God this movie was bad. Bad casting, terrible lines, and just too much setup. They should have dropped the Lotharmar story with his son, focus on kadghar with Garona. You don’t need to cram 2 books into one film. You defiantly can also tell that this movie was in a budget and blew the budget on the orcs.
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I got 30 minutes into the film before leaving.
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With a movie like Warcraft you go the Star Wars route.
Start with the Lich King and make prequels when you got the audience.
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its between a B and a C movie imo
war1 story is just bad.
I found it was more of a Movie for Warcraft fans, anyone who didn’t play Warcraft games would probably not understand all of it.
Also I think if they did a movie revolving around Goldshire would have been better. 
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Needed to be an animated Netflix series to stand a chance, sort of like Castlevania
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The movie was pretty meh, and I say that as someone who sits squarely in the demographic it was aimed at.
Going for the WC1 story was a terrible idea and made the movie utterly incomprehensible for those who don’t already have a good grasp on the story.
I think if you’re trying to get people into a universe as complex as Warcrafts can be, a series is a far better way of doing it, pointing to Witcher, DOTA Dragons Blood, Castlevania and Arcane as some recent(ish) examples.
That gives you time to establish the setting and characters and not try and cram everything into a movie to be watched in a single sitting.
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I’ve expressed my thoughts on the movie in a few other threads on the topic. To sum it up in a few bullet points:
- Too much happening in too short of a runtime
- Orc half good in both CG and performance from actors
- Human half meandering between bad and mediocre
- Human half should’ve been CG too, live action didn’t mesh well with Warcraft stylized CG orcs
I think they might have actually been better off if they made the first movie almost entirely about the situation on Draenor and how it came to be, with Azeroth and characters on it only showing up in the latter half as things begin to line up for the Dark Portal to be opened. That would’ve given the second movie a lot more time to expand on the orcs coming through the Dark Portal and Stormwind’s reaction to it all, as well as give the audience a lot more reason to care about the orcs.
It left a lot to be desired. Which is pretty on par with the company that owns the franchise.
A franchise like Warcraft is destined to fail if they try and do live action.
It just doesn’t work.
The powers, the size of humans vs orcs.
It just feels fake and unbelievable.
Look at the abomination that was the live action dbz.
What they need to do is a full CGI film.
There were some great shorts in BFA.
It’s 100% do able.
I found it likeable enough. I went expecting to hate it completely based on the amount of heat it was getting here, but I didn’t. I hate they cut Metzen’s part out; he didn’t deserve that. But it had its good moments, and some of the bits of humor were well done (Khadgar’s line after sheeping the prison guard tops them).
The problem as others have said was that they tried to cram too much into too little space. This didn’t need to be a movie; it needed to be a Netflix series of about 10 parts, just for the WC1 era.
The other issue is that the best story from original WoW days is the Arthas story. Why not film that one? Because it’s really, really similar to the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader story, especially the ending in Icecrown. Close enough to always have been derivative in my mind. If they had led with that, I don’t think it would have gone over well with the non-playing public.
I’ve said this before – it’s like every time someone tries to film C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” series. The best book in the series, the one that is edge-of-your-seat action and drama from opening to close, is the last book, “The Last Battle.” But you have to tell the other six stories for that one to make sense. And invariably, production companies get bogged down in “The Silver Chair” or “The Horse and His Boy” and never get to the really big stuff at the end. Unless Warcraft is reimagined as a series, we’ll never see the stories of TBC, Wrath or especially MoP or Legion – and even then, you’ll have a C.S. Lewis problem on your hands because you’ll have to discuss WoD. The last two xpacs are not worthy of film treatment of any kind, in my opinion.
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I don’t think it did Warcraft justice but then again many movies with vast amounts to pick from often don’t either.
A TV series would be much better. Game of Thrones being a good example, at least for several of its seasons. Try condensing GoT into a single movie and it’s bound to be just another cliche knights and dragons movie.
In typical movie fashion you don’t really “connect” with many of the characters and things are thrown at you. For example, if we started in the same time period of the Warcraft Movie maybe there is a deeper dive into Medivhs corruption, back story on Guldan to be a more sympathetic villian (which you see a little Of in the digital shorts Blizzard made), or even more of Khadgar being a fledgling mage.
I don’t know how popular it would be right now with all the downs Blizzard has had, but if a Warcraft TV series is anything like the Arcane series for League of Legends it would be a hit. Lots of potential is there, yet I know Blizzard is fond of Wasted potential and Late ideas.
Arthas is more of a dark version of King Arthur. Hell, it’s nearly his name!
However, the point is noted as that is a nuance that would be lost on a fair amount of folks. Plenty of folks would likely equate paladins with Jedi and death knights with Sith.
Never read any of those books or saw any of the various live action film adaptations. I vaguely remember at least one animated version I saw as a kid. However, you bring up an excellent point and likely said it better than I have.
Everyone apparently wanted WC3 or Wrath from step one. Hell, some have said go the Star Wars route: do Wrath, then do prequels (while likely also failing to realize the full backstory as to why George Lucas did things the way he did, or the fact that he got EXTREMELY lucky with that first film)
Everyone however is failing to understand that with as much backstory as this series has, you really CAN’T do that. It’d be like adapting LotR, ignoring FotR/TTT, and starting with RotK. To use another famously hard to adapt series, it would be like attempting to adapt The Dark Tower and deciding that you were going to start with Wolves of the Calla, especially considering how much of a mind screw parts of that book are.
