With the worldwide box office topping $US370 million ($500 million) , Duncan Jones’ Warcraft has stolen the title of top-grossing video game movie from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Didn’t we hate both of those?
I didn’t hate Warcraft. I thought it was a fun movie for what it was, an entertaining two-hour exploration of the lore of a game franchise I’ve invested a lot of time and money into. I thought it was good. Most critics and many movie goers in the West thought it was not.
Ultimately our opinions do not matter. Not when a $US185.5 million ($250 million) third weekend powered by the movie’s massive Chinese opening dwarfs the paltry $US37 million ($50 million) Warcraft’s made in the US since its June 10 opening.
According to the figures at Box Office Mojo (via Gamespot), Warcraft currently sits at number 17 on the list of top-grossing domestic video game movies, far below number one Lara Croft: Tomb Raider‘s $US131 million ($177 million) or the more recent Angry Birds Movie, which has earned $US103 million ($139 million) domestically.
Domestic, schlomestic. The real money is worldwide, and while the Angry Birds Movie‘s $US327 million ($442 million) global take came close to toppling Prince of Persia‘s $US336 million ($454 million), Warcraft blew past it in less than a month.
What does it all mean? We might not need to fear China, as Jackie Chan recently suggested, but their taste in both movies and video games is almost certainly going to be taken into consideration the next time a studio decides to pump a couple hundred million into a video game adaptation.
Comments
36 responses to “Warcraft Is The Top-Grossing Video Game Movie Ever And Doesn’t Care What You Think”
I love the Warcraft Universe. Haven’t played WOW for yonks, but I played the RTS games to death.
I really enjoyed the movie. I’m finding it hard to identify if I enjoyed the movie because I love the games, or if I just enjoyed the movie.
I’m super happy the game is doing well internationally, as I really hope there is a sequel. These fantasy movies take a while to get going and explain how everything works, so the later movies can be pretty decent in my opinion.
Would I recommend the movie to someone who has no exposure to Warcraft? I honestly don’t know.
I use to read the Lore behind Warcraft 10 or so years ago and also played each of the Warcraft games. I haven’t really read up on it in a long time however, I understand where you’re coming from and it’s not just you being confused about whether or not you liked it because you played the games or because of the Movie itself.
I have watched the Movie twice now, the first time around I enjoyed every bit of it whilst finding the first 40 minutes confusing due to them trying to set the stage for the rest of the movie, but second time around found that part of the movie somewhat sloppy with how they pieced together each of the scenes while missing out a lot on Character Introduction.
I found the initial Throne Room scene with Garona a little cringe worthy due to the acting from her coming across poor and her script rather terrible with lines such as “Orc take your world now” whilst starting almost every sentence with “Orc”. I also found it hard to believe she had such poor speaking skills which had a sudden dramatic improvement after this scene.
Overall after the stage was set, the rest of the movie from there onward was very much enjoyable. The only other problem I had was with Anduin’s son Callan. I couldn’t tell if it was just a terrible script he was given or if he was bad at acting (“For Azeroth *cough*”).
Out of the whole movie though, I think my favourite Character was Khadgar.
Actually what I found quite good as a small detail was that when garona is speaking to the humans she speaks very stiff English indicating she does not know their language too well, but when speaking to the orcs her speech is a bit more fluid and natural because obviously that is her home language and she speaks it well. I think the way the language mix was handled in the movie was really good (because to the audience, both sides are speaking English)
I’ve never played any of the games and I can confidently say I enjoyed the film.
I am a little bit of a fantasy fan though so that may have helped me follow the story more easily, the friend I went to see it with apparently got lost.
Anyway it had it’s flaws sure, if you want to pick it apart, but overall I think it’s a pretty solid flick
Kotaku sure likes to flip flop when something starts being successful: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/05/the-warcraftmovie-is-not-good/
That’s already linked in the article, along with a link to Fahey’s own positive review.
Damnit, didn’t they get the memo that everyone that works for the same publication needs to have exactly the same opinion on everyting?
I liked the movie. Like it wasn’t ever going to be Batman begins, but it was better than Batman vs Superman.
GOOD.
Pump out a sequel please. Ohhhohohohohoho the possibility of getting to a Stratholme or Lichy movie makes me giddy.
The sequel will likely be the sacking of Stormwind and the conclusion of the first war. The third movie will be the rise of the Horde (Warcraft: Exodus (?)) and the “Green Jesus”.
I expect a second trilogy will handle the Lich King storyline. You’ll have a while to wait, I reckon.
I got plenty of years left in me. I can wait!
bah, curse my foggy memory for having to look up the details of the 3 wars to confirm facts, you beat me to it but we had pretty much the same idea.
I don’t expect the movies to follow the lore right down the line. The first movie already retconned a few details. Corners will be cut to fit “Beyond the Dark Portal”, the end of the first war and bits of WC3 into two more movies.
yeah for sure, some parts are already wildly different, in a way that works mind you but still some events might not flow as naturally as they once would have. Any mention of the burning legion for example, I know we get “demons” but baiting the hook with a nebulous big bad wouldn’t have gone astray I don’t think. I think all the major beats will still be hit though, leaving stormwind, death at blackrock, slave thrall, events leading up to them though will be a little unpredictable though is all.
