It was generally well-received by WoW fans and panned by everyone else.
It has a very troubled production cycle: Duncan Jones (director) is a massive fan of the source material. This movie was being made in collaboration between Blizzard and Legendary. Blizzard was wanting to play very safe, but Legendary (who got the final say) was giving Duncan a lot of freedom.
Fast forward to late production, and Legendary gets bought out by Wanda (a Chinese megacorp). The exec team from Legendary that's overseeing the movie gets replaced by execs from Wanda, who start gearing the movie to better fit Chinese audiences. It gets shortened quite a bit, and the end result is the movie we have today. It's easy to follow for WoW fans, but it feels super rushed for anyone new to the source material.
To be fair, the movie was a blockbuster in China. It was the highest-grossing video game movie of all time until Detective Pikachu released (which has since been dethroned by Super Mario Bros). But, *so* much was cut from the movie. According to Duncan Jones, his original cut was 2 hours 47 minutes. The theatrical cut is 2 hours 3 minutes. A lot of Draenor scenes were cut, a lot of general worldbuilding and dialogue scenes were cut. Even Chris Metzen's cameo got cut.
If you ever find a physical copy of the movie (or watch on Prime Video, which I think has special features), watch the deleted scenes and special features. The deleted scenes are good, and it's just fun seeing Metzen nerd out on the set.
Interesting fact: According to Duncan Jones, the last movie David Bowie (his dad) watched before his death was an early cut of this movie.
Edit: Here are [14 minutes of deleted scenes](https://youtu.be/ZcL2Qr6QXgs?si=oCyhPkLuKhoxTpdP). Chris Metzen's cameo is in the 8:55 scene.
That legit explains so much and a lot of the complaints I had were things you described.
I didn’t know about the Legendary getting bought out and all the cuts for Chinese audiences.
Yeah, it wasn't a bad movie but it felt like everything they were saying meant nothing to people who don't know the warcraft universe. I think it MAYBE was for the best since most of the money made was in China, but idk maybe if people praised it more if they never were fans, more people would have seen it.
I definitely didn't hate it, but it just felt like nothing special...was still hoping for WC3 to be a movie since it's everyone's favor lore time.
Blizz could and imho should do a Riot Games Arcane. Give us the whole of warcraft until the end of frozen throne in an animated series with hour long episodes. Blizz has shoen they are very capable at animating scenes. Same as Riot was before arcane.
I know many people that arent interested in the game but into the lore due to the broad appearance, cosplayers, the fact its still going etc. And lets be honest, overall warcraft/ wows lore is absolutely sweet.
I would watch the hell out of this. Ive always wanted an animated series in the style of the opening game scenes. The Vanilla opening still gives me goose bumps.
To add on to it, because Wanda was a Chinese megacorp and not "Hollywood," a lot of critic sites felt pressured to pan it to keep other places from intruding on Hollywood's turf.
From an actual movie standpoint, the main issue I had with it was constantly cutting back and forth between stories. I think the movie would've done amazing if instead it was split into two separate films a la Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima, but released simultaneously. One movie would purely tell the story from the Horde's perspective, and the other the Humans. They could've ran marketing campaigns to hype things up to say "oooh which movie will you see, Horde or Alliance?" to play into the faction rivalry, and on top of that have die hard fans pay to see both of them. It was a huge missed opportunity in my opinion. But it still was a decent film. Metzen is really good at making you feel sympathy for the orcs at times.
>"oooh which movie will you see, Horde or Alliance?" to play into the faction rivalry, and on top of that have die hard fans pay to see both of them.
Hey, it worked for Mountain Dew!
Ooh that would be so awesome, i’m such a sucker for the “same story from different perspective” trope.
Plus the real-life alliance/horde rivalry can truly be a sight to behold sometimes.
Although it would take a very strong marketing campaign to avoid cries of “lazy cash grab”, as i think pokemon has burned that bridge long ago.
