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

[Durckad]

Went and saw Warcraft this evening. Originally, I was mildly curious about seeing this, but fearing the worst, that it would fall afoul of the curse of video game movies. Once the bad reviews started rolling in, I pretty much lost any interest I had in seeing it, but my roommate wanted to go and see it so I figured, why not?

Spoiler

 

So, yeah, this is nowhere near as bad as it's been made out to be. I've seen much, much worse movies than this that have equal or better ratings. I'd actually rather watch this again than any of The Hobbit movies. At least Warcraft ends after 2 hours rather than plodding on to another dull CGI sequence-filled hour of drudgery, a la The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Despite that, it's not a perfect nor a particularly great movie. Some of the acting is a bit suspect and many of the characters and much of the plot is underwritten as if the filmmakers struggled to fit the story into a mere 2 hours. Gul'dan, for example, is just evil, bad wizard-guy who wants to eat souls because... portal. What happens to Medivh is barely explained. Blackhand is just kind of there. King Llane is generic king-guy. This is not me complaining because these characters from the games just didn't get enough material, but the film actually spends a somewhat considerable amount of time on them. 

Durotan, Garona, Orgrim, Khadgar, and Lothar all get a fairly decent amount of material and that's quite a lot for a loud, dumb, summer action movie. I found Durotan and Garona's stories the most interesting of the lot. Lothar is the standard, action movie guy protagonist. He gets a few emotional beats in his story, but by the end, it doesn't feel like he's been changed much by anything. Same with Khadgar. He exists to further the Medivh story and plotsplain to the audience about magic and stuff. His character was probably the most boring of the lot. He barely changes. In the beginning, he says he doesn't want to be the Guardian and at the end, he's the Guardian, I guess? There's also a romance because OF COURSE, but it doesn't take up too much time nor is it a primary plot point so I won't complain about it too much despite the characters having all the chemistry of mud and wet napkins.

The CGI was good/great, the action was fine though there was far less than I expected. Some of the fanservice was fun, some was unneeded and could've been cut. Many have criticized the Dalaran sequence as being the worst and, as it exists in the film, I agree, it really serves no purpose, but if they bothered to actually explain the whole Medivh story, then I think it might be more important. I assume there was some material here that was cut for time, for some reason. Also, all of Dalaran looked cheap as hell, with the LED-eyeball mages looking absolutely terrible.

But I still enjoyed it. I don't know if it was because my expectations were sufficiently lowered by the onslaught of bad reviews or if it's because I've been playing Warcraft games since at least '95, I enjoy the lore, the characters, and the stories, or if it's just not that bad of a movie and the critics are being too harsh for whatever reason. It's decent summer schlock but beyond that, it's not some grand, epic failure of shittiness that some are making it out to be. Some of the characters are underwritten, some of the acting is suspect, and the plot tries to cover far too much ground in the limited time allotted to it.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Durckad said:

Went and saw Warcraft this evening. Originally, I was mildly curious about seeing this, but fearing the worst, that it would fall afoul of the curse of video game movies. Once the bad reviews started rolling in, I pretty much lost any interest I had in seeing it, but my roommate wanted to go and see it so I figured, why not?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So, yeah, this is nowhere near as bad as it's been made out to be. I've seen much, much worse movies than this that have equal or better ratings. I'd actually rather watch this again than any of The Hobbit movies. At least Warcraft ends after 2 hours rather than plodding on to another dull CGI sequence-filled hour of drudgery, a la The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Despite that, it's not a perfect nor a particularly great movie. Some of the acting is a bit suspect and many of the characters and much of the plot is underwritten as if the filmmakers struggled to fit the story into a mere 2 hours. Gul'dan, for example, is just evil, bad wizard-guy who wants to eat souls because... portal. What happens to Medivh is barely explained. Blackhand is just kind of there. King Llane is generic king-guy. This is not me complaining because these characters from the games just didn't get enough material, but the film actually spends a somewhat considerable amount of time on them. 

