Um. No.

There's no 'WoW' story that's more enjoyable than Warcraft 2 or 3. I enjoyed the Blackrock Mountain stuff, and Cataclysm is awesome, but none of it is as beloved as Arthas' fall and the invasion of the Burning Legion.

 

Just because Warcraft 1 is relatively 'unknown' doesn't mean Warcraft equally is.

I find it pretty funny that you're speaking for the entire fanbase, but okay.

The Warcraft games introduce all the major players - so much so that WoW has stagnated without another Warcraft game to introduce more - that first got us attached to WoW. The establish the Alliance and the Horde, concepts that would make no fucking sense without this backstory.

They could actually do a whole lot more than the games too. Like explaining what the Lich King is - and going into Ner'zhul's story more now that they're putting a greater focus on Orcs - and the Burning Legion's involvement in said events.

I haven't even touched on Warcraft 3 yet. If they follow the 'one movie per game' strategy, I could sit through two boring set-up movies if it all pays off with a Warcraft 3 movie, like, holy shit that'd be epic...

...also probably not doable in a single movie.

I should add the characters you're speaking of, that everyone knows about, start popping up in Warcraft 2 and 3.

I mean, if you don't know Khadgar and Medivh now as a WoW fan, then there's no point anyway.

I bet you'll see young Arthus and Jaina in the second movie.

As for MCU, they didn't start raking in 'huge' money until several movies in. Iron Man made around half a billion I think? Well, Warcraft did 80 million in China on the opening night...

 

I found myself really emotionally invested in Warcraft. Might be nostalgia. Only ever played the third game but the hints and references were enough. It's not exactly a deep movie but I thought it worked well and I really hope for a sequel.

 

I just wish they had started with Ner'zhul and gone Lich King centric. Sure, enslavement of the orcs and origins of the Horde give major context to this story, but it makes for such a boring vanilla plot. They could and should have pulled a Star Wars and just launched right into the meat of Lich King.

Could have been a tidy quadrilogy. First movie = Kiljaeden vs Ner'zhul and birth of the Lich King (introduce the orcs and the draenei). Second movie = Arthas' and Illidan's story ending with Arthas turning into the Lich King (introduce night elves). Third movie = Siege of Quel'thalas and Burning Crusade (introduce the Blood Elves and Forsaken). Fourth Movie = Wrath of the Lich King and a culmination war story as Horde and Alliance come together to bring down Arthas.

 

You don't open with KJ dude, massive faux pas imo. Gotta build up to the Big Bads.

Also, what are you more excited to see? Arthas' fall, or the Battle for Mount Hyjal?

Personally, MH on the big screen makes me moist... People adore the LK story, but its similarities with SW has always turned me off.

... Though Illidan vs Arthas would be kinda awesome.

 

Kil'jaeden, Archimonde, and Sargeras may be big bad super beings responsible for most of the evil plaguing the WoWverse, but they aren't very interesting characters IMO, and probably would make shitty movie villains. I want them to be lingering presences behind the scenes. I wouldn't even need to see MH and Sunwell final battles. The mortals they corrupt and manipulate (Ner'zhul, Arthas, Kael, Illidan), the characters who actually have personalities and motivations and who rise and fall, make for far better antagonists.

I've always thought that the Lich King story was the heart of Warcraft lore, so I'd be way more excited to get Arthas' tale on film.

 

I'm not going to argue the merits of Warcraft's characters, I've always thought they were super bland, esp the villains. Even Arthas.

Onyxia is probably the only villain I've thought was super fucking interesting. The entire Black Dragonflight, inc Wratheon, in general.

 

Went on a movie binge.

Warcraft was pretty awesome.

X-Men Apoc was terrible.

 

A Warcraft 3 movie sounds absolutely amazing to me.

Spoiler

"What are you doing my son?!"
"Succeeding you, father."

That cinematic blew my mind when I was 13 years old. I can still remember almost all aspects of it. The bell tolling, the rose petals, the throne room. If that is whats to come, I could be very excited about this franchise.

I had absolutely no interest in this film until recently. The reception + all the things I've been hearing about it have convinced me to give it a go, despite knowing nothing about warcraft lore pre warcraft 3.

 

Conjuring 2 was pretty fucking great.

 

So. Warcraft. Review features spoilers.

Spoiler

To keep things tidy, I'll approach this like I would a fanfic review. Technical stuff first: the CGI in this movie is honestly pretty fucking amazing. There's always the skewing of perception with CGI: if the viewer can tell that something on the screen was obviously computer-generated, he will look for any sign of fakeness and more often than not, he'll find it or convince himself that he has. Most people don't realize that CGI is everywhere today and most of it is good enough that we don't notice. I tried to look beyond this psychological trick of the mind here and I have to say, well fucking done. Orcs look utterly ridiculous, but I can't say they don't look real.

From what I can tell, the movie does a great job of bringing the Warcraft aesthetic to the big screen. Personally I prefer designs more grounded in reality, but what was on the screen looked great.

