Warcraft TV show

General Discussion
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Hey folks,
I just watched Arcane.
For those who doesn’t know, it is a animated TV show, produced by Riot Games, which is played in one of the several League of Legends universe.

This series is a real high quality production and this is not only my opinion but a rating of 9.2/10 on IMDB just proves that.

So now I am questioning myself, why is riot able to produce such a artificial masterwork, while the Warcraft movie was a big flop, even for Warcraft fans.

Blizzard has so much potential with all the lore and stories they have already created but they don’t use it. Sadly.

I think Riot is right now, what Blizzard wanted to be, but never came close to achive.

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The medium is essentially different. One is for a Television series, the other was a movie that was released in cinemas (remember those?), so it’s hard to compare the two. So much more can be done with an expansive story and lore in a television series compared to a two hour move.

As someone who wasn’t all that familiar with WoW lore, I caught the film when it was on Netflix. It wasn’t terrible, but for the budget it felt a little cheap and even I could tell they were trying to jam too many characters into too short a run time. It was still entertaining enough, but as I said, I wasn’t up on WoW lore, someone who is probably didn’t like it.

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I feel like the warcraft movie flopped, more or less (it did very well in China) because it was aimed towards the gamers but also everyone else and as a result didn’t really amaze either group.

The wow fans got a movie about very old lore they either know how would end or could guess, that isn’t even nearly as interesting, varied or fantastic as the current WoW stories are.
The people that play WoW have been used to stories about humans, gnomes, dwarves, night elves, draenei, orcs, trolls, tauren, undead, blood elves and all the other new races with warriors, priests, paladins, mages, warlocks, hunters, death knights, druids, rogues, demon hunters, monks, shamans fighting against hordes of undead and their master, the leaders of massive demon titans and their innumerable immortal demons, a massive metal-clad angry pissed off dragon that tore up the entire freaking planet, and some random fighting on an island full of pandas or something.

But we got orcs vs humans with like 2 mages, 1 orc warlock, 1 combat rogue and a bunch of warriors with so-called boomsticks.

The non-wow viewers got a movie that tried to introduce them to the wow universe/lore, but didn’t set up a larger intrigue or set up anything hinting towards a sequel and was kinda relying on you knowing the game world to understand certain things. The guard being polymorphed was probably more fun to a person that’s played WoW I would imagine.

As far as can be googled so is there a second movie in production, which is a good thing, because the movies could be A LOT more interesting once they get to interesting parts. I’d love to see the entire warcraft 3 campaign in movie form, although they’d need a couple of movies to cover all that.

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Sure, I understand the point. But this is exactly the problem that I see here. You can not introduce non player to the world of Warcraft with a movie. People have different expectations from a movie then from a serial.

What I really like about arcane is. That I could understand every move from every character and why they act like they act even though I have 0 clue about league of legends.
I heard that a lot of new players have found their way to LoL after they watched arcane.

I would really love to see Blizzard investing into something similar.

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No more Warcraft
It’s run it’s course
Just let it rest already

It’s been a while since I’ve honestly enjoyed a western fantasy setting. Most modern fantasy is just tween drama with a twist and rarely focuses on the setting itself.
I’m anxious for the Magic: the Gathering series. Part of me wants to believe it will be okay but experience tells me that it’s going to be a garbage fire.

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Live action movie adaptation vs animated tv show.

IMO, Video games do not translate well into live action. They tend to turn into a CGI ****fest. Animation, on the other hand, really has no visual limit. Take what valve was able to do with all the TF2 shorts. The Diablo “wrath” short is also amazing. And then there is the Castlevania netflix show. And the pokemon anime is also quite successful.

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I honestly enjoyed the Sonic movie. Granted, it’s not a cinematic masterpiece but it was decent enough. I like watching Jim Carrey do his thing.
Not quite as sadistic as Eggman usually gets portrayed but there were enough dark undertones in the quirkiness for it to be good in it’s own right.

Feels weird considering it as a video game movie since Sonic has evolved so far past just games into long running comics, spin offs, series and some really weird internet subculture.

I think the problem is it’s a Hollywood thing where it becomes this big project where hundreds of different people are trying to get what they want out of it and it stops being a movie about the game and just something that’s trying to appeal to as many people as possible for good sales.
Look at regular art. Usually just one dude doing his thing and it turns out alright. Now give 50 people, who may or may not be artists, brushes and tell them to go wild and you get this collage that belongs in the hallway of a school.

