I KNEW the movie would flop

[Hellfury]

Some ppl clinging on the sucess of the movie like The Warcraft franchise depends on it...

Take the warcraft glases and understand that the movie wasn't a sucess for the general population there I said it, hopefully the next one will be much better... move on please.

[Mcsuiy]

Great film, I think it will do better on DvD personally as a lot of people gave it bad publicity before it even went out. The general Warcraft fans at this moment in time want to see the franchise burn in hell for some strange reason. Was a good action film, great effects, debatable casting (I thought there was a couple of characters that may have had a better actor / actress), Story was good but very fast paced with scenes changing a lot. However it was the first film out of many and hoping to see progress in future films.

[Tijuana]

Right now, sitting at a disastrous score in RT. It begs the question to what Blizzard was thinking with this shit again.

What was the point?

270 million points so far...

[therealbowser]

The movie was critically bad. The people saying "this was an excellent movie" are almost exclusively either biased, delusional, or have no clue how to critically analyze a movie. You may have enjoyed the movie -- and that's great, it doesn't have to be a good movie for you to enjoy it -- but it was still critically a bad movie. Its aesthetic design was ugly (like, B movie quality at best), there was almost no character (or plot) development whatsoever. the characters were poorly cast (Travis Fimmel is a terrible knight but an excellent viking), et cetera and so forth.

I'm not upset. I'm glad it was released, I almost enjoyed it, and I didn't hate it. But I'm under no delusions that it was a good movie. It wasn't. It was pretty awful. Given its box office success, it seems likely that a sequel will occur. I hope if this happens, that they will focus more on developing a story instead of replacing story elements with boring tropes. We'll see.

My two copper.

[Mcsuiy]

The movie was critically bad. The people saying "this was an excellent movie" are almost exclusively either biased, delusional, or have no clue how to critically analyze a movie. You may have enjoyed the movie -- and that's great, it doesn't have to be a good movie for you to enjoy it -- but it was still critically a bad movie. Its aesthetic design was ugly (like, B movie quality at best), there was almost no character (or plot) development whatsoever. the characters were poorly cast (Travis Fimmel is a terrible knight but an excellent viking), et cetera and so forth.

I'm not upset. I'm glad it was released, I almost enjoyed it, and I didn't hate it. But I'm under no delusions that it was a good movie. It wasn't. It was pretty awful. Given its box office success, it seems likely that a sequel will occur. I hope if this happens, that they will focus more on developing a story instead of replacing story elements with boring tropes. We'll see.

My two copper.

I thought it was a great movie with flaws (as all films have) - me thinking that does not make me biased, delusional or have no clue.. it means I have my own personal opinion, as do you sir. I also thought Star Wars was the film of last year, amazing, others slated it lol, Again, everyone has an opinion.

Bring on the DvD and the sequel that's all I will say

[Todrazok]

Great film, I think it will do better on DvD personally as a lot of people gave it bad publicity before it even went out. The general Warcraft fans at this moment in time want to see the franchise burn in hell for some strange reason. Was a good action film, great effects, debatable casting (I thought there was a couple of characters that may have had a better actor / actress), Story was good but very fast paced with scenes changing a lot. However it was the first film out of many and hoping to see progress in future films.

Let's not forget about merchandising aswell, they're sure to rack up some additional cash from that.

[Selah]

A common complaint from non-fan critics that I find highly hypocritical, is that there are "Too many names" to keep track of.

What? Lets count them up: Khadgar, Medivh, Llane, Lothar, Gul'dan, Orgrim, Durotan, Blackhand, Garona, Draka. That's 10 total major named characters.

Is that a lot now? Because Star Wars The Force Awakens had way more: Poe, Finn, Rey, BB-8, Kylo Ren, Snoke, Dux, Phasma, Kaz Manada, Han, Leia, Chewie. That's 12 named major characters, and that's not even counting the three dozen minor ones that show up for a scene or two.

Another critically acclaimed movie, The Matrix had just as many: Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Smith, Dozer, Tank, Switch, Apoc, Mouse, Oracle. That's 10.

Another highly acclaimed movie, Lord of the Rings, for the sake of discussion lets just talk about the first one, Fellowship of the Ring. There's Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Gimli, Legolas, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron, Saruman, and Gollum. That's FOURTEEN named major characters to keep track of. And not one person bitching about there being too many names.

What's the common denominator here? In neither of these movies did I ever hear anyone saying "man, that's a lot of names to remember, I keep forgetting who's who".

But then 8 out of 10 reviews from the Warcraft movie whine about there being too many names.

Hypocrite much?

Yeah, I heard this too and couldn't stop laughing. When my brother dragged me to the new Marvel civil war movie, I was totally overwhelmed by the amount of characters there were. I knew maybe three or four of them. I didn't care though, I might not of known what was happening but I still think some cat dude doing combat with the Capt. was cool as shit.

[baskev]

Edit: @baskev - Just stop bro. You're getting decimated here by Dracodraco.

Nope. He says things towards me i do not agree with. And he twists my words. So nope.

[Sargiean]

Holy shit you thought Paula Patton did a great job? She's the reason I cringe watching the trailers and commercials. Everything I've read has said she gave the worst performance out of everyone here bar none. She was wooden and it just felt like she didn't want to even be there according to others. As I said earlier I haven't seen it yet, but the one major negative to me already is her.

Haha what can I say? As someone that has seen the movie, that's my first experience with her and I stayed away from reviews. Just my subjective opinion.

[Deleted]

The movie was bad.
All characters underdeveloped. Somebody dies - noone cares.
Acting below average. The queen makes a speech in front of her husband's dead body as if reciting from a book. Lothar's son murdered in front of his eyes and he stays as if watching any human being murdered.
Most scenes too rushed and somehow out of focus. Things of magnitude happen but you feel like watching just another episode of Bold and the Beautiful. Simply out of focus, events happen without proper build-up, wasted opportunities.

