SPOILER-FREE MOVIE REVIEW
I am not a fan of cinematic adaptations of video games. I feel that video games on their own are movies already when you take into account all of the cutscenes and all that jazz.
With all that said, however, I decided to go into this movie with an open mind as I am supposed to as a movie reviewer - and to see how it fares as a movie and not as a video game brought to the big screen.
It really helped that before watching Warcraft: The Beginning, I had absolutely no knowledge of the game or of the universe, with the extent of my awareness being me knowing this game series exists, and that I had played it once when I was little at my cousin's house during Chinese New Year.
So, without further ado, let's talk about the movie.
Warcraft: The Beginning was an... interesting experience.
For starters, I think that it's got a really good premise.
Creatures called Orcs going to battle through a portal made by Orc leader Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) with humans as their land dies - a premise that I actually could understand for a fantasy movie.
It's also got some truly stunning CGI work and terrific motion-capture to bring the Orc characters to life - especially Durotan (Toby Kebbell) who was by far the most interesting character in the entire movie.
With all these said, however, that was the extent of how much the movie managed to grasp my interest.
I'll just cut to the chase - Warcraft is a really, really poor film.
I mean, I appreciate that the filmmakers tried to adapt the vast and extensive source material into a two-hour movie which neutral goers like me could actually understand, but they could have at least tried harder?
Once we pass the opening 10-15 minutes, the movie starts getting carried away with excessive fan service and mentioning names and locations which weren't even mentioned before. It's all a blur.
The story was just filled to the brim with content that could have made two quality movies jammed into one two-hour blitz of a movie.
There was little to no consideration to give each character adequate development. This is especially so for the human characters.
Take main protagonist Lothar (Travis Fimmel), for instance.
Yes, he's all-awesome and such because of what he does as a warrior for Azeroth, but his character is so poorly-developed to a point where you just feel absolutely no connection between him and his son Callan (Burkely Duffield), and you just don't care about what happens to the characters.
This became a common theme among all the human characters - I just really didn't care much or at all for each and every one of them.
It's especially so with characters like the Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster), and Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer). They were just so forgettable and over-the-top.
Thinking back, I think it's quite funny how they tried to make those two interesting by having them make some deliberate expository scenes in an attempt to add depth to their characters. It's funny because that failed spectacularly.
That is not helped by what I think is the most poor editing I've ever seen in a movie.
Scenes are cut before they even finish or reach a conclusion, and it happened so frequently that it took me out of the movie entirely.
Transitions from scene to scene were painfully jarring, and it ended up ruining the film's pacing from a decently-flowing adventure unfolding to a choppy, sloppy two-hours-which-felt-like-ten.
All in all, Warcraft: The Beginning was an ambitious movie which tried to break the barriers and stereotypes which stick with every video game-to-movie-adaptation.
However, that failed spectacularly with a two-hour-long movie which felt like a century, filled with terribly complex and under-developed characters, subplots and locations which ended up making a terrible movie.
As for Warcraft fans, however, I think you guys may like it because there is really A LOT of fan service.
Still doesn't change the fact that it's a terrible movie. Don't bother with it, people, unless you like terrible movies.
3/10.
Warcraft: The Beginning was an... interesting experience.
For starters, I think that it's got a really good premise.
Creatures called Orcs going to battle through a portal made by Orc leader Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) with humans as their land dies - a premise that I actually could understand for a fantasy movie.
It's also got some truly stunning CGI work and terrific motion-capture to bring the Orc characters to life - especially Durotan (Toby Kebbell) who was by far the most interesting character in the entire movie.
With all these said, however, that was the extent of how much the movie managed to grasp my interest.
I'll just cut to the chase - Warcraft is a really, really poor film.
I mean, I appreciate that the filmmakers tried to adapt the vast and extensive source material into a two-hour movie which neutral goers like me could actually understand, but they could have at least tried harder?
Once we pass the opening 10-15 minutes, the movie starts getting carried away with excessive fan service and mentioning names and locations which weren't even mentioned before. It's all a blur.
The story was just filled to the brim with content that could have made two quality movies jammed into one two-hour blitz of a movie.
There was little to no consideration to give each character adequate development. This is especially so for the human characters.
Take main protagonist Lothar (Travis Fimmel), for instance.
Yes, he's all-awesome and such because of what he does as a warrior for Azeroth, but his character is so poorly-developed to a point where you just feel absolutely no connection between him and his son Callan (Burkely Duffield), and you just don't care about what happens to the characters.
This became a common theme among all the human characters - I just really didn't care much or at all for each and every one of them.
It's especially so with characters like the Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster), and Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer). They were just so forgettable and over-the-top.
Thinking back, I think it's quite funny how they tried to make those two interesting by having them make some deliberate expository scenes in an attempt to add depth to their characters. It's funny because that failed spectacularly.
That is not helped by what I think is the most poor editing I've ever seen in a movie.
Scenes are cut before they even finish or reach a conclusion, and it happened so frequently that it took me out of the movie entirely.
Transitions from scene to scene were painfully jarring, and it ended up ruining the film's pacing from a decently-flowing adventure unfolding to a choppy, sloppy two-hours-which-felt-like-ten.
All in all, Warcraft: The Beginning was an ambitious movie which tried to break the barriers and stereotypes which stick with every video game-to-movie-adaptation.
However, that failed spectacularly with a two-hour-long movie which felt like a century, filled with terribly complex and under-developed characters, subplots and locations which ended up making a terrible movie.
As for Warcraft fans, however, I think you guys may like it because there is really A LOT of fan service.
Still doesn't change the fact that it's a terrible movie. Don't bother with it, people, unless you like terrible movies.
3/10.
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