(If you are wondering which group I’m in, you’d find me most likely in the crowd scrutinizing book adaptations. However, I am far more objective than my fellow fans. I can usually see the reasoning behind certain decisions, but I still get annoyed with adaptations that resemble their source material in title and characters only. I’m looking at you every Young Adult adaptation outside of The Hunger Games.)
(Also, SPOILERS.)
I don’t know if there was a clamoring for a Warcraft movie by fans, but the project took ten years to actually make it to the screen. A friend of mine, who happens to be both a comic-book nerd and Warcraft nerd, assured me that the story in the video game is as paper-thin as most video game stories. Sadly, the movie does not improve upon this. It starts out well enough (and here’s where this is going to get nerdy) – the orc home world is dying and their leader, Gul’dan, is going to open a portal to another world so they can conquer that new world. The new world, Azeroth, is home to the standard Lord of the Rings races – humans, elves, dwarves, and wizards. To say that Warcraft is a derivative of Lord of the Rings is to say that water is wet. However, unlike Lord of the Rings, the elves and dwarves play no role in this particular story, so get ready for #whathappenedtowarcraftelvesanddwarves.
Had the movie stuck with the simple concept of humans vs. orcs, we would have been content, but the writers tried to cram a bunch of fantasy uber-nerdery (it’s a word now) on top of it. It starts off easy enough – Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) has acquired some green magic called Fel, which requires life in order to be used, including beings to power the portal. As soon as they get to Azeroth, things start dying as the orcs are pillaging villages and capturing prisoners. Azeroth is guarded by Medivh (Ben Foster), a godlike wizard using blue magic who has been fighting the Fel for a long time. One orc, Durotan (Toby Kebbell), realizes that the Fel is corrupting his race and destroyed their home planet, so he wants to work with the humans to defeat Gul’dan. At this point, we’re still on board with the story and it still fits the mold of humans vs. orcs with a typical twist thrown in. But then, #ihaswritingskilz happens.
There’s evil green magic that eats life and good blue magic that doesn’t eat life. There are wizards that are trying to stop the orcs and a wizard organization doing nothing but guarding a black cube containing Glenn Close and she is uttering nonsensical, double-talk prophecies. There are green orcs susceptible to blue magic death spells and orcs not susceptible. There’s a half-breed orc, Garona (Paula Patton), who is chained up to Gul’dan for reasons never explained, nor is it ever explained how a race on a completely different planet that had never heard of humans managed to have a half-human orc. Meanwhile, Medivh gets weaker every time he uses magic and a young disavowed wizard, Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer), gets stronger because he went in the black cube. Throughout the middle of the movie, 90% of things are happening because #fantasy, while the other 10% is actually setting up the ending, which is when the movie really goes off the rails.
I’m sure I’m boring you by now, so here’s the climax in a nutshell (again – SPOILER alert). Medivh turns into a demon. Humans fight orcs. Khadgar and the human general, Lothar (Travis Fimmel) fight a golam. Lothar flies on a griffon. Durotan’s wife floats her baby down a river like it is Moses, not an orc (you know, the race attacking the planet), begging the question – won’t it be killed on the spot when it is found? Gul’dan interrupts his own time-sensitive plot to fight Durotan because “the old ways are important.” Gul’dan is somehow not torn to pieces by the other orcs. Garona becomes chief orc by stabbing the human king (Dominic Cooper) in the back of the neck after he tells her to (plus, she was just fighting with the king), which seems odd considering how much these orcs tell us they care about honor. Lothar flies on a griffon.
I realize I’m making it sound very confusing, but even in the context of the movie, none of the climax makes any sense except for the part where humans are fighting orcs. Everything the movie was establishing during the first half is pissed right out the window when it becomes a hodgepodge of epic battle scene and fantasy mumbo jumbo. It’s like Dungeons and Dragons crossed with Eragon and don’t pretend you haven’t seen both of those movies.
Because I’m also a fantasy nerd, I was entertained by the movie, despite the trainwreck at the end. The blend of CGI with live action is seamless (so much so that I‘m not sure the entire movie isn’t 100% CGI and motion capture) and the movie rarely slows down enough to take more than two breaths. Yes, I would have preferred some desperately needed exposition, but the action and visuals were good enough to keep me from grumbling.
Finally, I gave my friend a brief explanation of the story components because some of the movie felt like it needed source material knowledge to be understood. I also wanted to know how much changed from that source material. He says that it’s pretty close to the stories from the original games published in 1994 and 1996 (same game, but different platforms), but he’ll let me know for sure after he sees it. After all, how could he not see it, he being a Warcraft nerd? Now, back to my own nerdery – I’ve got two civs left to kill.
Rating: Ask for four dollars back. #wereallnerds
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