Warcraft (2016), directed by Duncan Jones
I didn't realize that I was going to go this crazy and type this much over the course of 40 minutes. Wow. That was never my intention. This more than anything else is my Jingus-like opus.
When I said that I was trying to watch something to level the playing field a little bit, this was the movie I was talking about. I think this is an impossible film to make for a host of reasons, the most obvious one being that fanboys would get upset regardless of how the film turned out. I used to play World of Warcraft fairly seriously. When I look back on those days, I think it was a gigantic waste of my time. I can't believe how many hours I've wasted playing a stupid game like this one. Naturally I do have my own biases in favor of this movie, because I know the story and all that stuff. Or at least, I know what the story is supposed to be. With this being a film it is inevitable that there would be tons of changes to the story, so I decided I didn't care if there were. There were a ton of other problems with this film, though.
I will do my best in order to describe the events in a way that anyone who knows nothing about this game series should be able to understand them. Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) is an orc warlock from a world that is said to be dying. He wields magic that is referred to as fel magic, which seems to be pretty effective at killing anyone. Gul'dan wants to open a portal to Azeroth, where humans live. He has enslaved some blue people in order to do so, and their deaths are required in order for the orcs to travel. A half-orc named Garona (Paula Patton) has been tasked with translating languages for the duration of this adventuring. Durotan (Toby Kebbell) is a chieftain of the Frostwolves, and he is determined to bring his newborn and wife with him. He does, and his newborn nearly dies during birth once the orcs reach Azeroth. Gul'dan saves the newborn with fel magic, and then we see the title screen.
Sorry for spoiling the first five minutes or so, but this is not exactly how I would have introduced a new film series to the world. Upon the orcs arrival, naturally humans have a problem with this as the orcs are killing people, capturing them, and taking their land. A mage named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) is investigating some of the victims the orcs have killed, and is busted doing so by Anduin (Travis Fimmel), a military commander in charge of keeping Stormwind Kingdom safe. There is also a king, his name is Llane (Dominic Cooper), and he does kingly things. Last and certainly not least, there's Medivh (Ben Foster), a mysterious guardian of the world who seems to be quite the sorcerer.
In reading these last two paragraphs, the problem with this film is plainly obvious to me. There are too many characters who do too many things that need to be explained in short order. The entry barrier for this series is massively high. If it was necessary to make this movie, I think I would have chopped a few of the characters out. At the very least, that's one of the things they could have done. I wouldn't have made this film at all, though. Anyone can see that there is far too much exposition required for a genre that needs to be more simple than this. Peter Jackson expertly executed his attempts at doing so. Why didn't that happen here? Well, for one, people don't have the patience to sit through a three hour
Warcraft movie. I sure as hell wouldn't. Secondly, people are inherently against the subject material because of its reputation. Despite the problems, the movie is watchable.
I am not capable of describing how it was watchable without writing about more of the problems with it, so unless you want to read a very long paragraph or two of negatives you can skip straight past this part. Due to the incredible amount of special effects in this film, there are a lot of set pieces that really get the shit end of the stick. All of the tangible props and settings look extremely cheap, there's no other way to phrase it. It is often given as a compliment by people when a movie is able to blend the fake with reality. In this case there is no compliment to be given. I found it completely absurd. I could genuinely not tell if the entire movie was shot with a green screen. There may not have been anything tangible in the background of any scene for all I know. There are a ton of things about what I'm describing that are very bad, because there were necessities for practical settings that I'm not sure even existed. Enough of the scenes in this movie took place outside that I should have felt some sort of reality. I didn't, though. Unfortunately, there are also a few special effects scenes that get the shaft and could not possibly look worse. The background in Ironforge at the beginning is an obvious candidate.
There are also good actors in this movie, all of whom are completely diminished through an annoying lack of focus on their characters. There are no main characters in this film, which is another way of saying that almost everyone in this film is a lead character. Other than Fimmel, who is really good in
Vikings, none of the other human characters are terribly engaging. Ben Foster's character wasn't really human, if you're wondering. He's good in basically anything, but he's given no time to work with and his portrayal is backwards. The film did not address his or Gul'dan's motivations. The comparison between this and
Hell or High Water, both released in the same year, is quite mindblowing. It's also apparent that due to the massive special effects budget, this cast (just like tangible backgrounds) was put together on the cheap.
Warcraft was filmed in 2014, and nobody here had the clout to demand a big paycheck. This is a typical studio franchise attempt that failed.
It's not all bad, though. I mean, I've said a lot, but there were things about this film that I found endearing. For starters, the right characters were given just slightly more time than the others. Durotan is the obvious one. The motion capture and effects for the orcs is the real standout here. To make those characters look lifelike is very difficult, but they were the most intereresting part of the movie by some distance. It's not all that surprising that's the case when orcs and humans are given equal time in a movie. After all, humans are what's on my screen and what I have to look at all the time. The battle scenes are also always interesting, even though all of the visual problems I listed remained in the back of my mind throughout. Upon review, this is such a small amount of positives that I probably shouldn't have even posted this section.
Ultimately, I am convinced that this film was impossible to make. The budget required to do these scenes properly would make this an unbelievably expensive film. Due to the nature of the world established in the games, in order to have a realistic looking movie, the locations required would be completely off the charts. It doesn't make fiscal sense. I also don't understand how Duncan Jones went from making good movies like
Moon and
Source Code to something like this.
Warcraft reeks of massive studio interference, as this could have been a much better story presented in a different way. For example, I think chopping most of the human scenes out would have made for a more intriguing and focused film. I don't make those decisions, though. Telling a story with a ridiculous premise is very hard to do, so while I didn't like this, I couldn't outright hate it. That's probably because of prior attachment to the subject material. By all objective standards this was a bad movie, but I do appreciate the effort of taking on a project like this regardless of the results. The problem is, the characters are all wrong and none of them are fun. I also think there is a possibility that I have turned into a grouch and detest modern, enormous cast and gaudy special effects Hollywood blockbusters. With the current state of Hollywood being what it is, it is not even worth making a CGI-fest unless they put $250 million into the movie. The standard for special effects is ridiculously high now.
If they make another one of these I'll watch it, but I really don't want them to. The costume for Paula Patton's character was so bad I wanted to save those comments for last. I find it incredible to believe that in 2017 when they used special effects to create a host of other characters, that they would do such a bad job creating that one. Her character looked like something out of a 1960's Star Trek episode, and the piece used for her mouth made it almost impossible to understand anything she said. Fix the voice up in post-production or something, don't do that. That was brutal.
4/10 
