[Movie] Warcraft (June 2016)

[Anduin94]

Are we really defending the "cheapest-looking and crummiest ever to have reached the screen" line?
Okay, then I write a review too and write "Durotan's character has the best character depth and development that have reached the screen" and the soundtrack by Djawadi is "the best soundtrack ever written in the history of soundtracks".

I could do that if I were a random guy on reddit, but as a supposed professional journalist/critic, I would rather say "Durotan's character is well written, and Djawadi's score fits very well in the movie"

[Anduin94]

Because we've had 6 SW movies, and many TV properties for one world and only a series of games for the other? They both have books but SW has far more of those and I'm pretty sure SW has more fans globally than Warcraft(it's possible that's incorrect, but the box office should tell us).

Sorry, I don't understand what has the number of fans have to do with the editing thing..?

[Zulkhan]

That's not true at all. If you have no frame of reference for the aesthetic itself the backgrounds don't necessarily translate as it's a somewhat cartoonish aesthetic brought to life.

Anduin94 posted a review (not going to link it since the guy is Italian and you couldn't understand a word) where the reviewer was able to do just that, despite having no frame of reference as well since he didn't play a single Warcraft game in his life. He simply had the ability to understand from where the movie came from, it doesn't require a titanic effort and you would expect a competent critic to do just that.

Problem is that these kind of critics depict as "failure" of the movie what is, fundamentally, a short-coming of theirs as critics.

[Soulwind]

Yeah, because which is more likely, A LOT of critics who have no stake in loving or hating the movie are pretty much universally calling it crap, because they want to conspire against Warcraft. Or that the early viewers tend to be huge Warcraft fans to start so they are invested in seeing their franchise do well and are vastly over inflating the quality of the movie.

Except that people who don't know the games have also commented that they liked it.

Nobody is saying non-fans will rate it above 7, but for the same reasons, someone who rates it below 3 has some kind of agenda. Either they're fans and they don't like the lore changes, they don't like Warcraft or videogames in general, or someone paid them.

Make no mistake, China is a huge market that several companies are investing a lot of money into, Warcraft having an established fanbase there which can easily compete with much more expensive movies is obviously worrying to a lot of people. Whether or not they're behind some of these reviews, we'll never know.

It's a mediocre-to-average fantasy movie with excellent CGI and flawed pacing, filled with Warcraft fan-service. Nothing more, nothing less.

Fans love it or hate it. Non-fans like it or not. Some critics like it, some critics don't. But the critics that we're talking about are fiercely trashing it as if this was another Super Mario Bros. which we all know it's not.

Not many movies get such reviews, and the ones that do and aren't that bad are usually adaptations of massively popular franchises, such as Harry Potter or Spiderman, meaning the writers were very emotionally invested in the first place. I don't think all of these critics are Nostralius players or anything like that, so where does that anger and hatred come from exactly?

[Anduin94]

Again, I think he was referring specifically to the background and not the characters if you read it in context. I agree it's pretty hyperbolic, but that doesn't negate that many people feel like the environments could have used another $20M worth of love.

Yes, but the backgrounds etc were very far from the "worst thing etc etc"
I lose faith in a review that talks like that with hyperboles, a thing that professional critics should avoid.

[Deleted]

I'm still grasping what kind of "professional critic" writes like crap "The orcs are supposedly a smart species, but they have yet to invent t-shirts..."

[Anduin94]

The number of fans impacts how many people read the books, typically. Which makes the quick cuts easier to deal with if you know the background lore. Sorry, I should have been more clear on that point.

Oh, now I got it! Thanks.
Anyway, I never read any SW books or whatever, and when I watched the first SW 6 films I actually didn't get all the things due to the fast pacing of some scenes, but I didn't care since I enjoyed the movies lol If there were a random character who appeared and I had no idea who he was, I didn't care since I got what he said and try to enjoy what I saw, and it was very good. I think people should do the same with Warcraft:

[Deleted]

The kind that gets paid to write his thoughts while you're bitching about him having a job on forums?

He gets paid for being retard and not even knowing about something as simple as primitive tribalism? Shouldn't we fight that kind of crap in order to have a better society?

Oh, I forgot, you are just the devil's advocate troll, back to the ignore with you.

[Chosenone1]

His job is self proclaimed critic,maybe not,maybe he works for some company but shiting on movie just to get click baits like thewrap guy its just horrible.

[Anduin94]

Did you read what I wrote? When you see those kinds of things in reviews you can discount those specific reviews. Not all of them are speaking in such hyperbole as they're not trying to get the clicks just for being harsh or overly praising of films. Part of that depends on what their boss wants from their reviews. What most of them are saying is it's pretty mediocre and you might want to see the magician movie that opens the same day. On the English language aggregation sites at least.

Yes, and I say again that my issue with that review is the hyperbole, and you agree with that.
I don't care if other think backgrounds are bad, since they are opinions. I was just criticizing the professionalism of the reviewer.

[Zulkhan]

Like I said, it doesn't necessarily translate as well. For a number of people it hasn't. For others it has. This is what we call the human condition. The only things we all agree on are that we need to breathe air and we all die at some point.

And this is, again, a short-coming of theirs. For a critic is nothing but that, because it's just proof that he's not able to competently review the material he has in hand. They're not deserving of any excuses, especially when they clearly seem to dedicate most of their nervous energies to come up with hyperboles and poor examples of cheap humor rather than analyze the product in hand.

It would probably feel less of a problem if critics wouldn't sound so damn cocky even when they're not clearly doing their job well as they want you to believe.