Durotan, Garona, Orgrim, Khadgar, and Lothar all get a fairly decent amount of material and that's quite a lot for a loud, dumb, summer action movie. I found Durotan and Garona's stories the most interesting of the lot. Lothar is the standard, action movie guy protagonist. He gets a few emotional beats in his story, but by the end, it doesn't feel like he's been changed much by anything. Same with Khadgar. He exists to further the Medivh story and plotsplain to the audience about magic and stuff. His character was probably the most boring of the lot. He barely changes. In the beginning, he says he doesn't want to be the Guardian and at the end, he's the Guardian, I guess? There's also a romance because OF COURSE, but it doesn't take up too much time nor is it a primary plot point so I won't complain about it too much despite the characters having all the chemistry of mud and wet napkins.

The CGI was good/great, the action was fine though there was far less than I expected. Some of the fanservice was fun, some was unneeded and could've been cut. Many have criticized the Dalaran sequence as being the worst and, as it exists in the film, I agree, it really serves no purpose, but if they bothered to actually explain the whole Medivh story, then I think it might be more important. I assume there was some material here that was cut for time, for some reason. Also, all of Dalaran looked cheap as hell, with the LED-eyeball mages looking absolutely terrible.

But I still enjoyed it. I don't know if it was because my expectations were sufficiently lowered by the onslaught of bad reviews or if it's because I've been playing Warcraft games since at least '95, I enjoy the lore, the characters, and the stories, or if it's just not that bad of a movie and the critics are being too harsh for whatever reason. It's decent summer schlock but beyond that, it's not some grand, epic failure of shittiness that some are making it out to be. Some of the characters are underwritten, some of the acting is suspect, and the plot tries to cover far too much ground in the limited time allotted to it.

 

 

"It's decent summer schlock" I think this is exactly it. And sometimes these schlock movies work for critics and sometimes they don't. I think people get too hung up with the % of negative reviews vs. the average review score. When you consider with just 27% of reviews being positive, and probably most of them giving merely a passing grade, an average review score of 4/10 is not that bad. That means most reviewers didn't hate the movie, they just had gripes about things they see as important to what makes for a good movie, and that more than off set the bits that were done well, which is mainly the visuals.

 

[Kindly Old Man]

33 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

"It's decent summer schlock" I think this is exactly it. And sometimes these schlock movies work for critics and sometimes they don't. I think people get too hung up with the % of negative reviews vs. the average review score. When you consider with just 27% of reviews being positive, and probably most of them giving merely a passing grade, an average review score of 4/10 is not that bad. That means most reviewers didn't hate the movie, they just had gripes about things they see as important to what makes for a good movie, and that more than off set the bits that were done well, which is mainly the visuals.

 

4.1/10 is pretty bad. Just clicking through the other rotten movies below 40% on the front page, Now You See Me 2 (36%) has a 5 average, Careful What You Wish For (17%) is at 4.1, TMNT:OOTS (34%) - 4.6, Alice Through The Looking Glass (29%) - 4.5. A movie has to be absolutely unwatchable trash to get less than 3. Even Fan4stic(9%) has a 3.4.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

On 10/6/2016 at 7:43 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

24% fresh:

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

Anyone surprised?

I am not sure about this. Don't forget that there is also http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_room_1998/

[Spring Bass]

That was a fucking awful movie, worse than I was expecting. I was thinking maybe the critics were a little off - not that the movie was good, necessarily, but more entertaining and better than they were letting on. Terminator: Genisys, for example, was very entertaining and fast-moving even if the plot was a nonsense burger and horribly predictable (its RT rating is 26%, actually lower than Warcraft's currently 27%). 

The only part of it that's even remotely compelling or interesting is when Durotan and the Orcs are on-screen, and the movie spends most of its time cutting away from them to everything else. That everything else is almost universally terrible - bad acting, bad dialogue, bad pacing, bad script (seriously, it feels like they did a horrific editing job on a 3.5 hour movie), and even bad CGI. Seriously, every scene with humans in it looks cheap and badly shot. None of the human stuff works aside from a single scene near the end with Lothar. 

Honestly, that might be the worst big-budget movie I've seen in theaters, and I saw Battlefield: Earth and the Super Mario Bros in theaters. It doesn't even rise to "summer schlock", because it's not entertaining to watch - about one hour into the movie, I was checking my watch every goddamn time the humans came back on screen. 