“Faithful” adaptions are really hard to pull off because no one wants to fund something for some niche group of nerds who probably won’t even pay for it, it needs to be something that can go to the masses.
90s movies did this a lot. You had this decently famous comic Judge Dredd that was all gritty and dark, the movie gets green-lit and it just turns into another Sylvester Stallone movie where it’s a close up of his face for half of it. Though the recent Dredd movie was a lot closer to the original works in that it was just about this angry cop that doesn’t take off his helmet kicking the crap out of some random criminals.

I forgot where I was going with this.
Something about clashing visions and compromises ruining productions and turning them into generic mush.

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Correction: Arcane is a content recycle product from Riot basicly. The LoL universe doesn’t exist cause it’s still just a sandbox game with the same 1 map and has no meaning of existing but players go play their champs.

So Riot is just recycleing their already deveoped character in a new realm that actually has some Lore or story behind it.

It has a good rating only cause of the LoL fans. But i personally stoped at the 4th episode.
Tho, ppl can still enjoy it, no doubt, it has it’s charm.

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My opinion is that the WoW movie didn’t tell anything new. It rehashed what we already know. In my eyes, it’s a feature length advertisement for Warcraft.
The movie was boring. The human actors were lifeless. The CGI characters were amazing. The entire movie was a sort of mess. They cut out a bunch of stuff, where it ended up with a poorly told story. Worst of all, a basic, us vs them all out war… We have experienced this TOO many times in the games, cutscenes, and lore.
The opposing factions worked together twice to beat up a common foe, only to go right back to hating each other again.

I’m actually tired of all the characters from 20 years ago… Give me something new. When Overwatch came out, I was excited and interested in the characters. Mainly because they are new, and fairly good stories. Cept for the Murican gunslinger. SADLY, even OW was not spared the Dwarf character and cross-promotion skins of WoW.

I would be bored with a WoW series. There is so much lore to cover, that it would take forever to recount it all. Who would they have to cut out in order to fit in what is needed to tell the stories?

If they did a HOTS animated series.
They have to first figure out what the Nexus is.
Why they have to fight.
Which heroes would be main characters of the show.
What is the main point of the show.
There is so much explaining that needs to be done.

I’d even want the series to be rate M for mature. Raynor is not allowed to be in the series. If they start the series with exposition, they have failed. The best way to tell a “Fish out of water” story is just to literally throw them in and let the characters learn what the heck is going on.

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I’d rather just have a celebrity death match where it’s short after short of dudes battling it out

You know how much shorter the tournament arc would be if they cut out all the story and just showed the fighting? Like 90 episodes of filler gone

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Woah woah woah…You mean you expect them to pay for practical effects??? That’s just crazy talk!

Celebrety Deathmatch is pretty hilarious.

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I’m that someone, and I also heavily dislike Medivh’s actor (looks and performans as well), yet the film was okay enough.

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They did all the work in house. No outsourcing like Bliz did. The opening cinematics of the expansions are always great quality and I’d watch a movie in that style.

Edit: If you’ve watched the Witcher, I think that is a really good adaptation and personally I think in the WOW universe the amount of CGI required is more expensive than pay an actor a few million dollars. Unfortunately I don’t think when the WC movie came out “main stream” animation targetted at adults was as prevalent.

In saying all that I like the warcraft movie but I’d say it was targetted at people who have played the game, but it wasn’t cinematic enough to get non fafns to enjoy it. Wasn’t bad just not good enough IMO.

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That surely helps for good rating, but I am not a LoL fan and still really enjoyed it. So do many others.
The Netflix show of dota for example was just okay like the Warcraft movie.

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Idk, I feel like we’re at the age where a TV series is more favourable especially for a piece of media as expansive as WoW, so I’d personally like it if they made a series out of the games instead of a movie. But that’s just me.

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I think they figured it would sell well no matter what they did because it was WoW. And it didn’t work.

Oh, the misery.

Now with everything Blizzard is being accused of, everybody wants to be their enemy.

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At least that movie was a very easy paycheck for the wonderful actress who played Jean Grey. She got to basically just stand around the entire movie! My mind has basically wiped it from existence.

Speaking of Famke Janssen she was wonderful on some terrible early Netflix original series that was a kind of knock off Twilight, but with gore. The show was dreadful, but she was a delight, she gleefully chewed her way through the scenery for its entire run.

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Oh boy, yes he was very much miscast. This is from someone who only had a vague interest and understanding of the lore at the time, he really stood out, but not in a good way.

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After being spoiled by The Good Place. Every show looks lackluster now :frowning:

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TGP was probably my favorite show of the last 20 years. :slight_smile:

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