Posted in: Movies, Review | Tagged: film, movie, Review, warcraft

Warcraft Review: A Very Pretty Long-Form Cutscene

By this point most people who are at least of college age have committed some amount of hours, days, or weeks playing Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Many of us have played it for so long, we can all but close our eyes and know the paths through Azeroth's forrests, we know which shops are which in all of the major cities without even having to look at the signs. It's familiar. To that end, the new Universal Pictures film, Warcraft: The Beginning, does a magnificent job of letting us pay a visit to that world.

Written and directed by Duncan Jones (who previously created the top-notch indie science fiction film Moon), he gets the world and it's feel nearly spot on. That aside, let's talk about the story – The orc dimension/world of Draenor is being destroyed by the evil fel magic that uses life-force. The warlock Gul'dan sacrifices a mountain of captives' life-energy in order to open a portal to the world of Azeroth and sends through the orc clans to begin to conquer the rich and fertile new world. The king of Azeroth, Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper) and his brother-in-law, Anduin Lothar (played by Vikings' Travis Fimmel) find out from a mage about the incursion of evil and set off to investigate and try to drive back the invaders.

Sure, it must be said that Warcraft is far better than any Dungeons and Dragons film. It's stunningly pretty. But the story is simply lackluster, we know what's going on and can guess most of the story arc almost as soon as we're introduced to the characters. The Orcs that perhaps aren't as evil as they might otherwise be. The only pretty female orc, Draka (played by Anna Galvin)  is of course the sympathetic one, giving the trope of ugly = evil, pretty = good a bit too awkward of an amount of credence. That there may or may not be a spy in their midst, again, it's high fantasy and suspense for people who perhaps find The Great Muppet Caper pretty complicated. And the end isn't so much of an end, but a setup for a longer entry into a new hoped-for franchise.

As a cutscene, it does a good enough job. Just on a far larger screen and that lasts 100 minutes. Fans of the game world will enjoy the visit, but people hoping for more will probably feel like they've just taken in a lot of empty calories.

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