Warcraft Movie Review

There's been some talk regarding the Warcraft movie, which is an adaptation of the video game franchise by Blizzard. It recently came out in the US, but was released overseas much earlier.

On the one hand, the movie is panned by critics getting a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 32/100 score on Metacritic, and as of this review, it's estimated to earn less than $30 million at the US Box Office.

On the other hand, regular moviegoers give Warcraft a favorable rating. IMDB ranks it at 7.8 out of 10 from its user base. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic users give around the 8's and 9's. And according to BoxMojo as of this review, it earned $276 million internationally.

With the production budget of $160 million, and that it's not as heavily marketed as the Marvel and DC movies, I would say financially speaking, the movie did well.

So we have yet another scenario of movie hated by critics, but enjoyed by the audience. And it's a video game-turned-movie to boot. Where do I stand in this? Well, before I give my review, a few things to consider: I have played the first 3 Warcraft games and the only one I never bothered playing was World of Warcraft. Furthermore, I am not as invested of the mythology of the Warcraft franchise as its hardcore audience. So one can say between a hardcore fan of Warcraft and someone who never heard of it before, I'm somewhere down the middle.

The simplest way to explain the plot of Warcraft is that it is loosely based on the first game that sets up the war between the Human race and the invading Orcs. The movie shows the war from both sides through the eyes of its two main characters - Durotan of the Orcs, played by Toby Kebbell. You probably know him as Dr. Doom in Fox's reboot of Fantastic Four. And from the Human side, we have Sir Lothar played by Travis Fimmel, who plays Ragnar in the Tv series Vikings. Between them are an ensemble cast of characters who play a much bigger role within the franchise's mythology as opposed to the movie itself.

And that's where I find the biggest problem with Warcraft - it's cast of characters. There's just too many of them and very little time for the audience to know who these characters are. As a result, I could not care less about them at all. The only character that the movie really gave time to develop and ergo for the audience to connect was Durotan. For Warcraft fans, no doubt they will know who these characters are and will cheer for them, but not so much for everyone else, me included.

And because I care little for the characters, the overall narrative of the movie suffers. Though it is not a total loss as Durotan's arc is quite interesting up until the very end.

The movie tries to be a clone of sorts of the Lord of The Rings movies, and thus shower you with all these CG sequences. Yes, they are indeed good looking. In fact it is awesome and makes you feel like you're watching a cutscene from an actual video game. But it's in such excess and some have little to do with the actual plot and is nothing more but an eyecatch.

The reason why The Lord of The Rings were three movies long is because it is quite a very long story, and therefore there must be time to develop and connect to the characters and the conflict they are in. I believe it would have been better if the Warcraft movie is divided into two films - one about the Orcs, and one about the Humans, much like the first 3 games. Obviously, the studio cannot afford that so everything has to be jumbled up in one movie, and this is the result.

The action sequences are what you would expect from a typcial fantasy movie. However, because the scenes do have that video game cutscene feeling, it's not bad at all. While not in the same league as the cutscenes from Metal Gear Solid, if this movie were an actual game and these scenes appear, I would set my controls aside and enjoy watching it while eating popcorn.

And overall that's what Warcraft really is. It's neither a bad movie, or a good one. You just sit down, relax, eat your snacks and kill time by watching the movie. And there really is nothing wrong with that. This movie unfortunately won't convince the general audience to invest into the franchise. But for those who have already done so, you'll be quite happy with it.

As for me, the Warcraft won't convince me to spend $20 a month to get my ass kicked in World of Warcraft by those who played the game in like forever. But it does motivate me to go back and replay the first 3 games for nostalgia. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give the movie adaptation of Warcraft - a 3 out of 5.