Video games in particular just seem to be really hard to adapt and fall on two ends of the spectrum. They are either too simple in terms of plot or concept to adapt into a decent live action film and generally require a TON of liberties to be taken (Super Mario), or they are so plot heavy that you can’t just skip to the most interesting parts, yet at the same time the road to get to those parts is a long one, and the story might not do well if condensed down to two hours (Warcraft)
There are some things that I feel wouldn’t be totally impossible for an adaptation (Metal Gear comes to mind if you keep everything absolutely straightforward and don’t veer into the weirdness the series is known for), but considering how often so many of them get botched, it’s really hard to say what will be the project that exceeds all expectations.
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I don’t like you insinuating I’m stupid. 
I mean, I was in gifted, and in high school I was a good dungeon master with ideas and stuff. In my 20’s I was an aspiring sci-fi writer with an actual catalogue, though mostly unpublished because the school I ended up going to because it was in my town hated my content (I got good grades so I was doing something right by them, they just hated my content even if they liked my sentences I guess).
Nowadays I can’t sit and write either. I’ve been wrecked and it is not my fault, that stuff happened with the pills and all because I was about to unsub from life as it were. I guess action needed to be taken to keep me here, which is really so my friends and family don’t need to go through loss issues more so than because I even want to be here.
Then I hit my 30’s and insanity set in. The pills broke my brain. Guess I am stupid since I keep letting this forum get to me. I hated mass media even before the pills though, because they craft every story the same because the masses are like “safe consistent mindless fun is all there is, cause who has time to think!”
I still think, like, a lot. I just can’t hold attention on a screen anymore. Not even talking over it seems to work, I’m just thoroughly unengaged with the world at large. My wife keeps incorrectly thinking I’m mad at her and really I’m just mad at the world like it’s always been. No place for me.
Thanks for the Carlin clip, I’ve seen it. I am not the problem though, because I don’t pay dime 1 into entertainment. They still are not catering to me even if they make every product with ADD like mine in mind, it means nothing if I’m uninterested before I even watch.
Even this game is bought and paid for by a benefactor who wants me to play classic with him, so instead of forking over the 15 I play classic a couple times a week and we duo. The rest of my time is up to me so I made this character instead of filling pocopop’s console, pretty much. This will be my third 60 mage, but what can I say I wouldn’t delete or race change my human or BE, and felt I hadn’t given the new worgen model a fair shot in the 10 minutes I played my druid. Mage and pally are getting to be the only classes I play and I just keep moving more of those up with different races.
I have (or at least had, according to a college friend) “graduate level knowledge in at least 3 subjects.” I have read so far into norse mythology and the sagas that I could live like those people and know how to do it. Afaic that’s real living. I am also very well versed in world religions/mythologies and pharmacology, and there’s probably more I was into back then (that was told to me in like 05) but the brain has shriveled with the pills and lack of stimulation.
I’m just a malcontent when it comes to “entertainment” in general. I tend to resent it and it doesn’t serve me, it diminishes me. All of it. I’ve played this game for 15 years and it’s just made me feel like a yutz. Then pills obliterated my attention span so there really is nothing better, at least when I play this I can queue up a dungeon, run it, then shut down no harm no foul.
I wanted to get back into classic especially wrath because it brought queues and was just a stellar expansion, but I was told the things I like “aren’t classicy enough” so my opinion there doesn’t count. Eff me I guess, but eff them too for splitting the player base YET AGAIN.
But I ramble. Whatever, I spent time writing it I’m sure as hell going to post it. Good day to you!
You’ll appreciate this, since we’re talking about similarities between Arthur and Arthas …
The lead hero of “The Last Battle” is a very knight/paladin-like, lawful good character named … Tirian.
Also, Tolkein and Lewis were good friends in real life and contemporaries. Their most memorable works were being written simultaneously while both were alive. To one degree or another, each lent suggestions to the other, enjoying somewhat of the same relationship Truman Capote had with Nelle Harper Lee. The point being, whether it’s LotR or the Narnia series, the work is so big that the amount of capital it would take to tell them is massive. LotR found a backer; Narnia has had several fits and starts at it, with Walden Media getting the first three books to movies in the 2000s-2010s before abandoning it. Telling “The Last Battle” on screen with the scope it deserves could only be done with a massive budget, and with Lewis’ works being overtly Christian in allegory, the chance any Hollywood studio will give it its due is very unlikely.
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The Orcs were alright, Ragnar…I mean Lothar was meh
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I liked it. but people who aren’t wow fans might not be able to appreciate it.
The movie was OK. Not horrible. I am not sure if being a fan made it better or worse.
Had I never been a fan, I might have found it overly long and tedious with a lot of strangely dark scenes (as far as lighting). But OK enough.
Being a fan was a double edged sword. I did a little internal cheer when I saw a gryphon. I loved all the little details. But Garona should have been a bit more gruff. Maybe a Rhonda Rousey type. And the High Elves looked goofy as heck. I was looking forward to seeing how Blizz would depict High Elves… and then I was glad their appearance was brief. They should have gone for a simpler Elf look, but they went overboard.
Over all, 2 out of 5 stars. Tolerable, mildly entertaining, not completely awful. Needs a lot of improvement for future projects.
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I recall the movie seeming like an exceptionally long, very beautiful cutscene, one that neither surprised nor excited me in any way. It was neat to come together with other WoW players, but the only enjoyment I could garner from the film was recognizing places I’d been in-game. I’ve never felt compelled to watch it again.
i hear they’re going to remake it, as its not PC for the time.