Warcraft Movie [June 10, 2016]

[zeross87]

Originally Posted by aohige

It's quite interesting. The movie is getting a ton of hate from the critics, and receiving overwhelming Rotten as its review.
But the gaming fans who got to see the movie, the core audience the movie is aimed for, are generally praising the film.

It seems to be the case of non-video game enthusiasts just simply not "getting" it.
To be fair, I think one of the goal for cinema adaptation is to make it palatable for the general audience, especially if they intend to broaden the interest and draw people into their franchise. For that purpose, this movie may have failed.

I myself am a long time Warcraft fan & player, so I have no doubt I'll enjoy this film.
Unfortunately due to invested interest, I doubt I can make an objective criticism for it.

i've seen critisism like "there are too many named character we can't remember them all"... well yeah to the people that cant remember that the guy with a crown is the king and the guy with glowing green eyes is the bad guy the film could be difficult to understand

if you don't know the warcraft story like me the begining is a little confusing and like something like a prologue. but then the film is already 2h long i guess choices were made

[Ithekro]

In the previews, I knew who all the orcs were. It was the humans I wasn't knowing well enough.

[AntonKutovoi]

I liked the movie. Surely, there are some problems, but overall it was higly enjoyable and I want to see the sequel.
Can't say I liked Travis Fimmel's acting here, though. He constantly had this "are you serious?" expression on his face, which started to annoy me in the end.

P.S. What I found to be kinda funny is that in the Russian dub Durotan is voiced by the same VA, who voiced Thrall in WoW.

[ImperialKnight]

Originally Posted by zeross87

i've seen critisism like "there are too many named character we can't remember them all"... well yeah to the people that cant remember that the guy with a crown is the king and the guy with glowing green eyes is the bad guy the film could be difficult to understand

I watched the entire Hobbit trilogy and I still can't remember any of the dwarves except maybe Thorin....I mean nobody complained about that.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by ImperialKnight

I watched the entire Hobbit trilogy and I still can't remember any of the dwarves except maybe Thorin....I mean nobody complained about that.

Actually, people complained about that too in The Hobbit movies (especially critics). Just read their reviews for movie 1 & 2 of The Hobbit. Not trying to defend them or anything, just stating the facts.

[Galaxian]

Originally Posted by ImperialKnight

I watched the entire Hobbit trilogy and I still can't remember any of the dwarves except maybe Thorin....I mean nobody complained about that.

That's actually being faithful to the book.

[Ithekro]

Originally Posted by Galaxian

That's actually being faithful to the book.

That is also true.

[Brother Coa]

Originally Posted by HasuMasu

Despite the obvious sequel-hook at the end, I'd much rather have Diablo or Starcraft.

To be honest, after Warcraft: Orcs and Humans came Warcraft II: tides of darkness, Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos, Warcraft 3: the Frozen Throne and finally World of Warcraft and it's several expansions.

With that much material remaining how could not be a sequel bait at the end of a movie?

I will watch this movie for sure since I played the first game and know the story. But from what I have seen the movie captured that feel perfectly.

edit: I just read several critical views about the movie and I ma generally surprised how majority of the critics wrote that the movie is based on MMORPG game. Totally failing to understand that it is based on 1994 video game. xD ( let me just say that nowhere in the review did they mentioned this - it was the fans that corrected them in comments )
They just lost all credibility with their reviews...

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Brother Coa

edit: I just read several critical views about the movie and I ma generally surprised how majority of the critics wrote that the movie is based on MMORPG game. Totally failing to understand that it is based on 1994 video game. xD ( let me just say that nowhere in the review did they mentioned this - it was the fans that corrected them in comments )
They just lost all credibility with their reviews...

Well, mainstream movie critics mostly only follow movies and don’t follow game/anime/manga/comics that religiously (and many of them are not interested in doing research on it coz their job is only reviewing the movie from a newcomers’ POV). That’s pretty much the norm, so I personally won’t dismiss their opinions for that mistake alone. Heck, even movie news site like ScreenRant sometimes made mistakes about some anime/manga/comics. For example, they got the titles, the released year or even the author’s wrong. Let’s just say that things other than movies are not their field of expertise and give them a bit of slack.

[Brother Coa]

Little research never hurt anyone, but from what I have seen it will hurt their reputations.

You don't need to follow the various media, but researching about it even a little can have the effect on your expectations a lot. Like I said, many of them never knew that Warcraft had a story before WoW and dismissed this as 'plain MMORPG plot for a game that has no story'.

I learned to trust only selected few reviewers for movies ( Jeremy, Decker and occasionally Joe form YouTube ) and video games ( TB, gggman, AJ, TheEscapist ). The rest I do not truest even if they said that sky is blue.

