[Movie] Warcraft (June 2016)

[Jotaux]

Honestly, I think I'm a bit more hyped for the movie now.

[Jshadowhunter]

Going to see the movie now, back in about 3-4 hours.

[Kelimbror]

No, I am telling you it was in the public consciousness which would influence writers of the time. I know complicated shit. Jsut for ref, I am not saying that is the primary focus. Just saying it is an influence.

Chris Metzen, pioneer of anti-immigration narrative. If not for him, Donald Trump wouldn't want to put up walls everywhere. Curse the Orcs and their invasion of our homeland. They quickly took all our low paying jobs and pushed us out of Eastern Kingdoms.

[Valeron]

I am still concerned about some performance reviews being accurate though. Not a lot of great human acting going on in the trailers.

I don't think you go into these types of movies expecting great acting or dialogue

I just hope it's an enjoyable movie. It doesn't have to be a great movie, just a good popcorn summer movie.

[Tornwar]

2 hours until I am gonna watch le movie! #HYPE

[Wikiy]

Nope. Still a moron apparently that doesn't get how many influences can be in a story without being the primary theme. There are most assuredly those in WC who would agree with trump. Including in the film. Pretending this isn't true is fan boys dismissing a valid interpretation given the current political climate(globally speaking). Get over the fact that this film isn't amazing. It is mediocre at best, but entertaining if you let yourself be entertained.

Have you been consuming mushrooms? Are you seriously saying the current political climate influenced the thought processes of a person who 20 years ago came up with this story?

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I don't think it's genuinely healthy doing that.

It most certainly is not. But I definitely think the longer you work on something, the less you're capably of refraining from checking out how it's being liked by, well, everyone.

[Zulkhan]

Nope. Still a moron apparently that doesn't get how many influences can be in a story without being the primary theme. There are most assuredly those in WC who would agree with trump. Including in the film. Pretending this isn't true is fan boys dismissing a valid interpretation given the current political climate(globally speaking). Get over the fact that this film isn't amazing. It is mediocre at best, but entertaining if you let yourself be entertained.

And even today someone pooped in your soup. What a shame.

[jdbond592]

Don't forget the priceless assumption "I read somewhere Duncan Jones chose the length of the movie!"

That evil director chose to cut his own movie to piss jdbond592! Now is all clear.

It is easier to believe that our master director had real shiny gem on his hand and evil movie studio chopped everything.

Must defend Duncan. He obviously couldn't have done this on purpose!

If you don't know how much Metzen is hated by WoW community for raping lore and more, don't bother.

The sad truth is that was probably necessary for a summer blockbuster to be like that. People keep praising The Fellowship of the Ring, forgetting that movie was released in a completely different period of the year.

Now this is true gem. Master movie fouled by season!

This doesn't change the fact that I would still appreciate that stuff within an exclusive edition, one that would still draw some attention once the summer period is over.

Thank god our prayers have been answered. Director's cut on Blue Ray will fix everything! For fans, no less! Can someone pass me some of that "green magic" Gul'dan was using?

[Deleted]

Does Lothar have a decent depth/development? It's one of the main thigns I want to know

I liked Lothar, he has good chemistry with Khadgar and some funny back and forth comments, he's still a very one-dimensional character though, you don't get to know a whole lot about him.

[jdbond592]

Nope. Still a moron apparently that doesn't get how many influences can be in a story without being the primary theme. There are most assuredly those in WC who would agree with trump. Including in the film. Pretending this isn't true is fan boys dismissing a valid interpretation given the current political climate(globally speaking). Get over the fact that this film isn't amazing. It is mediocre at best, but entertaining if you let yourself be entertained.

In games and books, Orcs were not fleeing their dying home world apparently killed by a single orc. They just needed something to kill. Pity..

[Wikiy]

No jackass, read my comments. I am saying the political climate of Southern Cali in the early 90's influenced it and a similar climate exists in Europe today, except the migrants are legal versus illegal.

Right. You're crazy. I'm sorry, but if you're gonna claim Chris Metzen came up with a story where one race is invading a planet as parallel to immigrants invading California, you really need to put forth some evidence if you don't want to make yourself look like a complete clown.

On a somewhat brighter and unrelated note... Seems like my country is somewhat blessed when it comes to Warcraft. We never got the 2nd trailer in the cinemas, and it seems they decided to give away the whole free game to anyone who watches it in any theatre (the one company pretty much has an effective monopoly on cinema here). And they're basically advertising that all over their site.

The movie could fare well in Croatia, makes me happy.

[jdbond592]

I liked Lothar, he has good chemistry with Khadgar and some funny back and forth comments, he's still a very one-dimensional character though, you don't get to know a whole lot about him.