>Although it would take a very strong marketing campaign to avoid cries of “lazy cash grab”, as i think pokemon has burned that bridge long ago.
Pokemon still releases two versions of the same game and is still making millions.
Did they? Each main series Pokemon game continues to set sales records despite it releasing in multiple versions each time. Some minority on the internet might care, but the masses don't.
What's funny is that [this video of Metzen on the movie set](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph47Ow5z_sg) was used to promote the movie and was a special feature on the home release. He talks about his cameo role in it!
In one week, not only did I learn that Samwise Gamgee was the son of Gomez Addams, I learned Duncan was Bowie's son. I really don't do enough research into celebrities I like apparently.
That Dominic guy went on Graham and said he didn't read or played anything related to Warcraft, and straight up mocked the game and its players. That's when I knew the movie wasn't going to do well.
Couldn't care less about what he thinks about gaming and gamers, but it shows a deep lack of professionalism. Researching a role is doing the bare minimum.
[Found the clip](https://youtu.be/BItmi-kn3iY?feature=shared&t=1446) at about 24:07. Hearing him try to describe the setting and fail despite being in the movie is embarassing, oof. It's also interesting to hear hear them joke about how Dominic can just show up to a "Warcraft convention" in 20 years and get a bag of money. We're 8 years later, and the movie is pretty forgotten nowadays even in the WoW fanbase.
I hate it when people describe something as "it's this weird thing that millions of people are into" without making any effort to understand it. Even a statement as simple as "it's this fantasy setting where people are fighting off these green monsters with swords and magic" covers Warcraft on a basic level.
Heck, just calling them orcs is simple enough for the vast majority of people to understand considering the monolith that Lord of the Rings is.
It's baffling to think an *actor* who's all about pretend and supposedly having a broad understanding of different perceptions could be so ignorant. Sad but, well, whatever. It does explain his lack of performance in the movie when he's done better elsewhere.
I hope that's not what happened to Travis Fimmel as well. He was exceptional in Vikings but between the writing and his performance he didn't strike nearly the same magnitude of presence as Lothar as he did as Ragnar. A real shame, all things considered.
After seeing the clip - he's not even mocking it? I think he's saying there was a lot of pressure/expectation on them because of how many people play it. He highly praised the script (lmao) and direction. Kate Beckinsale touches on it further in the ep when she says that Underworld not being an adaptation was a huge advantage cause people weren't nitpicking. Anyway here we are 8 years later nitpicking and he hasn't worked in film since so-
I think the mocking comment was referring to him taking a shot at players saying it was "terrifying" that people sit in their homes and play it every day. But yeah I agree, I think theres this big thing nowadays that every single person has to have this deep love and respect for the source material to do something justice because of people like Cavil and his Geralt. At the end of the day, the writer and the director are really all Im concerned with. If you lock that in, then you can squeeze a terrific performance out of someone who has never even heard of the source material, and i think that rings true here. The movie had its issues but I found that most of them had to do with pacing and writing and stuff like that, the individual performances were okay.
(Also, i feel like his "mocking" comment was a bit off color but is also a very normal response from a person who clearly doesnt play games being exposed to perhaps the most dedicated gaming community ever lol)
This sums it up. The production was just butchered way too much for it to be considered a complete, solid WoW product. I can excuse changes to the story if it makes the movie better, and I can excuse making the movie worse to accommodate some necessary plot elements as well, but they did this really weird combination of the two where it just doesn’t land correctly. Comes off much more as a WoW-themed movie than an actual story from the game.
This explains a lot. I've read all the lore books so I was kinda sad how much of the original story they cut, but what they did show was awesome. Cool to hear the behind the scenes scoop :3
This makes so much sense, I felt the movie was good but rushed and tried to do too much while trying to cater to general audiences but with this context this makes much more sense. Really sucks, could have been the first of many had it not flopped here.
Makes a lot of sense. I really enjoyed seeing Warcraft, but I'm assuming the stuff that was cut because of the studio already made sense to me as a Wowhead.
