the movie is dissipointingly flawed that has a poor vision and failed to properly introduce the World of Warcraft to an outsider audiance.
The LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG version:
The Warcraft movie, there are 2 camps for this, its the worse thing ever to outsiders of the franchise or the best thing ever to the insiders.
Before I go on with the review at least let me introduce the Outsider to what the Warcraft franchise is from a guy that lives and breaths Warcraft.
Warcraft is a video game franchise made from Blizzard entertainment and the World of Warcraft MMORPG is the most successful and still #1 MMORPG in the Market today beating all its competitors because it is the most accessible and polished gameplay.
Its an Epic and Colorful Fantasy World with a rich amount of lore and developed characters, some really increadible works of Fantasy (The Lich King, Old Gods and Titan lore)......while others really stupid(Med'an, Xe'ra,...the Pandas even though I liked it for what it was in the end)
But not every franchise is perfect, Star Wars and Warhammer 40k for example certainly had thier stupid moments (Jar-Jar and Matt Ward respectively) but for all its faults I still adore the lore especially when its at its best. I regularly play the MMORPG World of Warcraft today and to this day Warcraft 3 is one of the best RTS campaigns I have ever played. And Blizzard to this days makes some of the most increadble cinematics. And its because of how well done they were is the reason why people were wanting a movie.
If you want to be introduced to the lore of Wacraft at its most up to date I recommend watching the videos of the youtuber Nobble87, a very nice and humble person that almost never gets too angry even when Blizzard does something stupid to Warcraft.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Nobbel87
But if I have to say what is the lore of Wacraft at its more shortest? Here we go:
Before the universe existed, there was Light....and their was Void (Darkness/Shadow) these 2 primordial cosmic forces clashed with each other resulting in what is essentially a Big Bang creating the entire Universe called the Great Dark Beyond with millions upon millions of worlds. You may think already that is way to big and daunting to comprehend, But in this case only at least 3 Worlds actually matter in the grand scheme of the lore: Azeroth, Dreanor, and Argus.
The movie takes place and concerns the World of Azeroth which is the more important world that matters so far for the lore. And on that world alone millions of races exists: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Goblins, Tauren (Minotaurs) Naga (Sea Serpent People) and many more. And this is just scratching the surface. I can go on but I will stop at here. If you have anymore questions you can ask me.
So after all that would I recommend the movie? The short answer is yes and no. But after that long introduction I will begin my review of the movie and I am gonna put it in Spoilers for the purpose of space in this post. 1 is the movie's synopsis, the other is my critique of it.
Our movie begins with the introduction of the charcater of Durotan, his pregnant wife Draka, his close friend Orgim Doomhammer, and the race of Orcs on thier Homeworld of Draenor. The army of Orcs lead by the Warchief Blackhand, who is under the puppetry of the Orc Warlock named Gul'dan, have just finished creating a Portal to link thier world to the World of Azeroth to invade it. The movie is trying to frame the character of Durotan as the only good guy because the Orcs lets just say has been corrupted by an outside force through the Warlock Gul'dan who wields the malevolant power known as the Fel. The Orcs are greenskined because of the influance of the Fel and Durotan is one of the few to not accept it which is why his skin remains a tannish brown whici is the Orcs Natural color.
So the Gul'dan opens a portal by sacrificing hundreds of captured Prisoners of the World of Dreanor and using thier souls to open the portal and invade the World of Azeroth.
After that opening the next part of the movie follows the Human charcaters starting with the Main one Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), A knight of the Human Kingdom of Stormwind who receives a message concering attacks/raids in the villages of Stormwind, this takes him to a Barrack where he meets the Mage/Wizard named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) who noticed something strange about the dead bodies of the raids which now makes him as for "The Guardian", later they meet with the King of Stormwind who asked for the blessing to go to Karazhan to meet The Guardian named Medivh (Ben Foster) to shorten what Khadgar noticed about the dead bodies was that they are filled with the Evil force called the Fel I mentioned earlier. Basically the movie splits into 2 halves which the first I will write concerns the Orcs and the other concering the The Guardian Medivh
As the movie progresses the humans are ambushed by the Orcs, though the humans managed to win it out and captured a Prisoner of a Female Orc named Garona (Paula Patton) basically she explains who the Orcs are and where they come from to the Human charcaters and she became an "ally" to the charcaters.
