Working on an Arthas movie screenplay. What would you personally like to see? Also, what parts of the lore would you cut out?

Lore Story Forum
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Hello everybody! I am a screenwriter currently working on an Arthas movie script. When I decided to start my project, I knew there was A LOT of lore that needed to be cut from the Arthas story. If you’ve seen the Warcraft movie you will probably agree that there was a bit too much going on for the movie to be any good. There was a lot thrown at you, a lot of useless characters, and most of the characters I just didn’t care for. So, I wanted to make a movie that people who do not understand the lore can follow along with. I will tell you what I have done so far, and you can agree or disagree and also give your opinion. Here are the problems I ran into:

  1. The story is too long to fit into a movie.
    Starting with Ner’zhul, Kil’jaeden’s creation (or so he thought) of the Lich King and basically the whole storyline about why the Lich King exists is… tough to adapt and takes a lot of runtime. To remedy this, I had to cut Arthas and the Lich King’s story A LOT. Here is what I’ve done:
    -Cut the entire backstory of the Lich King. No Ner’zhul, Kil’jaeden, or Burning Legion. In fact, the Burning Legion is cut from the movie completely.
    -Focused one just one part of Arthas journey: Finding out about the plague and killing Mal’Ganis. Arthas entire story after that will need to become a sequel. Up until the Culling of Stratholme and the confrontation with Mal’Ganis, Arthas is a good guy. To see our protagonist be good for half the movie then bad for the other half is just confusing and doesn’t give the audience something to cheer for.

  2. Cut characters.
    Now that we’ve cut the story down, lots of characters will be lost. This includes Illidan, Sylvanas, Medivh, all of the Burning Legion backstory, and all other races besides humans and undead. That’s right, I cut out (unfortunately) almost all of the rest of Azeroth except the Kingdom of Lordaeron. This is simply Arthas attempt at stopping the Scourge before they take over the kingdom (and getting his revenge).

Now that all of that has been cut, who is left? Who are our main characters? It has to be narrowed down to as few people as possible.

Our heroes: Arthas, Jaina, and Uther
Our villains: Mal’Ganis, Kel’Thuzad, and Lady Barov
Minor characters: Antonidas, King Terenas, Darkmaster Gandling
You’re probably thinking Lady Barov… WTF? This character is actually Jandice Barov from Scholomance. She was originally placed into the story as the person who is producing the plague (since there is no Ner’zhul). Scholomance plays a big part in this movie because it is the base for the Cult of the Damned. After writing dialog for her, she just jumped out of the script and I had to give her more lines. May sound stupid, but it works.

Now for the viewer to connect to our hero we need to sympathize with them, and they need flaws that they have to overcome through the movie. This all has to be established in the first act along with his call to action.

What are Arthas flaws in the game?
Pride maybe? I really can’t think of much, so this had to be changed. What I’ve added:

  • He fears he is not strong enough
    -He doesn’t think he inspires his people enough to be king.
    -He is too focused on vengeance (we will get to that)
    -The Light won’t accept him.
    This is all mostly established in one of the first scenes when he spars with Uther. He fails to defeat him because he can’t muster the Light like Uther can. It also introduces Uther and his role as mentor figure. We can also sympathize with him as we all want to be better and stronger people.

Let’s move on to one of the most important parts of the first act. The incident / call to action.
For me, just leaving to find what’s happening isn’t enough to hook the general audience in. I needed a stronger element, something that really sparks the story into being. Here’s what I’ve added:

A coffin is returned to Arthas and King Terenas. It contains the corpse of Arthas mother. The course then gets up as an undead. (There is currently a scene in the script where Arthas kills his undead mother for extra emotional impact, but it’s not decided if that will stay in.) This sparks Arthas into action as he wants to get revenge for who did this to his mother and also save the kingdom from suffering the same fate.

What is the conflict?
Besides the obviously the main conflict of Arthas and company vs the Cult of the Damned there is internal conflict. Arthas need to decide whether his true motivation is vengeance for his mother or to save his people. (I added in the great line with Uther "not vengeance… JUSTICE).

