My expectations going into Warcraft weren’t very high. The couple of photo’s I saw of the movie in advance didn’t resonate with me and as the movie is based on a game it meant chances were high that this was going to be bad. The genre of video game movies hasn’t really delivered on movies which manage to wow audiences. But despite that I still had a bit of hope because of its director, Duncan Jones. He was previously responsible fort he impressive Moon. Would he be able to deliver a quality film?
Azeroth is a world which has been at peace for ages. The Guardian (Ben Foster), whose job it is to protect everyone, hasn’t been seen in years. Everything changes though when a portal to another world opens and big groups of Orcs enter Azeroth. They take people prisoner in order to use them as an energy source to open the portal again in order to let the rest of the Orcs through, leaving their dying planet. It all revolves around ‘Fel’, a dark magic which impacts everyone who experiences it.
Even though I did play the first two warcraft strategy games, I remember nothing when it comes to their stories, on which this movie is based. Without any prior knowledge I would be hard to introduce this world to non-gamers. The opening of the movie gives some hope, when the Orc Durothan (Toby Kebbell) and his pregnant wife are introduced. The two CGI-characters are convincing as are their emotions, making you care for them. Not enough of this type of care is spent on the other characters, making it difficult to feel anything during the events of the film.
The comparison to the Lord of the Rings movies is of course inevitable and this film doesn’t manage to reach the same level. If more time was spent in setting up the world and its characters and extending the running time with another hour this might have worked better. Warcraft simply tries to cram too much in too little film. And because it has so many characters on both sides they don’t get enough depth to matter. Maybe slowly working to a movie like this (like Marvel did with the Avengers) might have been a better strategy.
Fans of the game will probably enjoy this a lot more with their background knowledge and seeing small references to it, but for the average moviegoer this will mostly feel like a weak Lord of the Rings clone which does have some action and humour, but misses an emotional center.