Durotan later on realizes that his Clan the Frostwolves, need to find a new home in Azeorth and that Gul'dan is corrupting the Orcs with the Fel and that the Fel is evil and destructive basically. So he makes contact with the Humans to form a plan. Gul'dan wants to make another Portal to connect to the one on Draenor bring the rest of the Orcish Horde Army and sacrifce the souls of captured humans in the process. Durotan meets with the human characters with Garona and they exchange their plans, Durotan will challenge and kill Gul'dan in a Mak'gora (a Warrior's Duel of Honor basically) while all the Orcs are distracted the Humans will raid the Portal camp to free their people. But in the end Gul'dan killed Durotan in the duel by sucking out his soul, his wife dies but before that she place her son in a cradel and on a river before she is killed by an Orc under Gul'dan's orders.
Now to the Guardian Medivh part: Turns out the Guardian has been corrupted by the Fel, and he was in cahoots with Gul'Dan to bring the Orcs to Azeroth. And this is where Anduin and Khadgar steps in. They find out, they went in Karazhan to find that Medivh is now consumed by the Fel and invoking an incatation to open the new Portal on Azeroth to link it to the Draenor one. Basically Khadgar stopped him with a spell that pretty much gets rid of the Fel in Medivh.
Now the climax is the King of Stormwind with Garona and the Human Army decided to assault the Orc Portal Camp now and a battle ensues, long story short Gul'dan managed to open a Portal, but Medivh now purifyed of Fel made an incantation to Re-link the Portal from Draenor to Stormwind City, allowing the Human Soldiers and Prisoniers to escape, but the King knew the battle is lost so for some reason he told Garona to kill him to somehow pacify the Orcs because if she kills him she becomes Warchief (this a change to the established lore) after that than Lothar swoops in on a Gryphon kills some Orcs and makes out with the King's body, funeral happens, the Alliance is formed with the other races of Azeroth, Garona is now Warchief, Gul'dan is active still, and Durotan's child is found by Humans, the end
So the Gul'dan opens a portal by sacrificing hundreds of captured Prisoners of the World of Dreanor and using thier souls to open the portal and invade the World of Azeroth.
After that opening the next part of the movie follows the Human charcaters starting with the Main one Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), A knight of the Human Kingdom of Stormwind who receives a message concering attacks/raids in the villages of Stormwind, this takes him to a Barrack where he meets the Mage/Wizard named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) who noticed something strange about the dead bodies of the raids which now makes him as for "The Guardian", later they meet with the King of Stormwind who asked for the blessing to go to Karazhan to meet The Guardian named Medivh (Ben Foster) to shorten what Khadgar noticed about the dead bodies was that they are filled with the Evil force called the Fel I mentioned earlier. Basically the movie splits into 2 halves which the first I will write concerns the Orcs and the other concering the The Guardian Medivh
As the movie progresses the humans are ambushed by the Orcs, though the humans managed to win it out and captured a Prisoner of a Female Orc named Garona (Paula Patton) basically she explains who the Orcs are and where they come from to the Human charcaters and she became an "ally" to the charcaters.
Durotan later on realizes that his Clan the Frostwolves, need to find a new home in Azeorth and that Gul'dan is corrupting the Orcs with the Fel and that the Fel is evil and destructive basically. So he makes contact with the Humans to form a plan. Gul'dan wants to make another Portal to connect to the one on Draenor bring the rest of the Orcish Horde Army and sacrifce the souls of captured humans in the process. Durotan meets with the human characters with Garona and they exchange their plans, Durotan will challenge and kill Gul'dan in a Mak'gora (a Warrior's Duel of Honor basically) while all the Orcs are distracted the Humans will raid the Portal camp to free their people. But in the end Gul'dan killed Durotan in the duel by sucking out his soul, his wife dies but before that she place her son in a cradel and on a river before she is killed by an Orc under Gul'dan's orders.
Now to the Guardian Medivh part: Turns out the Guardian has been corrupted by the Fel, and he was in cahoots with Gul'Dan to bring the Orcs to Azeroth. And this is where Anduin and Khadgar steps in. They find out, they went in Karazhan to find that Medivh is now consumed by the Fel and invoking an incatation to open the new Portal on Azeroth to link it to the Draenor one. Basically Khadgar stopped him with a spell that pretty much gets rid of the Fel in Medivh.