I don’t want to give away the climax of whether Arthas chooses the light and to save his people or to pick up Frostmourne and claim his vengeance. (pretty sure you already know what he will do. Oh yea, Mal’Ganis has Frostmourne in Stratholme, sorry had to cut time again)

So, please share your thoughts, complaints, and questions for me in the comments. I would love to see how you would do it or what changes you would make to my current script. If I destroyed the lore for you and you now hate me, I am sorry. Thanks!

tl;dr: looking for your ideas on how to you would an Arthas movie screenplay

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Cutting it down for time like you have makes it even more nonsensical than it already was imo. “Oh I’m going to purge Stratholme for the good of my people now I’m going to take Frostmourne and kill them all.”

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I see what you’re trying to do here with the retelling of the story and reworking the details and I applaud your creativity. However based on where your going with this I feel that this would work better as a stand alone story outside of the main universe. The creation of the plauge, the Legion’s hand in it, its spread and Mal’ganis are the tipping point of Arthas’ psyche and his future actions because of these events set the stage for the entire franchise. You’re cutting way too much.

This is a typical problem with movie studios taking book and video game source material and then chopping it down for time, while making sure they include some cgi battles. They have lost the story and the important plot points. In an effort to save time and money they lose the reason that the source material because popular in the first place, the story. With that you end up loosing the audience and whatever money you saved you lose because you bombed at the box office because you lost the core fan base.

This also highlights either problem, studios line to do a “one and done” movie on certain plot points and the majority of WoW plot points are too large for one movie even if you cut out certain parts. Too much of the future rides on Arthas and his story is too important to do in one movie. This needs to be done in the right way.

I see that you are trying to establish an alternative to Arthas going bad by including the death of his mother which is a nice touch, but you’ve brought in the theme of vengeance far too early, that’s not until Stratholme. It would be better if that comes from Arthas realizing that even though he was right about the culling, he was set up so that he had no alternative. You’ve also introduced the sword too early. Frostmorne twisted and destroyed what was left of his mind and this was a while after to was tunnel visioned on revenge and mentally spiraling after the events in Lorderon. With the sword in Stratholme, Arthas has no reason to go to Northrend, spend months in the frozen wastes going made and gathering the army of the dead. You’ve cut more than you realize.

With all of the cuts you’ve made Mal’ganis a random demon and given Kel’thuzad and Barov no motivation for creating the Scourge that makes sense within the universe. You can’t cut the legion. I get not making it a huge focus but it’s that’s where all of the problems on Azeroth stem from.

You’ve also left out any reasoning for the utter destruction of Quel’Thalas by not including the legion. Unless you own in putting that in the next movie, but now you’ve over loaded that with too much information that should have been spread out.

There is too much that is missing here. In my opinion the only way to do this properly is in separate steps. First the Kel’thuzad, the cult, and the creation of the plague needs is own Netflix series. It’s too much to do in a movie and while it’s filler information it’s vital information that you can’t move forward without. The should lead into the the death of KT and the deaft of the cult but the plauge has already spread. The movie should pick up with Stratholme happening within the first half and the second half with Arthas in Northrend, and the movie ending with Arthas walking into the wilderness to further descend into madness.

Furthermore the whole franchise should be carefully and methodically planned out in stages like Marvel has done with the Avengers.

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Nice nname

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Do it as a trilogy.

Film 1: Lordaeron Campaign. Ends with Culling of Stratholme.
Film 2: Northrend Campaign. Ends with claiming Frostmourne and returning home to raze Lordaeron.
Film 3: Scourge Campaign. Ends with him putting the crown on his head.

Could probably condense Film 1 and 2 into a single film. I don’t think people are as adverse to long run times as they used to be.

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You don’t cut it down for time.

You make it into a trilogy, Shoot the live action for all three movies at once in New Zealand, but only spend the money for the CGI and post production on the first one, doing the other two if the first one doesn’t bomb in the American market.

I’m sure no one’s ever thought of that.

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I have to agree with all that posted before me and mainly the story needs to be told right and not rush!
The only thing I could add is if not a Movie being possible…

Then make it into a short movie series… I’m sure Netflix and other streaming services would jump at the opportunity on having a high quality popular story like that on their site.

Oh and battle or fighting scenes… NEED to be incredible, but that just me… I love flashy over the top well done fighting scenes… for example that last Arthas vs Illidan? You need to go all out no stops… on that fight for sure! :muscle: :grin:
Again that part of battle, is just me… so you can ignore it! :sweat_smile:

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Ner’zhul never gets enough respect around here.

