I enjoyed it. Was it great? No. Was it better than just good? Yes. It definitely was a feast for the eyes, if not the brain. But, I didn’t go into the theater expecting a treatises on the human condition. I expected cool visuals and humans and orcs pounding the crap out of each other. That’s what I got. I give it a 3.5 out 5.
The movie had its own take on Warcraft lore, which is deep and convoluted anyway. I haven’t played WoW since 2008, but was able to follow along. I can imagine that someone coming into the movie fresh might have been lost in a few places. It’s basically the story of the first game in the Warcraft series. I probably would have chosen a different story to tell, and had a Lord of the Rings-like prologue to setup the world. But, as with so many other movies, no one asked me.
Saw it and feel pretty much the same. It was fine. I liked Khadgar’s character the most. They handled the multiple languages well. Didn’t buy Garona/Lothar.
Thank God Stormwind isn’t that huge in WoW. Lotsa luck finding that wine merchant.
I’m a World of Warcraft fan - been playing off and on since 2006 (mostly off since 2013, but I’ve been popping back in lately to run old raid content).
I thought it was the biggest hot mess of an incomprehensible film that I’ve seen in years. The acting was bad, the CGI was too in-your-face, and the story was dull. And why did they have to make all the orcs so horrifically ugly? I mean, the orcs in the game won’t win any beauty contests, but even the sympathetic male orcs in the movie were hideous (except for Baby Spoiler–who made me wonder why a race so huge and warty and tusky would give birth to such tiny, soft children? And only one at a time?)
That’s just my opinion, though–obviously at least three Dopers and several million Chinese people disagree.
I actually hope they do make the sequel, though–I’d much rather see a story set in the more “modern” Warcraft universe, with more interesting characters (like Thrall, Sylvanus, Varian Wrynn, etc.)
The core of the movie goes back to the beginnings of the Warcraft milieu: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. This is where the story comes from, this (and the novel based on it) is where the characters come from, and this is where the aesthetics come from.
WoW wound up prettifying the Horde. A lot. And I say that as a longtime Horde player of WoW. But someone who’s only seen the Warcraft universe from within WoW is missing a great deal, even if they’re intellectually familiar with the backstory.
In some ways, this movie seems like a love letter to the real hardcore Blizzard Warcraft fans, the ones who bought and played every game going back to 1994 and read all the novels and the comics and the entire extended universe.
I thought it might be worth sharing this Duncan Jones interview [spoilers] that was making the rounds on Reddit the other other day (primarily on /r/cringe). The interviewer seems very rude and determined to make the movie seem bad, but Jones really keeps his cool while addressing the guy’s gripes.
“A scene where King Wrynn outlines his defensive strategy to the war council as “turtling for first 15, then archer spam w/cleric & knight wall. glhf” has been removed.”
I liked it very much, for what it was. I’m not expecting anything serious, and this was good. I did note that while they had other races, it seemed each kingdom was pretty monolithic. Yea, we’re at peace, but we won’t mingle and mix much with each other.
I liked the ambiguity of the shadow figure in the black box, and the fact that you don’t really know what happened in the end with those with the fell (or whatever they called the green energy).
Greatly set up for sequel… Whereabouts of Garona, which could become chieftain, what will the orcs do now that they’re not in their planet, what will happen to Gulden (?), plus they need one movie with that little baby grown up and ready to take the father’s tusk from his friend.
Things I liked: The unexpected deaths.
Things I disliked: The quick thinking that Garona betrayed humans, at least from one of the characters.
Khadgar was my favorite part of the movie. The human characters were mostly interesting. Orcs were a total snooze-fest, though. I hate the simplicity and one-dimensionality of their species – with the exception of Durotan and his wife and Baby Spoiler (ha!), I almost snoozed through ~45 minutes in the middle. That said, visuals were very good, particular w/r/t spellcasting. I was incredibly impressed with the way language-shifting was done while Garona translated during the parley scene.
I feel we got our money’s worth because the vouchers can be used to set up multiple accounts for recruit-a-friend, **very **inexpensively. But why choose such an old storyline to cinematize? I think this is pretty disappointing for most WoW fans who weren’t into the old Warcraft games. I’ve been playing the game since vanilla and didn’t have much context for what was going on (other than hey, Karazhan! and hey, I recognize that name!). Fortunately, my husband is a huge Warcraft lore/Warcraft III geek and was able to help me out.
I don’t know why they didn’t choose a more current storyline. An Arthas/Lich King story would have been mega super ultra tits.
See for someone who has no idea of the lore other than “this is from a video game”, the story didn’t matter. I can see that for someone more invested, and knowing more of the lore, perhaps they would have prefer another story. OTOH, if this is more of an “origin” story, this then is the base for future movies.
I’m glad I used an about-to-expire free ticket to see this. Great visuals, but the story was completely muddled. And the clear “There WILL be a sequel” strings left hanging at the ending were pretty annoying. Travis Fimmel was awesome as usual. Glad to see they let his character keep his slightly crazy persona from Vikings.
More than half the Goofs on the IMDB page are of the “These 2 orcs are not in the same clan” and “The city shouldn’t be floating until after the war with the Lich” variety. Unironically.
I just got around to seeing this movie and I thought it was a fun ride.
The only real complaint I had was muldoonthiefs comment. The movie had no conclusion but I realize that is because the story is not finished. It continues on in the games so there is no conclusion for the movie to even have.
Other than that I enjoyed it. It’s a pretty mediocre fantasy story that is nothing new but it was all the Warcraft shout-out moments that made it so fun for me. Ironforge, Stormwind, the murloc, the gryphons, the different clan markings on the orcs, Dalaran, the murloc.
I finally saw this and was shocked how good it was. There was a real depth to both sides of the conflict and you really wanted to see the true evil get defeated so both sides could work out their differences. It reminded me of the recent Planet of the Apes movie in that way.
Now I’m glad that China went gaga over this so we can get the next installment I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll be sure to see the next one in a theater.
I would love to see the same people take a crack at Starcraft next. That has an interesting back story too.
