For years, I looked forward to watch the Warcraft Movie. Even more when Duncan Jones took over the reins. I followed Duncan Jones on Twitter from the beginning and he’s demonstrated his passion for the Warcraft mythos countless of times, and I have witnessed his humor, and geekiness. He’s a down to Earth gentleman, and a true and proud geek like any of us. So it wasn’t hard to trust he would make a great movie adaptation. I watched “Moon” shortly after he was announced to be the director of “WARCRAFT,” merely to get a glimpse into his past work. It was a great movie.
I still do not understand why a large portion of reviews out there are so inflammatory and spewing hateful vibe toward the WARCRAFT film. I have never read any of the Tolkien books, but when I first watched Lord of the Rings, not knowing who the characters were, I still loved it. I was probably age 8 when I first watched Star Wars, and Star Trek The Original Series in the earlry 1980s. I’m right now watching Star Trek: Next Generation Season 6 — which tells you how profoundly I love the mythos.
I understand many of those critics and the general public has never read a Warcraft novel, or played the games. They watched the film with no knowledge of who the characters are, or what the core of the story is about. If you asked me what was my first impression after watching Lord of the Rings, I would say it was fun to watch, but I had no clue what a hobbit was, or what Golllum was, or who Sauron is, or what’s up with all the rings and the ONE ring. Or the Fellowship or who the flip Gandalf was. I had absolutely no knowledge about that story setting.
There were battles with sword, and magic, and a lot of it, but it was enjoyable. So it baffles me when I see critics call WARCRAFT the worst 2016 film. I have never seen anything like WARCRAFT before. It was also my first IMAX 3D movie. The orcs look so real, gigantic and powerful. Did you see how one of the orcs hurls a horse at one of the footmen? Crazy, right?
There was nothing difficult to understand about the movie from the very beginning. There are orcs preparing for a journey. Durotan and Draka have this emotional moment where he touches her pregnant belly, and both lay down to laugh. This is shown in many of the trailers out there. These are not those evil grotesque orcs you know from Lord of the Rings. These two are very … human.
Later on, you can understand that these brown orcs fear Gul’dan and do not like what his Fel (demonic) magic has done to the land. Nevertheless, they follow the Horde through the Dark Portal. That scene where Gul’dan siphons the souls of the draenei to empower the Dark Portal was epic, and for the first time ever we get to see what happens when you step into the Dark Portal when you see the loading screen in-game. You are floating through what seems like a goo pool in slow motion, until you reach the other side of the portal. That was so cool to watch.
We get to see why Thrall is green when his parents never drank from the blood of the demon Mannoroth, which was disturbing but totally made sense in this movie adaptation. I don’t recall any novel ever explaining why Thrall is green. so it was refreshing to learn how from the movie.
I loved to see Stormwind, Ironforge, Redridge Mountains, Westfall, Karazhan, and Black Morass. I loved to see a few comedic situations between Khadgar and Lothar. There were some scenes that seemed rushed, and may have confused non-gamers; but overall it was a great movie. Again, Lords of the Rings was a very complex movie for someone like me who never read the books. I still enjoyed it, and watched the two following sequels. To be honest, I had no clue why the orcs were fighting the heroes in Lord of the Rings. With Warcraft, even if you never read the books nor played the game — come on, you have to see clearly that these blood-thirsty fel-infused green orcs want to conquer these human lands. You can feel sympathy with Durotan and his brown-skinned clan wanting to side with the humans to fight their common enemy: Gul’dan.
I even felt sympathy for Garona — nothing to do with having such beautiful Paula Patton honing the role. Garona was raised a slave to serve Gul’dan, always in chains by the neck. Durotan frees her, only to be captured by Khadgar. Garona doesn’t trust the humans, but slowly she realizes these people care for her and trust her. Something she never experienced with her brutal orcish masters.
Whether you are a Warcraft gamer or new to the mythos, you will truly enjoy these epic battles with swords, axes, lances, and magical fireballs. ILM did an amazing job bringing to the big screen these massive battlefields, and the realistic orcs clashing with real human actors.
There are gryphons, wolves, dwarves and high elves as well in some of the scenes in Ironforge, Stormwind and Dalaran. So ILM did a lot of work there in over 10 months of post-production.
I recommend to go watch the movie and to ignore all the bad feedback from certain ignorant media outlets. Even if the plot may confuse you, you will certainly enjoy the special effects, and learn something from the plot. Don’t trust the media’s bad reviews. Currently, Rottentomatoes lists 26% (4/10). Who to trust: The media critics, or the general public viewers who watched it? The true critics of a movie are its viewers, and 83% say they loved it. Nuff said.
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WARCRAFT was directed by Duncan Jones with a $160m budget. At the time of this review, WARCRAFT has made $24,356,000 in 3,400 throughout the United States in the past 2 days — ranking # 2 Domestically (US). In China, WARCRAFT has made $145m in 4 days. Worldwide it has made $286.1 millions.
Overwall, WARCRAFT was a great movie to watch, and the moment the Blu-Ray goes on sale I plan to purchase it for the extended material, and to re-watch the film several times.
IMDB rates the WARCRAFT movie with 7.7 / 10 from 51,675 votes.
If you wish to learn more about the original WARCRAFT lore I recommend these novels:
Follow us on Twitter @blizzplanetcom for update alerts once the Blu-Ray becomes available.
A nice review and I agree, it is a great movie. Still here some points:
Thrall being green was perfectly explained in previous books. Since any orcs being near fel-magic too long turns green, so do their children. Even if he hadn’t needed help from Gul’dan, there is a chance he would have turned green once being born in the camp even if his parents were not, given his resistance to it would be weaker. The movie’s version actually made me quite happy, for it showed the charisma of Gul’dan and the power of fel in a very different way. They could have even played it out with Durotan being indebted to him due to saving his son.
The original storyline of Medivh, at last him being the son of a rouge Guardian being possessed by Sargeras would indeed have been so much better, as would have been the mentioning of the Legion. I can see why Duncan didn’t include it since he didn’t want to press too much into it, but it would have made the story so much better.
Speaking of, using the original storyline of Garona killing Llane, at last hinted and played out in a sequel, would have been better, too, since it would help to establish Gul’dan as even more of a badass. Given the structure of the movie, it makes quite sense not ending it with Stormwind’s destruction, for it would have needed to be at last thirty minutes longer to be portrayed in a
One last thing. I think you underestimate the difficulty of orcs and humans uniting. Even if the chieftains agreed to make peace, they still would want to save the rest of their kind from Draenor. Gul’dan is the only capable of doing this, especially with Medivh gone. Even if they would capture him alive and force him to use alternative fuel like cattle or gnolls(cough), I see little chance King Llane agreeing to it, since it would leave the humans greatly in disadvantage. Given the orcs’ large numbers there would also be a lot of land-sharing be needed.