Big change I wasn’t happy about while watching was
the whole Fel infusion thing. No more drinking demon blood, just infused by Gul’dan 🙁Thought about it afterwards though and I think the change was for the better, drinking the blood would’ve been great to see at the start but for later in the film it’d just kill the pacing – and without introducing Mannoroth (I assume they’re holding him back for a sequel) it would just be more confusing for new viewers anyway.
To be fair, it might have still happened at some point before the events of the movie, they needed a plot reason though to make it possible to convert on the fly and in this case, I don’t mind infusion by a powerful warlock. I think that, story wise at least, this really should have been a second movie of a series. Comes full circle to the biggest complaint most “critics” had with the film, lack of explanation. Those of us familiar with the lore kind of give it a pass because we already know but at the same time, the characters behave ignorantly enough that past events might play out the way the existing lore dictates, or could very well be something else entirely.
Personally I think they’ll use the sacking of Stormwind as a prologue to the second film and advance the story to Tides of Darkness. That is where we’ll see Gul’dan and Orgrim fall from power and the humans emerge victorious which is something Hollywood may feel more friendly towards.
I expect the second movie will deal with
The orcs uniting under Doomhammer as their warchief, gul’dan deposed to dream of sargeras’ prison while forming the shadow council, later destroyed, along with the sacking of stormwind and ending with the humans fleeing to lordaeron.Third movie will start with
the forming of an alliance with Terenas, Turalyon, the Wildhammer Clan and dwarves and gnomes out of Khaz Modan. Some sea warfare and an assortment of battles to retake the eastern kingdoms leading up to Lothars defeat at blackrock mountain, Arthas, Jaina and Thrall are all introduced. Arthas as a child training under Uther and Bran with Jaina as a fledgeling mage and friend of Arthas limited screen time is devoted to the pair. Thrall as a tortured slave and gladiator, escaping when he learns of Gul’dan’s corruption and setting out to find Grom, receiving a solid arc in the movie.I still think the Thrall storyline from the finished-but-never-released Lord of the Clans game (which became a novel instead) would have been a better storyline for the first game. An orc in Alliance territory lets you tell the story of the first 2 games in flashbacks, which I think works – WC1+2 were pretty light story-wise. Also sets the scene nicely for introducing the WC3 characters and building towards a burning legion / lich king arc.
Haven’t seen Warcraft yet but intend to if I ever have the spare cash to venture out…
I liked the Prince of Persia movie though, didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.
What critics think, rather. The general consensus among most of my friends is positive, not that its amazing but enjoyable nonetheless. Just should have had a bit more substance / been longer.
I’d tend to agree. Flawed but entertaining. It would leave people who don’t know the background a bit “WTF?” though.
The extended version is on the way to disc with another 40 minutes.
Might actually be the first disc I buy in a while. I normally stream/download, but dem extras…
I’m a bit of a disc junkie …. though I admit streamin has made me a bit more discerning in my purchases lately. This one will be a day 1 purchase for me, though.
Really excited about that, even more excited seeing how much Duncan Jones wanted the extended version shown/released himself (talking about in interviews even before the release), makes me think it’ll be worth the wait.
Yeah. Fans evidently like it just fine, given the 81% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, despite the 29% critic score.
The movie started a bit slow, but I liked it well enough after that. My wife was absolutely lost without the same background knowledge that I have about the factions etc. The movie has actually renewed my interest in the lore and I think I might play Warcraft 2-3 again, we’ll see!
The movie was pretty good! Fuck what the critics had to say…
Looking forward to sequels (that are hopefully marketed better XD)
Loved the film. Was a LOT better than I was expecting, although I had some hope restored from the recent trailers. I walked out with a cunning smile on my face. It has some issues (But don’t all movies?) I thought it could have been longer but I hear they have already cut 40 or so minutes out of it to keep the runtime down, the Blueray will be good! Solid 8 out of 10 from me.
No we were just told we were supposed to.
I certainly didn’t hate Prince of Persia. For what it was I thought it was actually quite good and definitely one of the better video game to movie adaptions.
When I think back to criticism of that, I can’t remember if the complaints about it were about the quality of the movie or the fact that they cast white actors to play Persians.
It should care what we think. The movie isn’t finished yet. It’s a good, maybe even great, start but due to the way they’ve structured production and it’s links to an existing brand it’s success comes down to how all three movies are received. Plenty of movies do well at the box office but can’t support sequels due to not getting a positive enough reception.
This movie is fine and I’m actually pretty confident that the first movie is going to work better as part of a trilogy than as the standalone movie we can go see today, but it’s not over until it’s over.
What it shouldn’t care about is Kotaku’s early review. It was a classic case of bloggers betting on the movie being received poorly. They took their (valid) opinions and doubled down on them with the headline ‘The Warcraft Movie is not good’ because they thought that’s what everybody else would think.
I went into this movie knowing little about Warcraft and still enjoyed it. I played a little bit of Warcraft 3 but spent more time in Frozen Throne TowerD, never played WoW. I thought they did a fantastic job of the GC work as well.
having seen it twice i stand by what I said before, if you’re expecting some Tolkien / LotR level movie you’re going to be super disappointed, if you walk in expecting the movie to be crap because (let’s face it) every video game movie has been crap, you’ll walk out enjoying it
yes it has pacing issue, yes it feel very much world building but i don’t think it’s so incoherent that you’ll walk out going “wtf just happened”
Video game movies are never on the same level as other blockbuster movies.
Its a Dwarf among midgets.
The only thing bad about this movie was the acting and casting on the human side.