[The Anti-Targ]

9 hours ago, Kindly Old Man said:

4.1/10 is pretty bad. Just clicking through the other rotten movies below 40% on the front page, Now You See Me 2 (36%) has a 5 average, Careful What You Wish For (17%) is at 4.1, TMNT:OOTS (34%) - 4.6, Alice Through The Looking Glass (29%) - 4.5. A movie has to be absolutely unwatchable trash to get less than 3. Even Fan4stic(9%) has a 3.4.

I'm not saying it's a good movie, but it for many people it will be an all right experience. I am surprised at Fant-4-stic's 3.4/10. That seems to be pretty high.

I see opening weekend for the USA is looking at just under $25 million. In terms of similar openings I'm looking at Chronicles of Riddick as a guide, which probably means about $60 million box office, but possibly up to $70 million with a B+ Cinemascore. A B+ is pretty good, and movies with that sort of CinemaScore with a mid $20 million opening have varied in final box office from $60 million to over $150 million. So I expect Warcraft to not be a total flop in the USA and it could end up anywhere from below expectations to meeting expectations. The 2nd weekend drop will pretty much tell us that.

[williamjm]

I saw the film a couple of days ago. Wasn't entirely sure what to expect given the wide range of reactions, some people I know really liked it but there have been lots of awful reviews as well. Having seen it I would say some of the reviews do seem overly harsh, I wouldn't say it was a great film but I thought it was entertaining. In some ways it perhaps feels a bit like a B-movie that has somehow been given a huge budget, the story does manage to hit most epic fantasy cliches and while the acting is reasonable I wouldn't say any of the performances really stood out.

Some of the comments and reviews have described the story as being hard to follow, but I thought they explained most things reasonably well. The only thing that could have done with a bit more explanation was

the background to Mehdiv's betrayal. It might well be deliberately left as a mystery but it's such a crucial plot point that I think a bit more background would have been nice.

I never played WoW, so my only experience with the Warcraft universe is having played some of the RTS games a couple of decades ago, I vaguely remember the name Lothar from the original game but that's about it. I suspect there are probably plenty of references that are a bit lost on me, but I don't think it really got in the way of the film too much.

[Jasta11]

Yeah, honestly I think the reviews that panned it as another Battlefield Earth or Jupiter Ascending were overreacting. It's pretty much about what I expected, a cliché-filled CGI fest with mediocre writing and fanservice aplenty. To their credit, said CGI is pretty well done, and the Orcs are just as expressive as the humans so well done on that front. 

I did play the RTS and WoW for some time, so I know the background story. My friend didn't know the first thing about Warcraft, and followed the plot about right, albeit he was confused about that the ''evil wizard guy'''s deal was. It very much feels like a movie that could have used at least another half hour of scenes to better establish the characters, rather than jumping from Dreanor to Stormwind to Dalaran to Westfall to Ironforge too fast. Maybe some sort of Director's Cut will be released and make the film better, like it did for Kingdom of Heaven.

Not an amazing film by any means, but a decent enough fantasy popcorn fest. And I frankly expected no better so I was satisfied.

[The Drunkard]

Yeah I don't think it merits the terrible reviews, but I wasn't a fan. Reminded me of BvS. Movie was all over the place, characters weren't interesting, main story was predictable (although I'm not sure how they can get around that if you've any knowledge of the games), but the action scenes and world looked pretty good.

On 6/12/2016 at 6:45 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

So, what's the formula for a good video game adaptation? For the most part even genre fans acknowledge this movie has some significant filmic problems which prevents it from being good.

My feeling is that no video game story can be adapted to screen because either it's too long to condense into a movie (probably Warcraft's main problem) or it is simply not very good source material. So really an adaptation can only really take the some bits of the meta aspects of a game and then tell a completely different story.

I think it's just that in the vast majority of cases. Most games might have good world building or good little short stories in them, but nothing that lends them to a consistently good 2/3 hour movie format. 

Something like The Last of Us has a shot at being a legitimately good movie, but as far as game writing goes that's near the pinnacle. Deus Ex might be another. 

