warcraft began.
Noticed through a lot of these review from both Warcraft fans and non. You are all fully aware there is some pretty fundamental retcon going on in this film yeah? Just surprised it hasn’t been mentioned even once.
The way I see it is that this has a whole Marvel Cinematic Universe vibe going for it.
The MCU differs from the comics, this differs from the Warcraft games. If they make more movies it’s likely going to be it’s own ‘thing’ merely mirroring key points in the timeline, instead of going for a wholesale copy & paste approach. As much as I think people want that, I don’t mind this approach either.
The movie absolutely has its issues, my main issue was something already mentioned about how the Orc/Horde side of things felt much more fleshed out compared to the Human/Alliance. That said I still actually quite enjoyed it and can only hope there’s more to come.
I didn’t see much retcon outside of characters like Garona appearing long before they should have in the overall lore.
I havent seen it yet, but from what ive heard there are a few major changes to the lore in a movie compared to the games but i havent seen any bitching or whining about on MMOC, Scrolls of Lore or the Offical Story Forums. In Fact the consenus has been rather positive with changes and taking the same approach as the marvel movie universe
I guess I must have missed it in my viewing. If I get a chance to go again I’ll pay closer attention and go back and re-read lore to see what was changed.
Ill most likely see it twice just so i can look for all the easter eggs that are in the movie because i just no ill miss some on the first viewing
Angry Joe has given it a 7 out 10, Del gave it a 7 as well and Other Joe gave it an 8 out 10 and he has never played any warcraft game.
I was very surprised at how balanced Del & the Joes were with their review. I honestly thought Angry Joe would have bitched about it non stop.
I’ve heard rumours already that the bluray/DVD will have an extra 40 minutes added to the movie
eh its very rare that id disagree with Angry Joe when its come to his reviews (be they movies or games) but it is his thing to bitch a bit
Moviebob on the other hand went completely off his meds back after Man of Steel and completely physcotic after gamergate
The movie isn’t canon, so retcons aren’t an issue.
I watched it today and thoroughly enjoyed it. Actually expected it to be extremely bad based on the press. Think the press is full of shit to be honest.
a lot of the press reviews can be safely ignored (ie saying that its worse than Battlefield Earth), but the big problem that the movie faces besides being a video game movie is the simple fact that its got to compete against LoTR and GoT. One of the best reviews i saw for actually compared it more to Willow or Ladyhawk type of Fantasy Movie which i think is a much better comparision.
Some reviewers also complained because it was PG13 but then the Warcraft games have never been anything other than T for Teen when it comes to ratings.
However like i said in my first post, editing and cutting seems to be where the actual issue lies so i reckon a Directors cut would fix quite a few problems.
some bodies tried very hard to hate the movie.
Weird how every website/media outlet is desperate to tell me how garbage it is, but literally every single person I’ve spoken to that’s seen it said it was great. Not like oscar winning great, and not without it’s issues – but good fun and fairly solid.
I’m going to see it next week and I’m pretty excited, to be honest.
Join the trend, cause it’s easier to say popular things than to be honest.
half the problem stems form “video game movie” stigma and the other half from people expecting a WoW movie not a Warcraft movie( Kotaku US suffers from both)
I just don’t understand why people feel they’re entitled to enjoy the movie in the sense that if they’re not fans, of course they’re not going to undertand what’s going on.
Do you go into the latest Pokemon movie, thinking “I’ve seen a Pikachu, I know what’s up” but leave sorely dissapointed that it wasn’t a 10/10 specticle of modern cinema? No, you don’t.
*Taken from a facebook review of sorts I did earlier today*
Warcaft, it’s got some issues. If however, you have a familiarity with the lore, it is a rather faithful adaptation of the source material landing somewhere in between a retelling of WC2:Orcs vs Humans and the novel “The Last Guardian”.
The movie follows two stories. One of Anduin Lothar, Khadgar and Garona across a small section of the Eastern Kingdoms, namely Stormwind, Elwynn, Redridge, Deadwind Pass, with brief stop-ins at Ironforge and Dalaran. Second of Durotan, Orgrim, Blackhand and Guldan and their own motivations among a people trying to find their way in a new land.
The movie takes itself quite seriously which is a shame, there is room for comedy, and indeed the few comedic parts land pretty well. As expected, there is fan service throughout, some things masked pretty well so as to not stand obviously shouting “Hey! take notice of me!” Flying a gryphon into the correct archway in Stormwind for instance should bring a smile to the face of anyone who has played WoW but others feel forced, the murloc for instance and the horde war cries. My personal favourite was Khadgar polymorphing a guard into a sheep, and then when questioned about it says “oh it’s not permanent” then pretty much rattles off the spell tooltip as an explanation.
The problem really is one of pacing, some scenes should have had more time devoted to them, others less so. There is definitely some B grade acting going on but it isn’t cringe-worthy. The roles that matter are handled well enough, Medivh seems to be the most polarising for uninformed viewers thinking his performance wooden, while those who are familiar with The Last Guardian understand that this is kind of his shtick. My personal issue with pacing is that we never know where the quest is taking them which is a problem with the script. The group will often pack up and leave to go somewhere else but nobody bothered to inform the audience where or why, granted this isn’t always the case but it happens often enough it is noticeable. Some characters are better scripted than others. Durotan, Khadgar, Orgrim and Guldan all came off best. The other parts not so much sadly.
