I come to the world of Warcraft as a total newbie.
Over many years I’ve seen boxes and books with its label, but never played it. I don’t play video games. So when I settled into my movie seat, with popcorn and soda, my only brush with Warcraft was with the movie’s trailers.
You know? It’s not bad at all. This review may be of great relief to any Significant Other who is going to be dragged to see it. I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my cash full-price ticket, which wasn’t what I thought when I went in.
I suspect that if you knew more about the game, you’d be able to understand why some of the good guys die, why some of the bad (no, really bad) guys survive, but from the cheap seats, you don’t know what’s going to happen so you continue to crunch, and wait and see what happens.
The plot is pretty simple. The world of the Orcs, a dry desolate desert planet, is dying. Their wizard opens a portal and sends a war party to the green and fertile world of Azeroth. They land in the area ruled by King Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper,) known as Llane. The Orc war party with wizard set up camp, start building another portal to bring in more Orcs, and ravaging the land to get humans as “fuel” to open the gate.
Llane takes offense at their arrival and wages war. His friend, and elite warrior Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel) leads the way, but also is the contact to the Guardian (think arch-mage) named Medivh (Ben Foster) who is a friend of the King and Lothar. Lothar is a wonderfully human character with a sense of underused humor and a sense of honor. Then there’s an apprentice Mage, a former enslaved Orc, Garona (Paula Patton) who becomes a friend and foe, and a bunch of other smaller characters.
This is the main conflict – Orcs vs humans, and minor conflicts, like Orc groups in conflict. Humans generally work together.
There are lots of battle scenes between over-steroided Orc groups, lots of battles between humans and Orcs, and just not enough battles with magic because that was kind of cool. The absolute dangers of using magic come through loud and clear (and with spectacular special effects too.)
Outside the Orcs, the special effects provide stunning shots of a flying gryphon sailing around turrets, and later into battle. The costumes are interesting if conventional – Camelot-inspired armor, exquisitely pleated robes and tunics, and really gross Orc gear with spiked heads and lots of dangling chains. Lots of fangs as well.
Now, problems arise when you’re crunching on the popcorn thinking, “these Orcs are a poor cross between The Lord of the Rings and Mad Max: Fury Road” or “Every time I see one of the these Renn Faire inspired movies, the women’s capes drag the floor. Must be hell of dust catchers. Why don’t they hem them up?”
But, at the end of the day, the actors’ performances (even hidden amid the rolling special-effect muscles of Orcs,) lift the movie beyond just common high fantasy writing and videogames. They made me wonder what happens next – just not enough to play Warcraft.
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