How about the story and pacing? Well, firstly, I rolled my eyes at the painfully shoehorned in romance between Lothar and the sexy green alien Gamora played by Zoe Saladana- oh, pardon, I meant the sexy green orc played by Paula Patton. That was just terrible, no other word for it. The overarching story was alright. As someone who knows zilch about Warcraft, I didn't feel too lost in the setup of the Alliance and the Horde. Pacing was uneven, there were unnecessary slowdowns mostly tied to the romance subplot and some of the stuff with the Guardian. Of course, the story is full of typical fantasy tropes. I felt like the movie suffered from oversaturation with things pulled straight from tvtropes.

Characters in this film: most of them seemed really bland to me. I could tell Fimmel was trying to do what he could with the lead role, but it didn't work out. Tbh, it looked like a combination of a poorly written character combined with a director who didn't know how to direct his actors and actors who just aren't that good. Same goes for the Guardian Medhiv (or Medivh, not sure, wasn't looking at subtitles), the orc lady Garona, the other mage dude (Kadghar?) and Lothar's son, whatever his name was.

Actually, two characters who I thought were actually kind of good were Durotan and Gul'dan (why the fuck do you need an apostrophe in there, orc mage?). I thought they managed to transcend the flat plains of two-dimensionality into perhaps 2,5D. Why, I'll give Durotan the full 3D - his motivation was clearly established and made sense and he had an agenda which he carried out.

The story, eh. The high points came when Orcs and people were smashing each other dead, i.e. in the moments when the story took a backseat to MRAWCARNAGE. I'll give it to the movie that the Guardian seemed shifty from the beginning, but in the end his betrayal just kind of happened, he got possessed by a demon, then died and I know nothing about how the demon came into play or why. Was the demon responsible for engineering the war? What, how, why? Maybe they're saving the flashbacks for the sequel? I don't know. If they'd cut out the romance and instead used that runtime to explain what happened there, movie would be automatically better.

Garona switching sides and humans accepting her so quickly, the obnoxious leaders of other kingdoms, the whole demon thing - it really does feel like a plot taken straight out of a video game. Thing is, in those games the plot served to take you from one scene of carnage to another. In the movie, it falls flat.

Lastly, when Gul'dan killed Durotan and got called out for cheating he just sucked the life out of a couple orcs and they fell in line. Then Garona killed the king and this time orcs don't listen to Gul'dan. Just use your death magic again, dude. I found that jarring and rather immersion-breaking.

There's quite a bit of unintentional camp in the movie, like the final boss battle, where Lothar just slices the huge badass green orc through the balls aaaand that's it, epic duel over. The griffin was way more badass than Lothar in that battle. When they landed, griffin went to town on the orcs. After a few seconds there was already an empty space around them. Lothar was kneeling over the king's body trying to look overcome with emotion (and failing) while in the background, the griffin was tearing shit up. That griffin was the most badass warrior in the entire movie.

But maybe I'm being too hard on Warcraft. It's clear it's not supposed to be like a Nolan film and, for the most part, it doesn't try to be. It's more like Blade: the goofy stuff is glorious and the hilarity potential of the serious parts increases the more alcohol and friends you have handy to watch the movie with. For brainless fun, it does the job. I don't often laugh out loud in a theatre, but when the mage turned a guard into a sheep, I literally snorted Coke out through my nose. That shit was hilarious.

One last thing: the battle against demon-Guardian was a snoozefest, easily the worst part of the movie and I'm including the romance here. Just yawn. Ben Foster just doesn't make a compelling super-wizard. The worst casting in the movie.

This is obviously a movie made for fans. Whether that makes it better or worse, I'm not sure. For me, it was decent enough fun, but I'm not terribly excited for the inevitable sequel. Not a film I'll be coming back to.

6/10

 

So I watched Now You See Me 2 last night and while I am a fan of the first one and it isn't exactly a bad one I have to say that I am a bit disappointed by it. For me it lacked the magic that made the first one special and suffered from having to many characters which focused to little on the four horsemen (as well as a far too crazy plot) and not enough on magic (tricks).

 

I've never played WoW and enjoyed the movie. It even surprised me as I didn't expect that kind of quality. Which game movie can compete with this?

Sure you can argue that a few more details would have helped but as a total experience I think it worked quite well for somebody with no insight into the WoW universe.

IMHO it's a good base to build on production wise.

 

The WOW movie bombed in the US but killed in China. Travis Fimmel made no changes to his character in the movie form his Vikings character, we are seeing Ragnar leak on screen several times.

Star Trek is the movie I am waiting for. I am not a fan of the TV show or earlier movies. But the reboot is really good. Well acted, excellent cast, great story, and good directing. What more can you want.

 

It's only the first weekend, which is a bit too early to say it bombed. Sure it was a bad domestic opening for a 160 million dollar movie, but it might be a slow burner. Happens sometimes to movies that have some hype but aren't full blown country-wide hype trains. People sort of want to see it, but aren't dying to, so they hold off until they have time.

Critical reception isn't doing it any favors though.

 

Shoulda title-crawled the First War ala Star Wars, and built a trilogy around the Second War. That feels a no-brainer for me.