[The Anti-Targ]

19 minutes ago, The Drunkard said:

Something like The Last of Us has a shot at being a legitimately good movie, but as far as game writing goes that's near the pinnacle. Deus Ex might be another. 

Last reports has TLOU the movie in "development hell", which is Neil Druckmann's own words. So I'm guessing they are having a really hard time trying to write a movie script that is not generic and/or uninteresting.

The game works because you are Joel (and Ellie), once you become more detached as a passive viewer the story might diminish in impact somewhat.

I did find this video about one person's experience with TLOU quite interesting.

 

[Kalbear]

I also think that the days where you want to see a video game turned into a movie are gone. In prior years the main reason would be that you'd see a live-action, special effects laden spectacle. But...that's what video games are now. We have professional actors, mocap, 100 million plus budgets and massive writing budgets. Hundreds of hours of dialog. 

What's the point of turning them into movies?

 

[red snow]

5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I also think that the days where you want to see a video game turned into a movie are gone. In prior years the main reason would be that you'd see a live-action, special effects laden spectacle. But...that's what video games are now. We have professional actors, mocap, 100 million plus budgets and massive writing budgets. Hundreds of hours of dialog. 

What's the point of turning them into movies?

 

Making money and potentially advertising the game franchise to a wider audience?

In terms of players wanting to see a film of it, you're right. I think Film still seems to have the top rung of legitimacy which is why people like to see comics, books, games etc turned into films. I don't know why that's the case but it's probably down to a) it seems real if people play the parts and b ) they are the most seen/experienced forms of entertainment.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I also think that the days where you want to see a video game turned into a movie are gone. In prior years the main reason would be that you'd see a live-action, special effects laden spectacle. But...that's what video games are now. We have professional actors, mocap, 100 million plus budgets and massive writing budgets. Hundreds of hours of dialog. 

What's the point of turning them into movies?

 

Actually I think the point is to build a property with an inbuilt audience. That is surely the primary motivation here and it seems to be paying off in Asia at least. 

Hollywood is extremely risk adverse, and it seemingly unable these days to bank on something that is untested or new. So now we have got to the point where public awareness of a franchise is probably more important than actually making a good movie. So you now get movies made on board games like Battleship! Hopefully their failure will lead to a bit more originality. Unlikely though.

[The Anti-Targ]

20 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I also think that the days where you want to see a video game turned into a movie are gone. In prior years the main reason would be that you'd see a live-action, special effects laden spectacle. But...that's what video games are now. We have professional actors, mocap, 100 million plus budgets and massive writing budgets. Hundreds of hours of dialog. 

What's the point of turning them into movies?

 

Intellectually I totally agree. Emotionally, there is just something about the prospect of seeing your favourite characters (or franchise) up there on the big screen with a whole bunch of non-gamers going, "Oh this is cool." I'd rather not admit that this would make me feel somewhat validated in my video game hobby, but I would feel some personal satisfaction at seeing a video game IP getting some significant respect outside of the video game community.

Also, I think if there had been at least a handful of video game franchises in the past 20 years that were well received by critics and did very well at the box office, there would be more people engaged video games beyond the smartphone app basics of Candy Crush, Angry Birds and the like. I dunno if that potential still exists, since people are so very cynical about video game adaptations. If a movie is a hit people might put it down to luck and still have a very negative over all view of video game adaptations.

 

 

[Martini Sigil]

I saw the movie.... it was not a great cinematic endeavor as far as having a great plot, or writing... but it was --IMO-- exactly what it was supposed to be... fun.

As a non game player... my biggest complaint was that they never explained the magic .... I'm watching, and some dude starts making spells with this blue light... and they never explain what this power is, or why certain people have it...

and I got a kick out of Jesse and Tulip

[protar]

Just got back from seeing it at last. And it was definitely a pretty good movie. Not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, I can definitely see how viewers unfamiliar with the lore could be confused. But the sheer hate it's been getting is nothing more than a blatant bias against video game movies. It was what it was - a decent fantasy action flick that can be enjoyed by anyone, with deeper lore to be enjoyed by fans.

