Why the Warcraft movie failed

[Teddybearavenger]

Because the movie sucked? They didn't use wow's story and went far and beyond of how things went just to make it a movie. They also made it live action. They also added terrible actors. I was ashamed this movie was made by the end of it. Nothing was right apart from how orcs looked and they even where exaggeratedly too big. I hope at some poin they decide to make a netflix animated version of WoW's overall story. That makes sense.

[wholol]

I know the Warcraft movie was a huge succes in Asia, but here is what Duncan Jones had to say about previous big fantasy novels and movies:

When we were writing the film, it was also really important to me that we maintain the balance that they got so right in that game. Multiple key characters in our film are women and are not love interests. They stand up and work in the film in their own right.

How do you balance that with appealing to these hardcore fans?

It’s not a problem, because Warcraft by its very nature has always represented different races and genders.

So you feel you don’t have the same problems you would face in adapting something like Tolkien?

Exactly. It wasn’t written by an old, white man in the trenches in World War I. It’s going to have a different vibe.

He literally shits on the most important fantasy writer who had ever lived, where countless amount of fantasy genres got their inspiration from. "Don't worry guys, Warcraft won't be the fantasy of a dull old white man that fought in World War 1, it won't be sexist and racist"

I can already see why his movie failed so hard in the west with that mindset.

When you decide to shrink the content of books into movies but end up limiting the plot and focusing on the "action" , is when you know your movie is going to be okay at best (subpar in other cases), this quick paced/ rushed movie style is meant for 1 time off action blockbusters that have shallow plot but lots of fight scenes , usually made for a quick buck and not meant to be an epic / historical landmark in the sense that epic movies like the lord of the rings should for example.

Feels like blizzard started with the idea of making it an epic like LotR but after surpassing their budget twice they ended up rushing it in order to satisfy shareholders and cover costs, this practically killed it. Sadly.

[Wondercrab]

He literally shits on the most important fantasy writer who had ever lived, where countless amount of fantasy genres got their inspiration from. "Don't worry guys, Warcraft won't be the fantasy of a dull old white man that fought in World War 1, it won't be sexist and racist"

I can already see why his movie failed so hard in the west with that mindset.

He didn't say that at all, and for all the problems the Warcraft movie had, "diversity issues" wasn't one of them. I mean he straight up says that the source material doesn't need any kind of adaptation in this regard, so you can't even make the argument that the script suffered from attempts to alter it in the name of diversity.

I know it's a panic button for some people whenever a content creator says words like "representation" and "gender", but it's important to actually listen to the context in which they're being used rather than just assuming they're boogeymen that ruin any piece of media they come into contact with. If anything this excerpt sounds to me like Jones was acknowledging the fact that, yeah, it can cause problems if you try to rewrite old stories (like Lord of the Rings) to try and modernise the cast of characters, and thankfully they didn't have to grapple with that problem in Warcraft because it already had pretty Hollywood-friendly representation quotas.

[Misaligned]

It was a fan service movie and not a great one at that. If you weren't a fan of Warcraft lore it was a generic fantasy movie and confusing.

I enjoyed it because I'm a fan of the franchise but I can admit that objectively it was not a very good film.

I wish their cinematic team would do a feature-length film. I think the recent cinematics have been very good.

[Rotted]

I enjoyed it, was worth paying the cinema ticket for it.

It was also an incredibly difficult task to cater to the hard core lore fans, game fans and people with no prior knowledge of wow. Make it basic for new people, it insults the fans. Jump right into it for the hard core fans, alienates the new audience. So overall I think they did a fine job.

Legit the only thing that left me bamboozled; the group of friends I went with to watch it (none of them are familiar with wow) legit struggled to understand why fel / green is evil. I still scratch my head to this day to understand how they couldn't understand

[Onikaroshi]

Good to watch is subjective of course, but financially successful is not. And taking into the account of advertising costs PLUS budget most video game movies lose money and the very few that don't barely break even. Yet hollywood is still dumb enough to make them for some reason.

And even if it is dumb, I'm glad they are making them still. Most of them are fun, all the way from Mario Bros. to Resident Evil. Even get some dumb fun out of some of the more ridiculous Uwe Boll movies like Postal. It's not always about having a great plot or even good effects, sometimes it's about just good old fashioned fun.

Hell, I dug into it and almost every Resident Evil movie was made at a profit, and they are by no means great movies, just fun ones.

[munkeyinorbit]

His comment on Tolkien is really dumb.

I guess facts are dum.

[Taeldorian]

Then you expect too much.

Also comparing fictional lore characters from a single video game to an actual living sports legend.

What drugs are you on? I want some.

Ill be honest he’s not wrong. I have plenty of friends that aren’t even into video games and they’ve heard of the Lich King. Whether it’s from parents due to W3 or other friends that know of WoW/played in Wrath, making a movie about the most well known villain in this entire franchise would draw more people.

I don’t think that’s why the movie failed though. Lich king would’ve been great but it could’ve easily failed for the same reasons this movie did. Those reasons imo are: It was obviously rushed, the CGI mixed with actual actors didn’t work out well, the makeup/design wasn’t great for the actors either IE Garona, etc. It also didn’t follow much of the plot from Warcraft which was unfortunate, however that was made even worse by adding in random shit that threw the lore completely out the window once everything was brought together.

