Warcraft movie: There might be spoilers from books and the games.

[Astromech]

9 hours ago, The Drunkard said:

They'd need to carve up WC3 into two movies, I reckon. No way could they fit every campaign into two/three hours and not rush it.

But they could probably do it after this one. A Second War movie seems redundant if an Alliance is forming in this one (and the trailers make it seem like it's happening).

I'm assuming they'll just blend both wars into the film. Yeah, the Frozen Throne would make more sense as at least two films.

[Hol Horse]

I'm really curious, if/when they get to the later years, who's gonna play Green Jesus? It's gonna be really weird (for me) if he's not voiced by Metzen. Then again, I think Clancy Brown did a better job as Thrall in Lord of the Clans, so I guess not having Metzen wouldn't be all that bad - assuming they found a decent enough replacement.

 

[Slurktan]

22 hours ago, Astromech said:

I'm assuming they'll just blend both wars into the film. Yeah, the Frozen Throne would make more sense as at least two films.

I'd assume any sequel will just be Thrall's story, no need to do full WC3 yet.  Just have him raised in slavery/whatever then bust out at the end possibly have him gather the orcs to sail west.  That would save a lot of unneccessary plot stuff for a WC3 movie, and then as said split WC3 into 2 with the first being Arthas's fall.  The second would then pick up with  Thrall getting to Kalimdor and then the shenanigans there.

[Astromech]

They could also juxtapose Varian's story with Thrall's. Maybe show Varian win a certain item of a certain character in the Warcraft film?

[JonCon's Red Beard]

First impressions from Europe and China:

OOOOSOOOOOM

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Ok, seriously: just read fans are reacting very well to the movie. They say it's very good done, the story is great. People are leaving the theatres very pleased.

Critics are being, according to comments, bitter.

Looks like will break records outside US, specially in Asian markets..

 

[JonCon's Red Beard]

 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

I've seen the words 'Battlefield Earth' mentioned in a few reviews. Seems like we have a real turkey on our hands.

[Corvinus85]

From what I've read so far, people who actually try to criticize this just as any other movie will find that it has much to be desired. But Warcraft fans will probably love it.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Just now, Corvinus said:

From what I've read so far, people who actually try to criticize this just as any other movie will find that it has much to be desired. But Warcraft fans will probably love it.

I'm not sure, I read the http://kotaku.com/the-warcraft-movie-is-not-good-1778550679 review here, from a guy who has played most of the Warcraft games and has a decent understanding of the lore. He didn't like it. At all.

I think just seeing stuff you love on screen isn't enough to make up for a bad quality movie.

[The Anti-Targ]

Getting the sort of poor to mediocre reviews I expected. I was never impressed with the trailers despite decent CGI. The trailer strongly hinted at a terribly generic fantasy plot in which the subtleties of Warcraft lore and characterisations would be completely lost on a general audience.

I'll be surprised if there's enough Warcraft fandom and general gamer good will for this movie to break even. It must have been a rather expensive undertaking (hopefully not more expensive than Prince of Persia) so even doing well at the box office for a video game movie will probably make it a financial loser.

Probably would have been better if it had been Pandas vs Orcs and all CGI IMO.

Video game adaptations have a problem in that they either tell the story of the game (or one of the games in a franchise) which generally tends to be of a lesser quality of story and character development than good movies, and hence they make for a bad (or mediocre at best) movie. Or they merely take the name, characters and theme of a video game and tell a totally different story to the game, but the story is typically generic and bland because no one has the creative energy to put in the necessary effort to tell a story that is completely their own, at which point you wonder why the writer(s) didn't just write a good story from scratch and ditch all association with pre-existing IP. 

I'd rather see a movie that was inspired by a writer's experience playing Assassin's creed than a movie of Assassin's creed. I'd like to see a movie inspired by a writer's experience playing The Last of Us, than a The Last of Us movie. 

Before a studio commits money to a video game movie, they should cut together a movie's worth of cut scenes and gameplay and screen test it with a non-gamer audience. If they like it then it might be worth making a direct adaptation with minimal change other than live action or movie quality animation. If they don't like it, scrap it and move on.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

The movie was shit. Don't dare accuse me of not liking Warcraft. I played Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the Frozen Throne, and I had played World of Warcraft since beta, though quitting with Mists of Pandaria. The plot, pacing, characters, and story decisions were abysmally appalling and weak. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

The movie was shit. Don't dare accuse me of not liking Warcraft. I played Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the Frozen Throne, and I had played World of Warcraft since beta, though quitting with Mists of Pandaria. The plot, pacing, characters, and story decisions were abysmally appalling and weak. 

