Long time Blizzard fan here since 1996 when WarCraft II was released for the Macintosh computer. I've been following the studio with Diablo II, StarCraft, WarCraft III, their expansions until finally sinking into World of WarCraft some 10 years ago. I own every Collector's Edition of WoW and have accomplished many things that cannot be accomplished now due to the game's massive changes. I've attended three Blizzcons and even the one where they announced Sam Raimi as the director of a WarCraft film. WoW has been a huge part in not only my life, but also my friends and family's life. I even got my sister into the game!
Now having said that, this WarCraft movie is one of the most disappointing ventures I've seen in quite a while. Duncan Jones is clearly working with something he loves, but there is no doubt in my mind that he is a 'yes man' to the higher ups at Blizzard who he no doubt idolizes. This imdb.com trivia entry is all I needed to know to set my expectations to their absolute lowest.
"Chris Metzen, the lead story writer at Blizzard Entertainment and the voice of many key characters in the Warcraft series, is also in charge of the story of the film."
When it comes to quality issues involving the story of their products, Chris Metzen is the usual suspect. He is self-indulging, very full of himself and is one of the prime examples of implementing 'creator's pet' in his works. And boy is Chris' pet in this movie. Yeah, Durotan's son is Thrall, the Orc Shaman WarChief from the games. Not only is this character given so revered for his god like status in the universe, Chris actually voices him! And the WarCraft movie didn't shy away from setting Thrall up to be a super important character complete with a Moses like origin story. It's so self-serving.
But looking at the film from a general audience perspective who have never played the games, the film is just a boring drag. Vivek, you stated in your recent post that,
Vivek said:
The current RT score is brutal and ridiculous. Some of the reviews are also dismissing the movie solely cause it's a video game movie, also that it takes itself too seriously. I wonder if they felt the same about the world of Middle Earth.
The big difference between WarCraft and the Middle Earth movies is that Middle Earth gave us characters for the audience to connect with. i.e. Characters who don't know what the heck is going on. They had characters who started out not knowing what the world was like and we, as an audience, learned about that world through their adventures. And this is what World of Warcraft is all about. First time players start out as a little nobody in the world with no money, no gear and no friends. As time progresses, you become part of a guild, earn gold and finally defeat the most ferocious enemies in WarCraft's history! It was perfect. And as a player, you can learn how the world worked at your own pace. What is the story of the Alliance, it's leaders and their conflict? You don't know that from the start, but you can. But with WarCraft the movie, it gives us characters who DO know what kind of a world they live in, who do know how everything works and know the best way in how to deal with it. There's little for audiences to care about because nothing these characters do builds a world for us to get involved in. Instead of using what makes this universe unique to build it up, it falls back on clichés in hopes that people will care, and it's so shallow. I know there's a saying "Show, don't tell" but show is doing ALL THE WORK. And for a franchise with this much lore attached to it, they dropped the ball.
Speaking of clichés, let me talk about Lothar's son before I finish this post. I know he never had a son from the game series so I knew exactly where this was going. They were going to kill him off so Lothar would have a personal vendetta against the Orcs in some fashion. And boy did I laugh out loud when that happened. The film is throwing in all this artificial garbage to make us care, and when the moment comes where you're going to make it dramatic, it goes super PG-13 on it. The film doesn't even care at this point. It wants to do things by the numbers and become a mediocre mess.
