Warcraft Review

Will we ever get a good video game movie? I'm starting to think it will never happen. I had high expectations going into Warcraft, mainly because of the director, Duncan Jones, who made the movies Moon and Source Code. Unfortunately my expectations were not met and I left the theater extremely disappointed.

Warcraft is a movie based on the extremely popular video game series called Warcraft, of course. The movie is about this land of orcs that is dying and the orcs must find a new place to live. The new place the orcs choose is this human realm. The problem is that the orcs start destroying the human realm and so now the humans must stop the orcs. I wish I could tell you the names of the places and the characters in this movie, but honestly I don't remember them (yes, I could look them up, but that would be cheating).

I love video games and I love movies so I was hoping that this would be a movie made for me, even if I have never played any of the Warcraft games. Unfortunately this movie may only be for fans of the video games. I feel like there were a lot of things in Warcraft that fans of the series would immediately notice and enjoy, but for me, I just didn't care. The movie jumps around to various different places, but never stays long enough to care about these places. The same thing happens with the characters in the movie. Once you start spending any quality time with a character, you immediately jump to another character and have to learn about their story. This made it really hard to care about any of the people in this movie.

One of the most distracting things about Warcraft was the way it looked. The orcs in the movie looked fantastic, but the world around them was ugly. The orcs looked lifelike and their armor had this incredible and distinct minor details. Whether it was skulls of mystical beasts as shoulder pads or jaw bones as necklaces, the detail was amazing. Unfortunately the humans didn't get to benefit for this type of detail. Their armor was extremely fake looking. It looked like armor you would find in a halloween store. It looked like the humans had never been in an actual battle before. Another problem were the buildings in the background. There was one scene where the king was riding his horse around the castle and the castle looked like it was made of styrofoam. Things like that instantly took me out of the movie.

Another problem was the characters and the performances given by the actors. Outside of the main orc (Durotan, yes I looked that up), I didn't care what happened to anyone in this movie. No one had a compelling backstory or even showed any type of emotion that made you want to root for them. The writers tried to throw in this love story between the main human (Sir Anduin Lothar) and a half-human/half-orc (Garona). I have no idea why this love story was needed, there was no pay off for it in this movie, but most likely will come into play in future films, if they get made. The performances by the two actors in this love story (Travis Fimmel and Paula Patton) were dry and dull.

If I had to pick one thing I enjoyed about Warcraft it would have to be the mage characters and the only thing I enjoyed about them is the way their magic powers looked. I cared a little bit about Ben Fosters character but that's only because I like Ben Foster as an actor.

Overall Warcraft was a dud. The story never allowed you to care about any of the characters, it jumped around from place to place and character to character. Relationships were forced for no reason whatsoever other than to maybe have pay off in a future film. Some of the CGI looked good but other parts of the film looked extremely fake and would suck you out of the world. If you are a fan of the Warcraft games then you may find something to enjoy in this movie. For me, it's world I never really want to explore again, which is extremely disappointing.