This. In his zeal to not show Orcs two dimensional, he managed to turn every human character into one Durotan is highlight of this movie.

[quras]

SNIP....

How am I supposed to look at what I got in the end if I haven't even seen the movie? And how can you make claims like that when you haven't either?

So you didn't read this thread that it's all over the place at times. The movie jumps around and does it rather quickly with little character development. Not enough time put into that and that the movie should have been longer for that. Thats the talk from people that have seen it. It's in the very thread.

Even if you're basing that on fan reactions... Like, I haven't literally seen one fan's review where he went on a rave how lore changes made the movie worse. Literally, not one. If I'm missing out on these, please, do me a favour, and show them to me.

IF you take the position that they should have left more from the book in the movie so that orcs could be developed better (and thats what was said). Well, thats 6 of one and half a dozen of another and saying damn near the same thing.

You wanted more story put in to develope the characters and hate it was left out because characters didn't get developed like you had hoped. You wish for an extended DVD so you can get more story and written lore that should have been there but isn't.

It's nothing more than some think one scene is more important and I think another is. Yet, the same ending is reached when neither is accomplished. Things don't develop well for the movie or the characters. They are just average and dare I say, sometimes worse than that.

[lonely zergling]

Going to watch it now. See you on the other side.

[Zulkhan]

I liked Lothar, he has good chemistry with Khadgar and some funny back and forth comments, he's still a very one-dimensional character though, you don't get to know a whole lot about him.

Heh, I didn't expect more in regards of Lothar. The character is one-dimensional per se, Fimmel simply added some quirk trait to it.

Right. You're crazy. I'm sorry, but if you're gonna claim Chris Metzen came up with a story where one race is invading a planet as parallel to immigrants invading California, you really need to put forth some evidence if you don't want to make yourself look like a complete clown.

This thread drops some gems at times that I can't even.

[Deleted]

All right, so I saw the movie yesterday.
Bear in mind that I am completely biased because they gave me a free mousepad and I won a gaming mouse. (None of those plebs knew Ben Foster was playing Medivh. Such amateurs, lol.) /s

First of all, I'll give my score: 8/10, which could've been a 9/10 if not for some issues. A non-fan score would probably be a 7/10.

So I'll just start off echoing the sentiment that yes, the pacing is off. It jumps around a LOT in the beginning, never really staying in place for more than a few minutes, and character introductions are veeeery short, if not non-existent. Khadgar is found, spell chucker happens, and now we're gonna go see the king. The king is met, now off to Medivh. It's very rushed, even for the orcs' side, but I'll get back to that.
Then it settles down to a more comfortable pacing, and the audience gets a bit of room to breathe, but it's still fast-paced.

Now, about the acting...
It's fine. There were 1 or 2 moments that stood out, but nothing serious. The worst performance was Llane's, but it wasn't that bad. He was solidly okay for the majority of the movie.
Travis played well, even if he's very similar to Ragnar. He's good at conveying emotions and doing a lot of small gestures that adds to his performance.
Paula was surprisingly good, at least in the beginning. She did give the impression of being an orc. Later there were some problems with Lothar, but I'll get back to those, too. ^^
Ruth Negga did fine, but was under-used.
Ben Schnetzer did surprisingly well, also. I don't recall cringing at his performance ever. It wasn't amazing, but it was good enough.
Ben Foster played Medivh pretty well. He gave off the aura of a reclusive wizard who had been alone for maybe a tad too long.

For the orcs (Gonna keep it brief because it's harder to judge performance through the mo-cap):
Clancy Brown did a really good job as Blackhand.
Kazinsky was a good Orgrim.
Toby Kebbell did a really good job as Durotan.
Daniel Wu KILLED IT as Gul'dan.
Anna Galvin was a good Draka, and her motion capture is among the most impressive, so it was a joy to watch her.

Now, as for the CHARACTERS that they all played...
Honestly, they were all fine. I know that goes against what most of you have read, specifically when it comes to the humans, but here's what I think is the problem.
It's not the characters that are bad. It's that the movie is way too short. This goes back to the pacing issue I mentioned earlier. It feels like a lot of things were cut. Little things all over the place which would've stabilized the pacing and much-needed given additional character development. The movie feels like it needs to be sprinkled with another 3-5 minutes every little non-action scene. I think DJ had to make a lot of cuts for one reason or another, but the movie wasn't made to work without those cuts. DJ himself said that there were a bunch of scenes they couldn't put in that he'd like to put on the blu-rays as an extended addition, and honestly, I think that is exactly what it needs. It probably won't solve all the problems, but it should help. So many things just feel a bit rushed. Draenor, Lothar x Garona, Lothar and his son's relationship, character introductions, character development (mainly humans), locations.
Like I said, I don't imagine all of those things could be fixed with an extended edition, but I think it might be enough to bring the score up to an 8/10 for non-fans, and maybe a 8.5-9/10 for fans.