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This is the plan, the first one has to go over well with mainstream audience though.

Thanks for the feedback! I forgot to mention this is just a launching point, the rest of the lore can be expanded upon later.

If you think about films that launched franchises you’ll notice they are all simple stories that dont go into broader lore at all.

For example, look at Iron Man, it launched the largest movie franchise of all time. There is no MCU lore in the movie. There is no mention of Thanos, Infinity Stones, no other superheroes, or even space. It was just a story about a billionaire without a heart eventually learning to be a good guy.

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But if thats the plan why all the cuts. Three films give you enough time to tell that. You’re a bit too concerned with the mainstream audience. At its height, which was WotLK wow had tens of millions of players and I’m willing to bet that a lot of them played w3. If you lose then with all of these edits the mainstream won’t matter because you’ve already lost your target market.

The mainstream audience also wants to see what all the hype is about. You inform them by giving them the same story that we know. Can you put every detail in there? No. But you can still provide the meat of the story and you’ve removed a lot of that for the sake of time.

And why are people so concerned about the run time. People sat and watched the Harry Potter movie and ALL of them were over 2 hours. Rushing and cutting for the sake of money is only going to cost you more money in the end.

All fair points. It’s just that you chose a HUGE starting point. Iron Man could be told from his own point of view and what happened to him. Arthas’ story is linked to the legion and it doesn’t serve well to cut that out. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just blunt by nature.

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All of that’s fair, although I wouldn’t count the presence of lore out.

Even before Iron Man was proven to be a hit, they teased the Avengers at the end with Nick Fury in the stinger. Moviegoers from the fan base are going to know who Sylvanas is, and for the mainstream audience, you don’t need to explain much more than being the elf leader of the city.

I like the call to action you suggested. I’d just be wary about cutting out some of the more iconic characters touched by Arthas’ deeds, because if you ever did want to incorporate them, you have to recreate the narrative gutpunch that the original story already does well on its own.

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Thanks, plan was to put Sylvanas and Illidan to be in 2nd movie. Teaser in post credits. Love the thread with all the suggestions.

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The main reason I’ve always been turned off by ideas about an Arthas movie before anything else, is that logically the film ends with him becoming the Lich King. But that would mean skipping over Warcraft 3’s pivotal moment, the Battle of Mount Hyjal, which imo is akin to the final battle scene in Avengers Endgame. That scene in Endgame was probably one of the most visually and emotionally overwhelming scenes I’ve ever seen in my life and I want the Warcraft film franchise to be able to capture that same feeling.

But I’m not an idiot. That moment needs to be earned and Endgame had earned it by spending nearly a decade building up to that scene. Same logic and care must be applied to Warcraft. Moments, visual and emotional, need to be earned. Cutting corners just to get to the meat will lead to pivotal moments in Arthas’ story falling flat.

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It was a pay off from over a decade of ground work. I don’t think the Battle of Mount Hyjal necessarily needs to be the same spectacle, or needs to have nearly as much ground work.

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Endgame had various superheroes from various backgrounds working together to defeat a common enemy.

Mount Hyjal had various races from different corners of the world (and planet) working together to defeat a common enemy.

I’m also not saying we need to wait an entire decade for a Warcraft 3 movie, just that everything needs to be done right to get that big payoff.

edit: And lastly, I’m not actually opposed to the idea of an Arthas movie. I’m just opposed to that story being told so soon in a hypothetical Warcraft Film Universe. Which is why I’d rather any potential Warcraft movie be a follow up to the first film we got.

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Why…

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And they try to start a cinematic universe so they try to put in as much references to various characters (even really minor ones) which just takes the audience out of the movie very quickly. It is the mistake that the DCEU made in Batman vs Superman with the “lets watch Wonder Women open up some emails about characters that aren’t involved in this movie” scene and Universals attempt to reboot their “dark universe” (lawl).

They fail to notice that the reason why the MCU became a massive success the way it did was because Marvel Studios took things slow. The very idea of a shared universe began in a post credit scene and for most of the MCU that is where the expanding universe was presented.

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I’ll finance the entire thing on your name alone.

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Make it about another DK if you ask me. Avoid naming names too.

Could end up making your own tv series.

Good hunting