Now the climax is the King of Stormwind with Garona and the Human Army decided to assault the Orc Portal Camp now and a battle ensues, long story short Gul'dan managed to open a Portal, but Medivh now purifyed of Fel made an incantation to Re-link the Portal from Draenor to Stormwind City, allowing the Human Soldiers and Prisoniers to escape, but the King knew the battle is lost so for some reason he told Garona to kill him to somehow pacify the Orcs because if she kills him she becomes Warchief (this a change to the established lore) after that than Lothar swoops in on a Gryphon kills some Orcs and makes out with the King's body, funeral happens, the Alliance is formed with the other races of Azeroth, Garona is now Warchief, Gul'dan is active still, and Durotan's child is found by Humans, the end
Holy shit that was a long one and there is still details I did not mentioned like Blackhand. But I will now critique this movie and you may think because I am a WOW fan I will go easy on it, nope.
Let me get the good out of the way, CGI Orcs look increadible, aswell as thier acting even though I find the Voice Acting of the Games to be even better, nice visuals, nice locales, brutal and meaty action scenes, etc.
But a lot of the movie is dissipointingly flawed.
1. The pacing: Just writing the synpopsis made it come off as a mess to explain but that is the biggest problem with the movie, poor pacing and poor/shoddy world building. I mean take for example this:
After the whole scene of Orcs entering the portal in the beginning, we than go to Ironforge, the capital City of the Dwarves where we meet Lothar, than it cuts to some random Barracks where we meet Khadgar, Mage of the Kirin Tor, already we meet another faction, than it goes to a village called Goldshire and meet the King of Stormwind who is close friends with Lothar and is married to Anduin's sister, than we go to the Tower of Karazhan and are introduced to the Guardian of Tirisfal Medivh.
In those 4 sequences spliced together we are introduced to 4 complete huge things with huge Background lore on its own in quick succession with no breathing room, we don't get to see the ins and outs of Ironforge City or Stormwind City and the races that dwell there. We don't know who this Guardian is and what is his purpose, we don't know what are the rules of this world. When I saw it in the theater I was like "slow down you already showing me at least 3-4 things that have really huge backgrounds" and it really hurts the first half of the movie because of how ridiculously paced the movie is.
2. The casting of the Human charcaters: This movie may go down in history as the prime example of never cast unknown and unproven actors to any kind of movie.
The issue with the acting is that all the charcaters even the Orcs sometimes are too softspoken and un-emotive. Watching the movie I was like "Speak louder I can't hear what the fuck you guys are saying"
And the human chacraters are perticularly bad.
The actor playing Khadgar is increadibly miscast, he does not remind me of Khadgar in his youth one bit.
The King of Stormwind Llane Wrynn is dull and this is a shock coming from the actor who I know can act better than this. Heck in the games there are better acted Human King charcaters than this guy.
The Medivh actor is way too soft spoken in the sense that I can barely hear him and un-emotive.
But the central problem is that these actors.....does not ham it up. Warcraft has the most awesome hammy voice acting ever. Just look at this cinematic from the games and look at it from an acting perspective and compare it to the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG3RVCEwCPg
Now compare it to the acting of the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW4U6IZqUJI
Its just inferior all around. And I don't care if there is a difference between live action acting and voice acting. Anyway can act good if they are passionate about it whether acting or voice acting. And these actors are not living up to the Warcraft name.
3. The music.
You may think "Music how is this important" music can do wonders to a film, would Star Wars be where it is now without its steller soundtrack? Would Jaws be memorable without its main signature theme, would the Rohirrim of Lord of the Rings still be awesome without that epic violin soundtrack?
The Warcraft games is famous for its increadible and epic Orchestral Scores, its some of the best ever done.
But this movie's score is just shameful, its barely memorable and worse they don't even try to put any of the memorable music pieces from the games. Now I must make another comparison I want you to listen to this piece of music from the games, the Overture of the Expansion Pack called Catacylsm:
Now compare it to the main theme song of the movie:
It just sounds so bland and generic. Heck I think I heard this same orchestration from somewhere else, example:
The mostly poor soundtrack of the movie utterly fails at capturing the athmopshere of Warcraft.