While keeping that in mind, I'll get more specific about the characters.
Lothar was very Ragnar. Whether that's good or bad is entirely up to you, but he was a decent character in my book.
Llane struck me as a king that tried hard, but wasn't overly complicated.
Garona is one of the better characters, barring the under-developed romance. I really enjoyed her at the beginning of the movie, when she did not trust the humans.
Lothar's son is sadly under-developed, so not much to say about his character. He wants to be like his daddy. That's about it.
Same for Lothar's sister, though she could get more development in the second movie.
Khadgar was a eager young wizard who wanted to read and was a bit naive, just like he should be.
Medivh was great, if a bit under-developed.

So the humans ranged from okay to fine.
The orcs, however, are pretty much all great. Durotan, Draka, Orgrim, Blackhand, and Gul'dan were all very entertaining. Gul'dan was especially amazing to watch. He totally stole the show.

Now, for the visuals and sound.
I expected the visual to be great, and they didn't disappoint, buuuuut do NOT watch the movie in 3D. Any sweeping shots will be blurry beyond belief, and it made it harder to appreciate the details.
However, what truly impressed me was actually the sound. Of course I watched it in a really good cinema, but I honestly think that didn't have that much of an impact. The sound design was what was amazing. The orcs just sounded so heavy. Everything had a great oompfh to it, and it really helped to give them weight. Honestly, the CGI and sound design was unparalleled, if you ask me. I didn't notice any bad green screens, but then again, the 3D would've made that harder, anyway. The humans' armor also all looked good on the big screen, except of course Llane's helmet, which just looks silly by design. I was especially impressed by the King's Sword, which very much looked like real metal. (Not to say the rest didn't, but it got a pretty big close-up shot.)
The soundtrack was fine, but I only really noticed one other track apart from the one we know.


Now the plot. It's good enough. Some things from the lore was left out, but some of those things can very well be added to the beginning of a sequel, so it's not a big deal.
I thought it did a good job with a lot of things, especially incorporating Durotan into it. You can also tell that Duncan loves the Warcraft universe, 'cause there are a lot of little easter eggs that I could appreciate. I also wanna address two concerns I've read: No, Medivh's betrayal wasn't super obvious. And no, the movie doesn't take itself too seriously. It can be pretty serious, but there is a lot of little bits of humor throughout the movie, in a similar style to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I laughed out loud at least 3 times, and had a lot of chuckles and smiles.
The very best part of the movie, for me, was the mak'gora. It just looked and sounded amazing, and had great atmosphere.

The movie isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a great movie for fans, and a good movie for non-fans. It's very flawed, but hopefully an extended edition will fix some of those.

[Deleted]

No jackass, read my comments. I am saying the political climate of Southern Cali in the early 90's influenced it and a similar climate exists in Europe today, except the migrants are legal versus illegal.

No political situation ever influenced the original game or the movie. In Warcraft 1 (1994) the Orcs invaded Azeroth because they were corrupted and bloodthirsty, not because their planet was dying and they wanted to peacefully find a new home. In the movie it goes like that because Duncan wanted to show both sides of the story without making Orcs the bad guys, so he gave them a good and morally acceptable reason to escape. It has absolutely nothing to do with Europe or California immigration problems.

[Horrid Crow]

Right. You're crazy. I'm sorry, but if you're gonna claim Chris Metzen came up with a story where one race is invading a planet as parallel to immigrants invading California, you really need to put forth some evidence if you don't want to make yourself look like a complete clown.

On a somewhat brighter and unrelated note... Seems like my country is somewhat blessed when it comes to Warcraft. We never got the 2nd trailer in the cinemas, and it seems they decided to give away the whole free game to anyone who watches it in any theatre (the one company pretty much has an effective monopoly on cinema here). And they're basically advertising that all over their site.

The movie could fare well in Croatia, makes me happy.

The biggest cinema franchise in the Netherlands is doing the same.
We got a really bad/cheesy tv commercial though...

[Wikiy]

So you didn't read this thread that it's all over the place at times. The movie jumps around and does it rather quickly with little character development. Not enough time put into that and that the movie should have been longer for that. Thats the talk from people that have seen it. It's in the very thread.

That has nothing to do with the lore.

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The biggest cinema franchise in the Netherlands is doing the same.
We got a really bad/cheesy tv commercial though...

The 30-second ones? Ah, yeah, well, to be fair, those things are always shitty, for many movies.

[Deleted]

Tossed all my thoughts together in a video. Please forgive the crap production quality.