The Warcraft Movie: What Happened?

Hey lads and ladies, it's me, your resident movie and game nerd.

As a movie/video game nerd, I'm acutely aware of the fact that pretty much every video game movie has been objectively not very good, regardless of what subjective enjoyment one might glean from any of them. After years and years of disappointing movies based on some truly great games, you'd think I'd be used to it, and for the most part I am. However, the disappointment of one movie in particular still comes back to haunt me every time a scene pops up on my Youtube front page: Warcraft.

You see, of all the video games that have been made into movies thus far, Warcraft is probably the game I love the most. I played Warcraft III in its entirety more than once when it came out, and then did it all over again when its critically acclaimed expansion, The Frozen Throne, was released. I've played World of Warcraft on and off ever since it was released in 2004 (for the Alliance). I've read the books, looked up the lore, and even picked my desired career at a young age after seeing the pre-rendered cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. I assumed the Warcraft movie would be a sure thing, especially with Duncan Jones at the helm (a film-maker that I don't mean to put down here, he's an incredible talent. "Moon" was spectacular.), but boy was I wrong.

So, what happened? Well, if you're still reading, I imagine you're at least somewhat interested in what I think, so I'll be covering the two major issues that I think held this movie back from being the first legitimately good video game movie.

The Story

First and foremost, we have to discuss what happened with the story here. Warcraft has no shortage of stories that would make some pretty fantastic movies. You have the possession of the most powerful human guardian in the world by a vengeful, rampaging deity. You have the corruption of the entire Orc race by one of their own, controlled by an extra-terrestrial race of demons bent on destroying the universe. The ongoing war between Orcs and Humans, and the emotional journey's of heroes on both sides. If any of this sounds familiar, it's because they tried to shove all of these stories into one movie. This may have worked for the original 1994 game, but in a 2 hour movie, we have a lot of major bits cut out or reduced to fit the runtime, and the effect is about what you might expect. None of the stories are given proper weight, none of the plot points hit the emotional highs or lows they aim for, and a lot of the backstory required to explain what exactly lead to the events we see within the first 5 minutes of the film is not present. Character arcs that were engaging and fully formed in the lore, are instead shuffled around and cut short to try and merge three or four different stories into one coherent, 2-hour narrative, with the result that the movie feels disjointed and confused; it becomes hard to keep track of everything when we have four or five people that you could consider protagonists, on separate journeys against two or three different villains, especially when only a few of them have clearly defined goals.

I know a lot of people try to make the claim that these games don't work as movies because, in games, you experience your own, personal narrative that a movie can't capture, and that is true in a lot of cases. However, Warcraft does have a set backstory, it has a defined, over-arcing narrative, and the fact is that the narrative presented in the movie is, unfortunately, a bit lacking.

A focus on any one, maybe even two, of these stories would have gone a long way towards making the movie much easier to digest (and much easier to follow, as the first half hour moves at breakneck speed), and would've left them open to an entire worlds worth of sequels.

The Visuals

Alright, don't get me wrong here, the visuals in this movie are not bad. In fact, they are very, very, VERY good. The CGI on the Orc characters, specifically, is out of this world.

I mean, look at this:

That is easily the best CGI I witnessed before Thanos stole the show in Infinity War. The problem, unfortunately, comes from putting the regular, practical human characters, into a movie where everything surrounding them, from environments to characters of different races, is CGI. Again, it's very good CGI, and the practical work done on the human characters (especially their armor and weapons) is equally high quality, but the difference in styles is jarring when put together, to say the least. It becomes very off-putting and distracting.

For example:

Take a look at this shot from the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria cinematic. The orc and human, both, are clearly stylized, with exaggerated proportions and bulging muscles. The orc towers over his human counterpart, but the human is no small fry. Both have a distinct style, but these two characters, while different aesthetically, are clearly part of the same universe; They don't look at odds when standing next to each other, and I can easily imagine that this human would absolutely hold his own in a fight with this orc.

Now, lets take a look at our lead human character, the heroic Lothar, in combat with some orcs in the Warcraft movie:

Separately, both of these characters look great! Each side has a clear aesthetic, and both are realized incredibly well. However, when meshed together in a scene, we end up with our frankly normal looking main character surrounded by a sea of stylized CGI characters. I was constantly distracted by this tiny, regular human beating these hulking, monstrous orcs in a fight.

This problem persists throughout the movie. Take a look at one final image, of our hero and a Dwarven ally standing next to each other:

Here we have the same problem; this clearly stylized Dwarf looks like he was ripped straight from a World of Warcraft cinematic, but next to him is...some regular guy.

This one is just an odd choice for me; with 90% of the movie being realized through stellar CGI, the decision to insert live human characters just seems ill advised.

That Said

Now, as usual, I don't want to only bad-mouth this movie, so I'll dedicate a small space here to mention the things the movie does well:

• The acting is pretty good all the way around, no one was giving a bad performance, and a few are actually quite good.

• The soundtrack is stellar, Ramin Djawadi never disappoints. In fact, take a listen for yourself

• The humor. Warcraft has always balanced it's seriousness with a healthy amount of goofy, and this movie really captures that spirit.

• The CGI parts of the world, specifically, are so accurate to the game that it's scary.

• Again, the CGI is so, so, soooooooo good.

And that'll about do it. As a fan, I had a lot of thoughts on this movie, and its universe, and decided to finally get my thoughts down. With all the potential of its story, I hope to see it done proper justice one day.