My main gripe was the actors mixed with the CGI. It was really bad and really took away some seriousness that the movie should’ve had. This and the fact it was a pretty short movie so most of it was spent explaining characters and such while others were left hanging and people had no clue who they were.

That’s another reason I think a movie based on W3 would be easier to do. It’s a story that doesn’t require too much background and the main villains are obviously evil whereas in Warcraft there’s good and evil on both sides. You wouldn’t have to go and re-write the lore of W3 for it to be understood by fans and new viewers. There’s still a lot of lore for W3 though so I’d much rather see it play out either in 3 movies or as a Netflix show.

[Eliessa]

The irony here is that Jackson kind of agrees with Jones on this topic. Arwen was given a bigger role in LOTR because he believed there were too many men. YET, it was fine because he actually knew what he was doing.

Jones is just mediocre. That's why the movie flopped.

oh please. hackson ruined lotr. dont even get me started.

[Goldielocks]

oh please. hackson ruined lotr. dont even get me started.

Most people wouldn’t agree with you there. Not everyone is a book purist.

[meroko]

I mean it made back more than 3x its budget, so I'm not sure how it was considered a failure? Yes it failed in the US but overall it was a success. So yeah.

[Onikaroshi]

I mean it made back more than 3x its budget, so I'm not sure how it was considered a failure? Yes it failed in the US but overall it was a success. So yeah.

Because marketing, and they did a LOT of it. It's estimated, in total, that they spent 450-460 mil making, advertising and distributing the movie.

[draynay]

Jones was stretched too thin to fight the studio meddling since his dad was dying during post-production. The movie was delayed six months, took two years to make, and premiered ten years after it was announced. There's lots of reasons.

[Onikaroshi]

Jones was stretched too thin to fight the studio meddling since his dad was dying during post-production. The movie was delayed six months, took two years to make, and premiered ten years after it was announced. There's lots of reasons.

Honestly forgot about the dad thing, that's hard for anyone, much more so someone in such a stress inducing position.

[Laz]

"It wasn’t written by an old, white man in the trenches in World War I. It’s going to have a different vibe."

Tolkien is the father of high fantasy, fuck Duncan Jones for that man.

- - - Updated - - -



https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/warcraft/

oooof

I was going to say that I am sorry that Rotten Tomatoes didn't like it, but I am not. I don't really give a rat's arse what other people think about movies that I LOVE. As far as I am concerned the OP is trying to stir things up, which apparently he succeeded.
Everyone has an opinion and everyone has an arse, both stink.

What is TRULY laughable and stupid is that I got an infraction for "flaming other users". I said the OP was a failure, which is MY OPINION, which as far as I know in the USA we have a RIGHT to express them. Yet a BOT gives ME an infraction for doing so. Apparently the Bot needs to be reprogrammed to learn what flaming someone truly is…I can teach it if MMO wants though the poor thing might have a breakdown once I am thru with it, lol.

What people NEED to learn is follow your OWN thoughts, not those of others. Experience something for YOURSELF instead of reading about it on some web page that says it's bad or terrible. I have played WoW since April of 2005, continuously, and LOVE the game. There are lots of people who say WoW is dead or that it is terrible. Well, those opinions I do not care about, same with the movie. Yes, they should have broken it into a 2-3 part "series" to be able to flesh out the lore better, but what they did do was fantastic. It REALLY brought Warcraft to life. Hopefully they will do others, I can only hope.

For those who don't like my opinions, that's fine because I really don't care about what you think. For those who agree with my opinions, thank you.

Cheers!

[Omega10]

I enjoyed it, was worth paying the cinema ticket for it.

It was also an incredibly difficult task to cater to the hard core lore fans, game fans and people with no prior knowledge of wow. Make it basic for new people, it insults the fans. Jump right into it for the hard core fans, alienates the new audience. So overall I think they did a fine job.

Legit the only thing that left me bamboozled; the group of friends I went with to watch it (none of them are familiar with wow) legit struggled to understand why fel / green is evil. I still scratch my head to this day to understand how they couldn't understand

I watched it several times - once at the movie theatre and a couple of times on HBO. I loved the movie, and each time I watched it I liked it better. I would like to see them make this into a series. There are so many different characters and plots going on that this would work better in a more extended viewing window.

[Extremities]

1 question - Did the movie make more money than they spent? If so, it was a success. I don't know how much it raked in. I feel it could have been a little bit better but overall I enjoyed it especially seeing all the locations like Redridge, Elwyn Forrest, etc.

[Onikaroshi]

1 question - Did the movie make more money than they spent? If so, it was a success. I don't know how much it raked in. I feel it could have been a little bit better but overall I enjoyed it especially seeing all the locations like Redridge, Elwyn Forrest, etc.

According to most sources it didn't even break even, forbes reported about a 15 mil loss.

[Extremities]

According to most sources it didn't even break even, forbes reported about a 15 mil loss.

Ouch. I am surprised especially with how many people love Warcraft. I thought the movie would make soooooooooo much money

[Paperfox]

One of the things I have always like about WoW is the incredible amount of humor in it, the movie had nearly zero.