[SPOILERS] Warcraft Movie - Review

[Deleted]

Just saw the Warcraft movie, as "hardcore" WoW fan that has played since the beta and fan of the lore, here is my review:

Pros:

• Characters and effects look cool
• Cities and environments look as they should
• Karazhan area had cool transformation to (dead) deadwind pass
• Blackhand(Blackbeard)
• Way how Gul'dan feeds on the souls
• Travis Fimmel (Anduin Lothar)
• Orc gear and clothin look cool
• How fel blood leaves the host looking like mummy after it's drained out
• Movie was funny at some parts
• Small things like the murloc

Cons:

• Alliance gear looks like shiny plastic toys
• Magic is pewpewpew magic missiles
• Story is confusing jumping from place to place
• Many of the locations are not named and sometimes hard to recognize
• I had trouble figuring out that it was Ogrim with Durotan
• Garona was cool character, however bodypaint and teeth dont make her look "real" like the rest of characters
• Gul'dan melee hulk was akward to watch...
• Story and places were very confusing for my friends who have not played the game, they were asking me "where is this place located in the world" all the time during the movie
• Sargeras looked like Satyr

Total:

Visuals - 8
Story - 4

6/10

[EternalBany]

a 6/7 does seem about right

been battling going to see this movie with a good friend whom never played wow..
i think i will pass, dont wanna shatter my teen memories, i will however wait for the directors cut.

Pitty.

[The3rdCatalyst]

My review on imdb...

tl;dr- Good mix of action and story, sometimes got lost on what is happening.

The character growth felt like it was meant to be the strongest part of the movie because it touches on so many characters and in detail. In the end only two characters are actually strong, Lothar and Durotan. All the other characters acted predictably, almost comically, and in the end were the only two characters that left the threater with me. This made the movie pretty boring, and was exciting when there was fighting or a scene with Durotan or Lothar story plot. These two characters made the movie worth seeing. The two were not unworldly strong but showed growth, pain, and strength from experience. Just because they are the main characters does not mean they should be the only characters with depth.

The CGI was very good, especially the Orcs. The designs of the Orc clothing, weapons and general culture (skulls as helmets or mantels, war paint, etc) is exactly how most people would imagine an orc. Humans were a little different. Duncan tried to capture the Humans as they are in the game, but this made them feel unrealistic and unrelatable, not helping that it was live action. It worked with the Orcs because it is what is expected while capturing individualism and proportional to their body. The Humans looked like a comic book character that wasn't trying to be a comic book character by mixing realism with cartoon features, coming off as distasteful to the eyes.

The fight scenes weren't bad, but aren't memorable either. Typical hack-and-slash fights, some awkward stumbling and stabbing if paying attention, but the general fights are what the viewer comes to see. Large battles, people being thrown around, and overcoming the odds of the fight through skill vs numbers.

I would see this movie again, but isn't a great movie. When Blizzard spoke about the development of this movie as "A mix of 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Avatar'", it can be imaged in some areas how it was attempted to do both, ended up accomplished nothing great, but failed at nothing either.

7/10 for above average and well above my expectations for this movie, let alone a video game movie.

[wowaccounttom]

[*]Story and places were very confusing for my friends who have not played the game, they were asking me "where is this place located in the world" all the time during the movie

mmmmhmmm

why would they ask where certain things are in world if they dont know anything about its geography?

and how would you answer???? "stormwind is 12441 gnome-steps away from kara and therefore they must take portals"?

[Deleted]

mmmmhmmm

why would they ask where certain things are in world if they dont know anything about its geography?

and how would you answer???? "stormwind is 12441 gnome-steps away from kara and therefore they must take portals"?

I was trying to watch the movie and not focus explaining where everything is. They were confused about the distances and where the dark portal was located, or why the orcs didnt siege the capital city (because they were gathering prisoners to fuel the dark portal)

Anyway, presentation was way too confusing for them (They loved Duncans other movies like Moon)

[Kretan]

Minor detail, but Garona wasn't body paint if I am correct. Wasn't that just CGI green?

Overall though I agree. Story was crystal clear to wow players, but non wow players = good luck.

[Deleted]

Yes i heard later that it was post production effect. But that is pretty much impression that everyone did get from her.

Ammount of detail on the orcs was amazing, why not do the same for Garona? It just felt sloppy

[klaps_05]

orcs just didnt work for me, the way they moved, CGI was good, just doesnt work on screen. LOTR orcs and urukhai were miles ahead, most of the CGI was just very cringy, let alone the moments with durotan and draka. garona not being able to speak, Fimmels acting in the map room after his son died was awful, especially the argument with Medivh, the armors of the orcs were the only good ones because i guess it was full on CGI. the most cringy moments were all the fan-service moments - yes they were nice, but also completely not understandable to an average viewer.

there were no MOMENTS when i went like "wow that was crazy or incredible". Aragorn jumping around in LOTR was more exciting than warcraft movie. the only moment that i really loved was after anduins son died and he challenged not-enough-money-for-cgi-so-heres-plastics Blackhand, the shot of his sword not moving or flinching, showing his resolve.

i love warcraft, the lore, wow, but the movie just doesnt work. they should have went straight for the lich king movie. much more understandable, zombies/undead costumes/cgi is very far ahead these days with stuff like TWD and the story is much simpler.

[interceptor]

I gonna watch it without having any of the reviews effect my opinion like most people

[Tocks]

I just want to know if there is a name for the demon we saw controlling Medivh.

I give it an 8. It could have been better, I hated the way they made Garona look, she looked terrible. Her story line with pretty bad also. Other than that, Fimmel's acting isn't great but I saw this coming when I hear he was playing Lothar. He wasn't great in Vikings either, I didn't expect much. I was very surprised with the rest though, I don't think the easter eggs were ever a problem if you weren't a player. The Story was VERY easy to follow, IDK what you guys had a hard time with. It was another typical Pocahontas rendition like Avatar but with a Warcraft twist and I thought it was very well done overall.

[Taeldorian]

I just want to know if there is a name for the demon we saw controlling Medivh.

If the movie followed the story (it had to) up to this point that demon was Sargeras. In the lore Medivh became the avatar of Sargeras so I'm assuming that's what it was in the movie.

[Garthul]

orcs just didnt work for me, the way they moved, CGI was good, just doesnt work on screen. LOTR orcs and urukhai were miles ahead, most of the CGI was just very cringy, let alone the moments with durotan and draka. garona not being able to speak

People need to stop comparing LotR and Warcraft orcs. The only thing they have in common is that they are called orcs, that's it. The production team has expressly stated multiple times that they didn't believe the orcs could be rendered faithfully with respect to the source material through practical effects. Moreover, it's almost impossible to get an expressive performance through prosthetics. This was fine in LotR since all the orcs had to do was scowl and look menacing but wouldn't be suitable for orcs that had to be real characters. Hell, Durotan was the deepest and most relatable character in the film and he was entirely performance captured. The performance was great and any attempts to present that with prosthetics on a live actor would have simply not worked.