QUITTER

[Jasta11]

3 hours ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

The movie was shit. Don't dare accuse me of not liking Warcraft. I played Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos and the Frozen Throne, and I had played World of Warcraft since beta, though quitting with Mists of Pandaria. The plot, pacing, characters, and story decisions were abysmally appalling and weak. 

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Apart from a select few stories, Warcraft is pretty much pure shlock. They could make a movie of Arthas's story perhaps, but the cheesy ''good humans (+ maybe good orcs) vs evil orcs'' origin that was basically an excuse plot in WC1/2? It's just not a good story to begin with.

Besides, even if it was a movie that was best appreciated by Warcraft fans only, then IMO it would still fail. It's a new continuity that comes with a promotion to get the game, obviously Blizzard wants it to attract a new market and not just placate those who still play WoW after 11 years.

[The Anti-Targ]

I can't really fathom what critics would have to be bitter about with this movie. Did Blizzard wrong a whole bunch of them with micro-transactions or something? Way I see it, critics don't know Warcraft as a video game and the movie as a standalone entity is simply not clicking with them.

The thing that seems to have caused fans of Warcraft to be overly optimistic about this movie is this notion that Warcraft has deep and extensive lore. But ultimately whatever story exists in the Warcraft games is probably no better than the generality of video game stories, and all the lore in the world isn't going to help translate mediocre story (for a movie) into a good movie. The move can't afford to assume knowledge of any lore on the part of the audience, and the time budget for a movie is too short to provide all that rich lore.

[denstorebog]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I can't really fathom what critics would have to be bitter about with this movie. Did Blizzard wrong a whole bunch of them with micro-transactions or something?

Could it be that they're bitter because the movie sucks?

I mean, the signs are all there in the trailers. The CGI is some of the worst I've seen, relative to the standards of the time. The armor looks like fucking plastic. And while trailers usually don't give an accurate view of a movie's actual depth, this just screams cliché, cliché, cliché. Yeah, I saw this one coming.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, denstorebog said:

Could it be that they're bitter because the movie sucks?

I mean, the signs are all there in the trailers. The CGI is some of the worst I've seen, relative to the standards of the time. The armor looks like fucking plastic. And while trailers usually don't give an accurate view of a movie's actual depth, this just screams cliché, cliché, cliché. Yeah, I saw this one coming.

Sure, but critics get to watch shit movies on a virtually weekly basis. If I was a non-gamer movie critic going in to this movie I would just be rolling my eyes again and saying "might as well get this over with" and go in with very low expectations hoping that the 1% chance that I might be pleasantly surprised actually happens this time. But when the movie is over and it meets my low expectations I wouldn't be bitter, but rather resigned and relieved. If anything I would feel like phoning in the review because I couldn;t be bothered devoting any substantial time or thought into writing a review.

[Kalbear]

Think I'd be bitter knowing I would have to watch a shitty game movie and then have to deal with the teams of shitty fans of said game. 

[JonCon's Red Beard]

I think this movie will be ok. It's going to be very polarized from critics and fans' povs. Honestly, the fans seems to be pleased with it. And I've learned to mistrusts critics (Kotaku is part of Gawker, like Jezabel, zero credibility, imo).

I'll keep my opinion until I watch it. I'm not a fan of the game, but I like the lore and myth. My son is a fan of the game, and his dad is very much a snob for adaptations (if he had read ASOIAF, he would have just murdered three tvs). Problem is that the premiere here is June 30 (it was going to be July, mfs). So... either they both will love or hate the thing. I'll wait until then.

Either way, for what I'm seeing, it's causing enough discussion to consider a sequel. That's good.

[ambi76]

The movie is perfectly fine. I laughed I cried it's much more fun than Cats to me. (Watched it in 3D which was a first for me.)

And I can tell you now why the trailers sucked so bad: The scenes in them are cut totally out of any context. Either maximum fail or maximum trolling form that department.

Also: OMG, Gul'dan, put your robes back on! _{Or maybe not.}

_{/kinda conflicted here}

Fangirl squee rating 10/10

Pretending to be a really grumpy critic rating 4/10

So 7/10 from me, which is actually kinda harsh from what I've seen from audiences so far.