Could've been 3 hours and the extra one could've been spent on proper character development and better unveiling the world of Azeroth. A little bit of background here and there, so you know what it means to be the Guardian of Tirisfal, what happened to the world of the orcs, a little bit of delving deeper into the origins of the Fel magic. Not like straight forward explanation, but rather hints so the audience is given something, but also interested into eventual sequel.
What we got: Fel - bad, Gul'Dan - bad, Mediv - some wizard, humans - good, Draka - good. Virtually any character in the movie can be defined as good or bad, like some Disney type of movie.
Orcs with cheat for infinite damage, one-hitting everything except for Anduin, who has a cheat for unhittable + cheat for infinite damage.

Can continue but its pointless. Sadly, yet another ruined game adaptation.

[Nightstalker]

This thread sounds a bit like a smartass convention. Only arguments on the extremes of the spectrum.

[Faroth]

I would guess this "500MM to break even" number is accounting for the HUGE promotion budget + the production budget.

That would be fairly insane. 340 million on promotion alone? No. No studio spends more than twice the production budget on marketing. It's frequently said the production budget can double after marketing if factored, but spending twice as much on production seems ridiculous. 340 million sounds more like the max you'd expect for production + marketing combined.


The worst thing about the huge success in China and the slump in the US is how much that would impact any future films in regards to the Scourge and the Forsaken.

[Zaqwert]

I seriously can't believe they managed to spend 160 million on it. That's what established blockbluster franchises managed to ring in around these days.

Had they made this movie for like 70-80 million (which is still a VERY healthy budget) they would have actually turned a healthy profit and their US numbers wouldn't have been seen as an embarrassment.

If there's a sequel it will be made on a dramatically smaller budget, that's for sure.

- - - Updated - - -

That would be fairly insane. 340 million on promotion alone? No. No studio spends more than twice the production budget on marketing. It's frequently said the production budget can double after marketing if factored, but spending twice as much on production seems ridiculous. 340 million sounds more like the max you'd expect for production + marketing combined.


The worst thing about the huge success in China and the slump in the US is how much that would impact any future films in regards to the Scourge and the Forsaken.

The main reason a movie needs to make 2x - 2.5x it's production value to make money is not only because of marketing costs, but also because the studio does not get 100% of every single box office dollar. There are various middle men who take a cut along the way.

[Deleted]

The movie was critically bad. The people saying "this was an excellent movie" are almost exclusively either biased, delusional, or have no clue how to critically analyze a movie.
My two copper.

oooh. look at barry norman, here!!

[TheTaurenOrc]

That would be fairly insane. 340 million on promotion alone? No. No studio spends more than twice the production budget on marketing. It's frequently said the production budget can double after marketing if factored, but spending twice as much on production seems ridiculous. 340 million sounds more like the max you'd expect for production + marketing combined.

Dude; theaters are not non-profit organizations!

[clevin]

It had a limited window of success. There was an article posted early about how the main target audience for warcraft would be burned through the first weekend and percent drop off would be high. The targeted age group will have seen it and

That's not unique to this movie. Most blockbuster/popcorn films are like that now. Established franchises like the Marvel films even see significant drop off (Ultron dropped 60% in week 2). The movie could easily do $400m when all is said and done about 4-6 weeks from now.

[Mustardisbad]

I saw the movie yesterday and I looooved it. The only real problem I had was that it was a little hard to hear what they were saying sometimes. All the visuals effects and fight scenes were awesome. I hope, if they make another one, that it is similar to the book about thrall - Lord of The Clans.

[quras]

That's not unique to this movie. Most blockbuster/popcorn films are like that now. Established franchises like the Marvel films even see significant drop off (Ultron dropped 60% in week 2). The movie could easily do $400m when all is said and done about 4-6 weeks from now.

Movies with those really high first weekends do tend to drop off the most. Thats pretty normal.

The difference may be when it comes into those other weekends. The question is, does warcraft have the stamina to last into that 400M range? It's got major competition in the coming weeks. Did it burn itself out too soon in only the opening weekend?

[Mad_Murdock]

It seems this forum is still filled with doom and gloom and warcraft haters. It's funny really. People hate Warcraft so much that they spend their lives here preaching against it. But it's useless, the movie is making lots of cash and has really favourable user reviews. That's what matters in the end: They are getting cash and the fans are happy. Just the critics and a vocal minority are complaining about the movie. And this vocal minority is always against everything warcraft.

I don't think it's purely gloom and doom though. The US critics are still right, the movie isn't that good and it's doing poorly in the US. I also think folks are being a little disingenuous. When has anyone ever cared about what a movie, game or anything else does in China? Now we're all singing the movies praises because China is carrying it from being a money pit. Even the Studios felt it wasn't going to do well in the US and to some degree in Europe thus it was released elsewhere first so that a bad US opening wouldn't hurt it.

It's fine if folks want to say the US doesn't matter anymore. So the next film comes out that does 200 million in the US, but does poorly in China, we'll call that movie a flop because we only care what China likes now.

At a minimum we should be able to agree that the US and China have different taste (at least right now) I really wanted Warcraft to do equally well in the US as China, but I can see why it didn't do well in the US. I'm not really sure how it's doing in Europe.

[Faroth]

Dude; theaters are not non-profit organizations!

That's true. It's also known that box office is painfully miniscule for theaters to profit from. They get a sliver of the box office and make the vast majority of their profits at the concession stand.

Though you do bring up a wrinkle in that overseas is different, with the studio making less off the box office than they do domestic. I actually hadn't been thinking of that.