warcraft movie and lord of the rings

[AcidicSyn]

Honestly the only issue I truly have an actual problem with, is pretty much covered by most here already- it was rushed.

I could go on a year long rant about Medivh and Garona (BTW during the first war, Gul'dan was the only one who knew her mothers heritage- everyone else, including Garona, thought she was half human and accepted it as fact- so first war movie saying shes half human is actually fine- but then the medivh stuff and.....*ahem*)

I can scream and rant about Llane not being assassinated in stormwind, or about Stormwind never actually getting sacked, or of the formation of the Alliance of...well I guess not Lorderon now....

I can rant about Doomhammer being frostwolf. About Blackhand being an idiot. There are so...so many more nitpicky things that I can complain about as someone who has followed the lore since inception.

But in the context of a movie? The majority of those really aren't mandatory; and could be changed for a movie audience. (Bright side of Garona being Medivhs daughter is no Med'an, so hey there's that eh?)

But what killed it for me, and imo for new audiences as well, was the lack of character development. They tried to shove way too much story into one movie. Personally I feel like Gul'dan should have been kept in the shadows, as he was in the first war, and let Blackhand and the blackrocks play the antogonist, have Gul'dan there for sure, acknowledge what he did and his manipulation of Blackhand, but there was no need to even have baby Thrall or Durotan there at all for this movie, focus on Doomhammer, Blackhand, and Garona with minor Gul'dan for the horde, and on Lothar, Medivh, Llane, and maybe Khadgar for the Alliance.

Before I go into another rant- my point is that they tried to shove characters that had roles in the first war, but whose roles were either completely unknown or well hidden during the actual events of said war, and brought to light later. This also needed to be a 3 hour movie.


tl;dr - Sure I liked it and hope they make another, with less rushed character development. But if I am being totally honest; I think it would have been better done as an HBO series, or on another network a la Black Sails or Vikings. (fun fact- actor playing Lothar is actually in Vikings)

[Wildtree]

i just finished watching LOTR trilogy again after over a decade. its just great. i loved it as a kid, and just as much i loved it now.
same thing with warcraft movie. as a long fan of that universe i enjoyed it very much.
so what went wrong ? reviews werent too positive, even warcraft players were cold about it.

what made LOTR truly a legendary movie while warcraft is somewhere above mediocre ?

it's rather obvious

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: 208 minutes (3 hours and 28 minutes)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: 223 minutes (3 hours and 43 minutes)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: 251 minutes (4 hours and 11 minutes)

Warcraft: 2 hours 3 minutes

Any more questions?

Well, in addition.. The LOTR material is actually real literature that serves as blueprint for the movie script
The Warcraft material is amateur writing blueprint.

[Teaon]

the moment i knew that warcraft movie is 2 hours long, is the day i declared the movie DEAD.

simple fact, trying to fill both side story in 2 hours, fast pace bullshit storytelling with many cringeworthy scenes.

yeah, find a better team please

[McFuu]

LotR's biggest weakness is awkward story rewrites and poorly developed characters.
Every other aspect of the trilogy is top quality.

Warcraft on the other hand, where could you even start with positives? Warcraft is the chick flick of fantasy movies.

[Dellis0991]

LOTR took its time to tell the story, Warcraft didn't.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

Also, minor point, but the LotR marketing team knew what the fuck it was doing.

[Soulwind]

2 hours. Not even 3.

It wasn't 2 hours initially. It wasn't 3 either, it was something like 2:40. They cut THAT much.

[Swalload]

LotR also knew they were gonna make 3 movies so they could think about the entire big picture, where to put things at the right place, the right time, etc. While Warcraft tried to bunch things together in one movie, hoping to impress enough people to maybe get the go for a second movie, that sort of creative limitation hurts a project big time.

[RampageBW1]

Warcraft is a movie that would have benefited from being a set of movies instead of just one. They tried to combine too much plot in to 1 movie, and didn't allow for much character development

[Deleted]

Lotro was "first of it's kind". The cinematography was gorgeous and a bit head of its time. It was also a legendary epic fantasy story.

Warcraft was none of these.

Some of the Lotro movies was on TV some time ago and it was running on my laptop on the table. I think it really hasn't withstood the test of time well. It was good then, not anymore.

The only thing about LOTR that hasn't stood the test of time is some of the CGI. Like elephants and such. The orcs are all people with makeup and it still after 17 or so years looks better than what ANY fantasy movie has pushed out I think. LoTR is the definitation of a classic that will stand the test of time. But yeah some of the cgi has aged quite bad ^^

[Jotaux]

The only thing about LOTR that hasn't stood the test of time is some of the CGI. Like elephants and such. The orcs are all people with makeup and it still after 17 or so years looks better than what ANY fantasy movie has pushed out I think. LoTR is the definitation of a classic that will stand the test of time. But yeah some of the cgi has aged quite bad ^^

Its amazing to me how quickly CGI ages. Like 10 years from now will we be saying the sames about great CGI today? I thought the orcs looked amazing in warcraft but I wonder how it will age.

[Traveler Voltin]

If warcraft was allowed to stay its 2 hours and 40 minutes it would have been better.
But no universal decided to be an asshole and make legendary cut 40 minuts

[zEmini]

The WarCraft movie wasn't awful but the problem for me was that it has too much CGI and it tried to tell to many stories in a 100 minute movie. Too much happened in a short time so the plot felt very rushed.

But as far as Video game movies are concerned, Warcraft is probably one of the best made.

[Wolfman31]

Why do you think that the WotLK retcon is better than the movie one?

There's only two possibilities. Either Garona is half-human and the time between the first invasion and Llane's death was about 15 years, making Garona a teenager when she killed him (and making Lothar pretty creepy in the movie for trying to hook up with an underage girl) or the First War only lasted a year and Garona is half-Draenei. The latter of which is now the official story, retconned or not. It seems the movie went for its own weird mashup of these two versions, with Garona being half-human but the First War is super quick, leaving no answer as to her background, which is why the movie's companion novel says she's Medivh's daughter, which is a huge retcon unto itself. The movie should've just stuck with her half-draenei background and kept it simple. They shouldn't have needed a companion novel to fill in all the plot gaps, like they do with the game's expansions. It's just further proof that their ability to tell stories sucks compared to actual writers like Tolkien, which is one of the many reasons why the LOTR movies kick the crap out of the Warcraft movie.