Finally and in my opinion the reason the movie fails is because they had poor vision, the director clearly has a poor vision and making a movie to properly introduce the outsider audiance to the Warcraft franchise. One of the things I blame is trying to make the Orcs not completely evil, but the problem is you have to now balance establishing the Orcs properly while at the same time building up the humans and clearly the movie and directors were treating the Orc parts with love which baffles me considering how much screentime the humans get
But a lot of the movie is dissipointingly flawed.
1. The pacing: Just writing the synpopsis made it come off as a mess to explain but that is the biggest problem with the movie, poor pacing and poor/shoddy world building. I mean take for example this:
After the whole scene of Orcs entering the portal in the beginning, we than go to Ironforge, the capital City of the Dwarves where we meet Lothar, than it cuts to some random Barracks where we meet Khadgar, Mage of the Kirin Tor, already we meet another faction, than it goes to a village called Goldshire and meet the King of Stormwind who is close friends with Lothar and is married to Anduin's sister, than we go to the Tower of Karazhan and are introduced to the Guardian of Tirisfal Medivh.
In those 4 sequences spliced together we are introduced to 4 complete huge things with huge Background lore on its own in quick succession with no breathing room, we don't get to see the ins and outs of Ironforge City or Stormwind City and the races that dwell there. We don't know who this Guardian is and what is his purpose, we don't know what are the rules of this world. When I saw it in the theater I was like "slow down you already showing me at least 3-4 things that have really huge backgrounds" and it really hurts the first half of the movie because of how ridiculously paced the movie is.
2. The casting of the Human charcaters: This movie may go down in history as the prime example of never cast unknown and unproven actors to any kind of movie.
The issue with the acting is that all the charcaters even the Orcs sometimes are too softspoken and un-emotive. Watching the movie I was like "Speak louder I can't hear what the fuck you guys are saying"
And the human chacraters are perticularly bad.
The actor playing Khadgar is increadibly miscast, he does not remind me of Khadgar in his youth one bit.
The King of Stormwind Llane Wrynn is dull and this is a shock coming from the actor who I know can act better than this. Heck in the games there are better acted Human King charcaters than this guy.
The Medivh actor is way too soft spoken in the sense that I can barely hear him and un-emotive.
But the central problem is that these actors.....does not ham it up. Warcraft has the most awesome hammy voice acting ever. Just look at this cinematic from the games and look at it from an acting perspective and compare it to the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG3RVCEwCPg
Now compare it to the acting of the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW4U6IZqUJI
Its just inferior all around. And I don't care if there is a difference between live action acting and voice acting. Anyway can act good if they are passionate about it whether acting or voice acting. And these actors are not living up to the Warcraft name.
3. The music.
You may think "Music how is this important" music can do wonders to a film, would Star Wars be where it is now without its steller soundtrack? Would Jaws be memorable without its main signature theme, would the Rohirrim of Lord of the Rings still be awesome without that epic violin soundtrack?
The Warcraft games is famous for its increadible and epic Orchestral Scores, its some of the best ever done.
But this movie's score is just shameful, its barely memorable and worse they don't even try to put any of the memorable music pieces from the games. Now I must make another comparison I want you to listen to this piece of music from the games, the Overture of the Expansion Pack called Catacylsm:
Now compare it to the main theme song of the movie:
It just sounds so bland and generic. Heck I think I heard this same orchestration from somewhere else, example:
The mostly poor soundtrack of the movie utterly fails at capturing the athmopshere of Warcraft.
Finally and in my opinion the reason the movie fails is because they had poor vision, the director clearly has a poor vision and making a movie to properly introduce the outsider audiance to the Warcraft franchise. One of the things I blame is trying to make the Orcs not completely evil, but the problem is you have to now balance establishing the Orcs properly while at the same time building up the humans and clearly the movie and directors were treating the Orc parts with love which baffles me considering how much screentime the humans get
All in all its a dissipointingly flawed movie for me. I was defending it because I was hoping a much better sequal comes out because the lore gets much better from this point on if they followed it faithfully for example the baby Orc at the end? He grows up to be one of the most awesome charcaters in the lore. Thrall, the Son of Durotan.
Sometimes I just think I could have made a better movie than this, I certainly have the better vision on how to start and introduce Warcraft to a outsider audiance. The only thing I can recommend is the action was great. Even though it was a very few at times.
Well thats that.
Questions and discussions?
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