SummaryThe peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: Orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course th...
SummaryThe peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: Orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course th...
The performances of Travis Fimmel, Toby Kebbell and Paula Patton as the warrior Lothar, the orc hero Durotan and the half-orc/half-woman Garona, all awakening to the evil forces around them, are meaty enough to hold attention.
The dialogue is so earnest that its lack of humor becomes a source of humor in itself. The acting is so primal that you’ll swear a porn sequence is about to break out.
I recently rewatched this with my kids because they didn't know what Warcraft was yet. Then I decided to check and see if there was a sequel coming and read the reviews, which made me sad.
First let me start by saying after the movie my kids were yelling FOR THE HORDE and FOR THE ALLIENCE all night. Clearly they loved it. My son asked me if there was an animated series for sequel right away cause he wants more.
Spoilers forward...
After reading the reviews I realized a lot of things. Hal the people witting the reviews have no idea what they are talking about.
For starters the amount of people who cried where were the Night Elfs... I will tell you where, in Ashenvale where they belonged. This was the first story. Warcraft 1. Which means, Orcs, Humans, Karin Tor Dwarfs, That's it. Night Elves don't get introduced until Warcraft 3, along with Torrens, Demons, Ect...
The fact is you people would have got your Night Elves if you weren't trying to sabotage a sequel from being made. My God people are dumb.
Anyways movie is amazing... follows real lore, stays true to the story. Sorry clowns ruined it, with uneducated reviews.
I'm honestly still mad, that this movie got review bombed - by the critics nonetheless! From the beginning 'till the end, I just couldn't but adore the beautiful landscapes, incredible CGI and simply astonishing soundtrack which pulled all of it together.
I'm not saying that this is the best movie of all times, but it certainly deserves more recognition than it has. I sincerely hope that eventually, we will get a continuation - as low the chance of it actually is.
Warcraft may provide grand, thunderous spectacle as it transforms human actors into hulking Orcs, but when trying to perform the alchemy of transmuting genre archetypes into characters with soul, the magic fizzles out.
The film takes a long time to build dramatic momentum and gets interrupted by what seem like unnecessary plot points; some of them, perhaps, geared towards potential sequels.
Definitively establishing that “state-of-the-art” and “chintzy” are not mutually exclusive qualities, Warcraft is a perplexing multiplex boondoggle: Rarely is so much time, money, and cutting-edge technology expended on a spectacle so devoid of wonder.
It’s soulless, incoherent, Renaissance Faire hooey. And since the latest iteration of game series that inspired it, World of Warcraft, already peaked years ago, even the timing is off.
This is truly a depressing experience. It’s rare to feel such pity for a major studio movie, but watching Warcraft bend over backwards to set up a sequel is like watching a desperate paramedic apply CPR to someone who’s clearly been dead for hours.
Warcraft is a movie with a very unique feel and press surrounding it. With a massive lore both before and after the period that the movie takes place in, you are undoubtabedly going to either add too much too the movie or remove too many important lore-bits, depending on who you ask. I for one consider this movie to be very confusing, despite being a die-hard fan of the lore. The movie spends too little time developing characters and too much time showcasing lore-references such as Ironforge, Dalaran and high elves, that for a non-wow fan the whole presentation may seem very random and difficult to grasp.
The visuals alone are also very interesting to touch upon. At times it is a beautiful movie. The orcs are well executed and the landscapes are gorgerous, but the human armor and much of the props give it a very B-movie feel for most of the runtime. The story is relatively straight forward, but the characters fall flat and those were the most important to get right. Anduin Lothar is assumably a caring father and a competent soldier, but we only really see him as the latter. Many of the other characters, such as the king and Blackhand, don't really have much of a personality and they appear as common character cutouts from other movies. The only character with a clear motivation and compelling struggle is Durotan. The rest fall flat. Overall the movie is a visual marvel and as a fan it is great to see some of the characters and landscapes from the games up on the big screen. As a movie in its own right, the story premise is too simple, the characters are not compelling and some scenes feel random, unimportant and underutilized.
This is probably the nerdiest film I have ever seen, which I find endearing as somebody who is a fan of franchises that hold such a shamelessly niche appeal. And on that point, my biggest praise I can give this film is that the aesthetics are completely loyal to how the games look and feel. However, this and the fairly competent action direction don't make up for the rest of this film feeling so empty. It has the most basic of plot-lines, the world-building doesn't expand much beyond the occasional fan-pandering, and an ending that is completely pointless beyond the set up for a sequel we will probably never see. I should probably hate this more than I do, but I left with less of a sour taste in my mouth as much as I did with an unanswered query: who is this for?! (apparently, a fair amount of people in China, according to the box office...)
08/07/2018
Production Company
Legendary Entertainment,
Universal Pictures,
Atlas Entertainment,
Blizzard Entertainment,
China Film Group Corporation (CFGC),
Tencent Pictures,
Taihe Entertainment,
Huayi Brothers Media,
Dentsu,
Fuji Television Network