[Anduin94]

[Soulwind]

Right, it's hit and miss for non-fans as I've seen some say they thought it was crap. When you have a mediocre to average fantasy film critics who aren't fans of the genre tend to be harsh. And the fact that as a fan you're saying it's mediocre-to-average says you should expect some harsh reviews. Not all of them have been as harsh. Once the movie is a bit closer to actually opening I'm sure we'll see another 100 reviews get counted. At that point people can either freak out or accept it.

Let's see how consistent this harshness is, shall we?

Avatar, mediocre-to-average sci-fi movie with excellent CGI (for the time): 83 MC, 83% RT.

The Hobbit trilogy, bad-to-average fantasy movies with decent and not-so-decent CGI: 58, 66, 59 MC, 64%, 74%, 60% RT.

Pirates of the Caribbean, average-to-dumb-fun low-fantasy movies with some bad, some decent and some great CGI: 63, 53, 50, 45 MC, 79%, 54%, 45%, 32% RT.

Warcraft, not in any way worse than the above, cutting edge CGI for the orcs, decent CGI for the backgrounds: 31 MC, 25% RT.

And yet you say they are not being any harsher on Warcraft. Right.

[Frozen Death Knight]

WARCRAFT 43,178,965

http://www.upi-boxoffice.com/

That is looking pretty good considering it has not been out for that long and has not got a full world wide release yet.

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Gul'dan seems to cover a more "bold" role compared to the original lore, rather than manipulating from the shadows and leaving Blackhand to serve as "face" he's more of an actual leader here, with Blackhand serving as military commander of the Horde.

I don't think is a big deal because Blackhand remains the actual Warchief since he's the leader of the war bands. When Orgrim will take over he'll probably eliminate Gul'dan from his position of power and just elevate the Warchief position as supreme leader of the Horde.

The way I understood Gul'dan's position is that he works similary to how an Elder in a warrior society would work as. He is not officially the leader of everyone per say, but he does have a say when it comes to passing judgement if the actual leader screws up majorly, or when it comes to dealing with the spiritual and cultural aspect of their people. Granted, Gul'dan is still manipulating Blackhand to do his bidding as well as sells the Fel as the future for the Orcs, but he kind of has the Elder type of position where it makes sense that he is the one who makes the decisions when the Warchief proves to be inadequate.

[Anduin94]

...

[jdbond592]

The kind that gets paid to write his thoughts while you're bitching about him having a job on forums?

Hard to imagine if they get paid more than minimum wage....

I don't understand why you guys are even debating this. I didn't know what "The Wrap" was before this movie. In this day and age, hard to imagine majority of these "critics" make more than your middle class blue collar worker..

[Anduin94]

Also...

[Zulkhan]

All this proves is you don't understand that not everyone thinks like you do. Just because something works well for you doesn't mean anyone else will think it looks good or appreciate it.

Cut off this bullshit once and for all. I don't give a shit about what someone feels and I repeated this to you plenty of times Jesus goddamn Christ. As a critic you're supposed to analyze the material you review enough to understand from where the material comes from. That's all a critic should be able to do, a competent one at least. Once that is set in stone, you're perfectly free to offer an opinion. "I like, I don't like it, it could work for others but it really doesn't for me" whatever. But if you go on your way and bash a movie selling your personal tastes as objective assessments than you simply failed as a critic, because you blatantly failed to treat the material fairly and in relation to its goals.

You either miss the point or run in circles for the hell of it, selling excuses to a category that isn't deserving of them. In your attempts to play the devil's advocate of my ass you're really trying to depict critics as a caste who can do no wrong and have always a perfectly justifiable reason to do what they do. Flash news, they don't. The very nature of their job is flawed to begin with and since people are different, there are those who either suffers more or less its consequences on the long term.

[Frozen Death Knight]

I like how that sentence is shown together with a header of the most stunning CGI still we got (at least if you look at the HQ version)

I just read through it all... and he is so not on point. Calling the mood gloomy... the color palette for muddy... what kind of camrip did these people watch? I am being serious here! The mood is anything but gloomy! Yeah there are times stuff get bad, but since when has that been a crime? Also a muddy color palette?! This is the most colorful fantasy film I have ever seen!

Dude most of the times it doesn't even sound like these people have seen the movie at all. Or at least they did, but went in with a gloomy mood (heh) and didn't want to give it a chance at all :P

Calling anything WarCraft related having muddy colours is like saying that a dalmatian is lacking spots on its fur or claiming that a zebra has no stripes on its body. The reviewer is pretty much admitting to being colour blind, which is just depressing when I think about it.

[jdbond592]

Because they disagree with you and write in a click baity style? They're writing for clicks... Not sure what you expect.

I really doubt they get enough clicks. I just don't see the reason to drag some random guy's opinion on forum. I don't watch many movies but I don't recall ever not watching a movie because someone "reviewed" it poorly. It likely has to do with my interest. I only watch movies I am interested in. Even the most rotten movies look better on big screen. If you decide to watch a movie after reading a review, you probably should skip it in first place..

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What shit? My understanding that there's a vast range of humans in the world? Your fundamental misunderstanding seems to be that you think this film, if viewed completely objectively(not the job of a critic as their job is to give their personal opinions), is a high quality film. It's a mediocre movie if you're being completely objective about the film. That doesn't negate it being enjoyable, but it's still not a good or great movie. That's my honest opinion and if you can't accept it then I guess that's the end of the conversation because nothing you're saying is based in reality. I live in the real world, do you?

Are mediocre movies unwatchable?