Hi! Alrighty, so - I’m writing a script this summer for a hypothetical Warcraft 3 film that seeks to go through the Warcraft story from the beginning of Warcraft 3 to The culling of stratholme.
And…I’d like to ask some questions about what you guys would like to see in a film like this! Here’s some for starters.
Would you like this to be almost a biography of Arthas’s life? Starting from being raised under Terenas, his induction into the Church of the Holy Light, his ascension to paladinhood, and his experience with Jaina and Kael’thas?
Or should this start at the beginning of the plague, after all of that?
Should we get a note of Thrall’s arc during this? Perhaps have their stories intersect a little bit? Use this as an opportunity to get Jaina’s perspective on the orcs?
I really want to cut it at the end of the Culling, as the fires are raging and Arthas stands bloodstained in Crusaders’ Square. I want to tell a story about good intentions and how easily corruptable they are - and I feel like really giving time to him and his life will make that all the more painful (In a good way) to sit through. What do you think though?
Honestly, an idealized Warcraft movie should start somewhere early with Arthas - in my opinion, with Invincible’s death. The Arthas novel really highlights this well as the start of his downward spiral, subtle as it was in places. A friend of mine once described it as “the loss of his innocence,” and that’s exactly what it was - when you see this young boy sobbing as he loses one of his closest companions, knowing that it was in a very large part his fault, you have a frame of reference for his line of thinking when it comes to the Culling.
After that, you can timeskip obviously, possibly to his induction into the Knights of the Silver Hand. There IS a lot that happened from those two points, but nothing really that can’t be established in interactions with the characters - Uther treats him like his treasured apprentice, Jaina treats him like the love of her life, Muradin treats him like a longstanding friend, and Kael’thas treats him like a terse rival. It shouldn’t be difficult to capture who Arthas Menethil is, and make him likeable, in the span of time a movie usually takes.
Arthas is absolutely worth a read. It stays almost entirely faithful to the events as they happen in the game, and it reveals a lot of solid insight for any would-be film brainstorming.
Her undead-self is a little nuts. I think they are going to turn her into a slasher flick character. Were just going to be walking through the woods on the moon in the next expansion, and run into a village where she is there just hacking the locals apart.
Prologue: Ion Hazzikostas is Fired
Chapter 1: Writing Team is replaced by the writing team for Hearthstone
Epilogue: Warcraft has properly been culled.