[Azuma Denton]

As someone who played the game from Warcraft II, is they lack the setting to set up the lore...
People maybe familiar with how Human and Alliance hierarchy here. But since Warcraft's orc is different from LOTR's orc, they tends to confuse it as brainless mob controlled by demon.

Well, for someone who already played the game, they will reckonize immediately who is Medivh, Ogrim, Durotan, Lothar, and etc.

But for general audience, they will be confused.
For example

Spoiler for Medivh:

They asked, what is the reason Medivh summon Orc to this world? How do he being corrupted in the first place?

[LoweGear]

Me and my brother discussed this film since we watched it together, and we both came to the same conclusion: the film has all of the elements needed for a great movie, unfortunately the final result didn't feel great. It's not that the plot is hard to follow, or that the story is strange, in fact the film has a very easy to understand story at its core. However, the way it's presented is such that the film seems to expect the audience to know certain nuances that and knowledge that only those who have played the original Orcs & Humans have, and thus it feels as though this is a film that can only be appreciated by those who have played the original game.

My brother still wants to do a rewatch of the movie though, as for me I'll give it a pass. The movie is obviously setting up for a sequel, but given the general reception I'm not confident it'll go ahead.

[zeross87]

Originally Posted by Azuma Denton

As someone who played the game from Warcraft II, is they lack the setting to set up the lore...
People maybe familiar with how Human and Alliance hierarchy here. But since Warcraft's orc is different from LOTR's orc, they tends to confuse it as brainless mob controlled by demon.

Well, for someone who already played the game, they will reckonize immediately who is Medivh, Ogrim, Durotan, Lothar, and etc.

But for general audience, they will be confused.
For example

Spoiler for Medivh:

They asked, what is the reason Medivh summon Orc to this world? How do he being corrupted in the first place?

meh i never played anything but warcraft 3 and didn't even remember the story but i just understood everything.
there is some orc that speak and are friendly = ok not all orc are bad
you see them talk about corruption and you see guldan turn the baby green = ok so that how orc bad
meldiv is called "the guardian" and everyone expect him to save their ass = ok its one kickass wizzard that as some special power
you see him with green eyes = ok bad news he is corrupted inside
he say something along the line of "sorry i though i could contain it" and transform into a demon = ok so that how he got corrupted

apart of that i probably couldn't remember all the names and things they said but you don't "need" them to understand the story. like i've seen people say that when the young mage say he is going to ... kirin thor ? and then you see him in the middle of a lot of magic user that say he shouldn't come here again after leaving; well its enough to understand its the consilof the mages
when he first appear you see him start to cast a speel and the human warrior make him shut up by holding his mouth and you see the spell disapear; its enough to understand that the words are important to cast the spell and preventing them will break the magic, you don't need to be told "here is a mage, a mage do magic, to cast a speel amage must concentrate and prononciate the apporpriate formula to summon the power of [whatever]" ...

its those small thing that make the movie great. it expect the spectator to understand thing half said but tell enough to make them clear without it being a "tuto to warcraft"
its true that for those who generally just say "oohhh it got big explosion; some tech music and bad vilain" it may be hard to follow

[Azuma Denton]

^
But then what makes it "Warcraft"? What you describe is no different from generic fantasy tale story.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Azuma Denton

^
But then what makes it "Warcraft"? What you describe is no different from generic fantasy tale story.

To be fair, what makes Warcraft "Warcraft" other than the long series of expansions/stories?

[Brother Coa]

To be fair, what makes Lord of the Rings "Lord of the Rings" and not some plain boring series ( book/movie ) with dwarves, orcs, humans, elves, dragons, eagles and faries?

For Warcraft the answer is Characters and plot that will become important only in 3'rd part of the movie.

For LoTR the answer is Tolken's reference to modern world and his obvious anti-capitalism and industrialism hidden as a secret message in the books.

[Kafriel]

Originally Posted by GDB

To be fair, what makes Warcraft "Warcraft" other than the long series of expansions/stories?

Its characters make the series. Warcraft has an enormous cast and although it contains a lot of story, I believe it is the character background and interactions that help the plot rise above and beyond your average epic battle fantasy tale.

For all the people judging this for being too focused on Warcraft fans, they should probably recall how FF: Advent Children was made...

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Its characters make the series. Warcraft has an enormous cast and although it contains a lot of story, I believe it is the character background and interactions that help the plot rise above and beyond your average epic battle fantasy tale.

While I agree, most of those characters are from Warcraft 2/3, not 1.

[Azuma Denton]

That's what I say, not enough lore.
They could start the movie telling the lore from event in warcraft 3 then move backward to Warcraft 1, hence the title Warcraft: Beginning.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by GDB

To be fair, what makes Warcraft "Warcraft" other than the long series of expansions/stories?

"zug zug"
"work work"