Definite positives are the CG and the orcs. It’s been a while since magic/swords/creatures have made an appearance on the big screen and they are all glorious to behold. The orcs are a believable part of the world, not something that feels like it was copied and pasted in after the fact. Magic effects blend well and the general destruction and clashing of orcs and humans have a visceral weight about them. I was initially worried about this point but fears have been allayed. That human armour though, it’s better than the initial trailers made it out to be but hell if it isn’t shiny.
All in all an entertaining watch with the caveat that you have familiarity with the source, there is a lot more to see if you know what you are looking for. If you are going in blind then I recommend bringing someone along who can explain some parts afterwards, the movie really isn’t made for first timers which is the biggest shame of the whole thing and given the pedigree of the production crew, director and consultants on hand, a better job could have been done to accommodate those unfamiliar. The addition of an older Khadgar, even if we are never introduced to him, narrating the story might have helped tie the story together.
I don’t play wow but I like this movies. It’s great.
wow these 2 are idiots. movie wasn’t the greatest but obviously a wow movie is made for wow fans. and comparing a video game movie to a movie based on a revolutionary book is just retarded. of course a book is going to have better fleshed out characters not to mention they only had three small books to fit into their movies and they barely managed that. wow has extensive convoluted story lines they have to make sense of and adapt. I think they could have done better then this but these 2 idiots just pissed me off with their ignorance.
I got to go to a pre-release. I’ve always liked Warcraft, never played WoW, and never read any books in its extended canon, so I’m obviously familiar with the Lore and characters, but no expert.
Its a lot better than the critics say. This is not the sort of film critics are ever going to like. Its quite well made for Warcraft fans, of which there are a fucking shit load. Some 50 year old critic going in with a biased hatred of video games isn’t ever going to give this a decent score. But if you look at the opinions of the audience, for example from the 35000 or so reviews on IMDB, its scoring pretty well from them. Its got its issues, but I think anyone with an interest will find it thoroughly entertaining.
I expected it to be awful, because video game movies always are. Its really not. If you’ve ever liked a Warcraft game, I think you’ll have a good time. I’m not sure I’d take my non-gaming girlfriend to it though, but she’s not really a fantasy buff at all.
Some of the criticisms are just fucking stupid. For example that one critic who called it racist because its white humans fighting coloured orcs, and the good orcs are lighter (green) than the bad orcs (red). Some how green on red is racist. Ignoring any kind of reason why some of the orcs might be a different colour, maybe something to do with demon blood and all that jazz… but nevermind the story when there’s triggered hollering of RACISM to be done!
I had the pleasure of seeing it at the Adelaide advance screening. My take on the movie is pretty much the same as most people who are fans of Warcraft. Here was my fb post about it:
Wacraft Movie Review:
Look… It’s got some pretty bad human acting in it. The scenes are chopped and edited together poorly in it at some points, and it’s probably a bit confusing if you haven’t played the games/know the lore behind it. But fuck it.. I enjoyed it. The 3 people I saw it with (one not a warcraft fan) enjoyed it. The special effects were damn good. And the orcs were animated awesomely. I look forward to future installments.
Oh yeah don’t see it in 3D, adds nothing. But if you like fantasy type movies like lord of the rings etc or Harry Potter, maybe check this one out.
I’m a Warcraft fan of about 15 years. The RTS and MMO. I loved the movie. If you are being realistic, the flaws are understandable. You cannot duplicate the game version and stamp it onto the movie, because the newbies would be completely lost. However, my dad joined us for the premiere. He has little to no knowledge of Warcraft and truth be told…he loved it. Even more than I did! We came out of the theatre and he was not lost at all. He was explaining the story, the characters by their exact names. It was an epic moment to bring this world that I’m so fond of to some of my family and friends that I thought never would get the chance to. So all of these posts saying any player would hate the movie, not true. All of these posts saying any new viewer would hate the movie, not true. I think these critics and their dreadful reviews are all of the butt-hurt elitists that had a bitter taste in their mouth before they even arrived to the theatres. Think about the horrible movies that are released to the public every single month, some of these horror movies, action movies, and recreations are just pitiful… Warcraft has always gotten a bad rep. If you are a player, you know that the majority of outsiders have never given it a chance – despite you begging them for years and years. They will not give it a shot and their reason is “because it is Warcraft…” and “Haha!”. I’m here to tell you, watch the movie. Give it a chance. If you enjoy it, great. Don’t let reviews sway you. Don’t let the media tell you what is good and what is not good. That goes for people, music, movies, TV shows, books, anything! Be individuals, not sheep!
Let’s all be honest here…
The only reason people enjoyed the movie is because the special effects and CGI were amazing.
The story, characters, acting, and editing were haphazardly put together like cinematic cutscenes you see in video games.
I stopped reading at “with memory of the game I still didn’t know who the guardian was..was it the golem?….seriously they pretty much state who he is before they even bring the golem…
Firt of all , the green orcs were green because of the fel , garona said that her mother was killed by gul dan because he found out garona was half breed , and so on , am i the only one who saw Grommash Hellscream ?
I LOVE THIS MOVIE> IM SEEING IT AGAIN
I knew absolutely nothing about Warcraft and loved the movie. I really hope they go ahead with number 2, can’t wait for the story to continue. It’s not exactly rocket science to understand the story line and figure out each character.
you all forget lotr is not the only movie to take multiple movies to set up chars, or have you all forgotten star wars?????