MOVIE REVIEW: WARCRAFT

I'm a sucker for fantasy movies, mythological monsters and beasts. Warcraft comes from the amazing and never disappointing minds at Blizzard Entertainment. What originally was a isometric real time strategy game, and then later evolved into what is now known as the World of Warcraft, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, where you play as an adventurer in various realms and worlds, one of which is Azeroth. Warcraft now has a crazy deep mythos behind it with plenty of big name important characters and events that take place in it's lore to give meat to why the Orcs came to battle with the Humans, and various other conflicts detailed within World of Warcraft, Warcraft III and several novels that have been penned in association to the franchise. If you've never played the games, or have any idea what Warcraft is other than the film, fear not. The movie pretty much lays out who's who, where is where, and what is what and is fairly straightforward with only giving enough info as to allow you to learn as you journey through this new cinimatic universe.

Some reviews and critics feel that the movie lacks in this needed information, and is thus confusing and ultimately suffers greatly for it. I do not feel this way, the movie is a great time, that gives you the important information required to enter the world, the rest you will need to uncover as the journey unfolds. Basically, the Orcs, a race of hulking warriors, who know only ancient traditions and fighting with honor. Their world has been turned into a wasteland, no longer suitable to farm or support life, thus they seek someplace new to call home. A mysterious voice guides their leader and the horde to a portal in which leads them to Azeroth, the realm of humans, dwarfs, elves and other races who currenlty live in peace with one another. The result is humans, entrusted with protecting Azeroth, confront the horde to learn who these beasts are that now invade their lands. But more importantly, what force has led the Orcs to Azeroth, and brought the evil destructive powers of "The Fell" with them.

This movie is beautiful, it's visually impressive and keeps you in relative awe the entire time, and I say this from viewing it through a malfunctioning 3d projector, and only seeing a blur 90% of the movie. It was still pretty! Fans of the games will giggle at the number of eastereggs and callouts to the video games that came before it. The story and plot of the movie is pretty basic, and nothing terribly deep, however it does a well enough job with a few little twists and querks thrown in to hit the highs and lows the story needs to get you through to the end. Quite a bit is left open and unexplained, which as many find this the films shortcoming, it really is the building of an awesome franchise that I think could do some wonderful things. If you aren't into gaming, or familiar with the video games developers, Blizzard Entertainment does not to things okay, or half cocked. Things are polished, and fleshed, and cleaned to a very meticulus degree. Every product they put out wins awards and breaks records, so despite Warcraft's shortcomings here in the US. It still crushed it overseas. I honestly think that is more the fault of a marketing and advertising campaign that was not nearly as aggressive as it should have been. One can only hope that future installments will garner a better return domestically and even more weight can be put on to this potential massive franchise. Really, Warcraft's biggest weakness, is the main characters of the film. I understand that in the bigger picture they're mere tinder for the bonfire, but it was slightly difficult to care about them. There was some areas of character development, and it may have been a slightly stiff performance for our human actor, Travis Fimmel who plays Anduinn Luthor. He clearly is a battle hardened warrior, so maybe that was intentional... but still made it tough to actually get into the character or care much about him. Our main Orc character, played by Toby Kebbel, faired a little bit better in his performance - but even still I found myself not caring as much at certain shocker moments in the story about him as I should have. The climactic scene of his story, arguably should have been a punch in the gut, if you cared... but I was unscathed. Even one of my favorite actors, Ben Foster; as the Guardian, Medivh, his character was very shallow and kind of felt phoned in, which is very uncharacteristic of him if you've seen his other works. The best performances of the movie were delivered by Clancy Brown, playing Blackhand, the Orc leading the horde into Azeroth. As well as, Paula Patton playing Gerona, the half-Orc/half-human, who even with small tusks protruding from her bottom lip is stare worthy beautiful or as beautiful as an Orc could be... She manages to bring some emotion into her performance despite the character's intention of being stoic and more ruthless than any human.

Ultimately though, overlooking those few bits, Warcraft is a good fun time, with great action, and breath taking visuals, despite its shortcomings in a few performances. It defintely sets a good foundation and enough lore to flesh out a huge cinimatic franchise, that it's worth checking out, either at a discount theater, or once it comes out on Blu-Ray/DVD.

#warcraft #orcs #humans #blizzard #worldofwarcraft