The introduction to the Orcs was solid, because we only had a couple of characters to be introduced to. Conversely the introduction to the humans was incredibly rushed. We were meeting Lothar, then Khadgar, the king, Lothar's son, the Queen, Medivh - all in thwe space of about ten minutes. That was the main part where I could see where uninitiated viewers would be confused. But as the film progressed I think that smoothed out. And the broader plot was pretty easy to follow. I think in that respect Medivh was probably the most confusing part of the film. His betrayal is confusing with no mention of the Legion. I wish the film had had just another 15 minutes to explain things a bit better.

The characters where not deep per say, but I did find them compelling once I had gotten a little way into the movie. Lothar, Llane and Orgrim where probably the least interesting of the major characters (I think Orgrim was lacking in development in the early parts, which made his shifting allegiances later on lack weight.). For me Durotan, Garona, Khadgar and Medivh where the highpoints. Khadgar was just adorkable, Ben Foster bought a lot of mysterious charisma to his role. When Durotan died it was actually genuinely sad - and disturbing to see him drained by the Fel. It was satisfying to see the first hints of the Horde turning against Gul'dan, and even though it was done differently from the game canon, Garona's struggle in killing Llane was compelling. I'd heard a lot about Paula Patton being wooden and a low point, but that was actually one of my favourite parts.

On Lothar's son, Caldon - at first I was dubious on his inclusion, on spending so much time on a new character to the canon. He was pretty bland and uninteresting. But when he died I think Fimmel actually sold Lothar's grief - he wasn't just forgotten after one scene. And I think without that death there would have been very little dramatic weight on the human side of the conflict. I feel like there was a tradeoff - they chose developing the humans a bit more over focusing more on Orgrim in the early film. Which is a shame, but the film already made the Orcs far more interesting so I can understand it.

I loved the little easter eggs for fans - the murlocs, the cameos of Orcs characters. Overall not a deep film but very strong for what it was. I hope that it makes enough money for a sequel.

[protar]

On 17/06/2016 at 4:21 AM, Martini Sigil said:

I saw the movie.... it was not a great cinematic endeavor as far as having a great plot, or writing... but it was --IMO-- exactly what it was supposed to be... fun.

As a non game player... my biggest complaint was that they never explained the magic .... I'm watching, and some dude starts making spells with this blue light... and they never explain what this power is, or why certain people have it...

and I got a kick out of Jesse and Tulip

You know it's interesting because it would never occur to me that the explanation of magic would be a sticking point for uninitiated viewers. I mean for starters the most plot relevant magic (the fel) is explained quite a lot. But you're right the Kirin Tor, general arcane magic is not. Now I know the Warcraft lore, but in general when I'm introduced to a new franchise, I've just been so saturated in various fantasy settings that there's a lot I'm willing to just roll with. Khadgar can turn people into sheep? Okay, sure. Most of the magic was fairly simple elemental based stuff, creating energy blasts and stuff. The only area where I think the explanation was lacking was how Khadgar got doused in Fel and just kind of overcame it.

[Mexal]

I thought this was fairly terrible but I enjoyed watching it. One of those movies that I made fun of throughout but was entertained enough to see it through. Could be infinitely worse.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Highest grossing videogame movie of all time.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11988990/warcraft-highest-grossing-video-game-movie

 

/I guess it kind of makes sense when you consider that Warcraft is probably the highest grossing videogame of all time. 

[The Anti-Targ]

The movie will be a minor flop in the USA, it will probably struggle to get past $50 million, but it won't be Gigli bad. But it has more than made up for it with the China box office. I imagine a sequel will be announced in the near future.

It also seems like Angry Birds will slot in at number 2, which pretty much makes 2016 the most financially successful year ever for video game adaptations. And if Ass Creed isn't completely shite, it might actually also be the best year ever in terms of critic scores.

It's likely that a sequel, if it is at least as good as the first, will do better in the USA than this one. A lot of people who stayed away from the theatre will catch the movie on Netflix or on Blu ray/DVD and decide the movie isn't so bad after all, and they will be inclined to see the sequel in theatres. Which could mean the sequel does better than the original, and as long as they don;t do stupid things with the budget (like spend $250 million) they could be set up for a multi-movie franchise.