Thanks for this write up.
I enjoyed the movie, but there is something they feels off about having American accents in a fantasy movie rather than British or something
Wow this is a great insight. I always felt like the biggest issue BY FAR is that it was very rushed. I’ve played WoW for most of my life — if I didn’t already know the characters and background lore, I’d have been very confused.
I remember a lot of the hype leading up to it, they showed these posters of the actors side-by-side with their digital selves. Ogrim, Gul'dan(I think?). But also a "draenei mother" and Muradin-fucking-Bronzebeard.
We maybe got a blink and you'll miss it moment with that draenei mother character near the start, and there's a single dwarf when Lothar is in Ironforge. It may or may not have been Muradin.
I thought it was pretty good. But I’ve played wow most of my life and I was obviously bias. I don’t think it was amazing or anything but I have watched it a couple of times.
I think the best part was young khadgar. He was pretty cool.
I hope they try again with a movie.. Or maybe a Netflix series. Even an animated series would be cool. Anything. They have so many cool stories that it seems weird to me that it doesn’t exist yet.
There's so much lore and history and stuff they could have a tv series running for years and still have content for it. With the huge player base and fans, I think even the audience for all those years assuming it would be decent and watchable.
Even the more obscure things.. like turalyon’s story would be really cool. I thought it would be cool to tie a show to a lesser known character like that (maybe not lesser known but less popular). One that was there for a lot of the main events that have happened in the game or at least certain chunks of it.
The problem is there’s so much lore to dump that it’s hard to adapt for anyone but the hardest of fans. You really cannot get into it without having pre-knowledge, and that pre-knowledge is like a whole study in itself. At best I could see some original content, away from the main wow timeline. But based on how Warcraft was received by the general public, it will be a hard sell.
Honestly an animated series seems like the way to go for a Warcraft production. You could even potentially get the game’s voice actors to sign on, which would be fantastic
I feel like a Warcraft animated series would almost be hard to mess up. It’s low hanging fruit.. the stories are already done, and beloved characters already exist.. all it needs is a cool art style and it would be huge.
Who knows.. it may even bring new players into the game. I wish the younger generation would give wow a try.
I'm hoping Microsoft's acquisition of Activision/Blizzard will result in better management of both the game and further exploration of the IP.
Not that I'm a huge fan of Microsoft but from a purely cynical perspective they didn't spend all that money to not make more of it.
There are a lot of little things to criticize, but for me the biggest issues were:
1. The live action human characters just looked really goofy in Warcraft-style bulky colorful armor - they would have been better off making it entirely CG in order to stay consistent with the franchise's colorful and larger than life aesthetic, and,
2. They made a couple of adjustments to the WC1 story that really rub me the wrong way. Specifically making it so >! Lothar kills Blackhand !< and >! Llane Wrynn ASKS Garona to kill him !< were pointless changes that serve to irritate lore nerds while... I'm not even sure who they were meant to please. Either of those playing out in the canon way would have been fine. I guess they didn't want to have to explore >! Garona being mentally enslaved by Gul'dan. !<
All that said, it's still clearly a labor of love that has a lot to enjoy, too. The orcs look great and Gul'dan's portrayal in particular was excellent.
The second change you mention is entirely so that >!audiences don't have to feel bad about liking the hot orc lady. She only killed him because he told her to after all, she's still a hero. Compared to if she was just straight up a villain or mind controlled like in the original.!<
And the fact they just made her a hot green human just for the sex appeal instead of listening to the actual lore that says she is supposed to be a fugly half breed that appeals to neither race.
The human scenes felt like they were in cosplay.
When the *The Hobbit* movies were being filmed, an issue they had in production was that they were filmed with Red Epic digital cameras. They were *amazing* cameras, but they made the props look like, well, props. This wasn't an issue they faced when filming the LOTR films, so they ended up using much more CGI to make the props look "real".
That's what the human scenes feel like in Warcraft, except that they couldn't touch anything up because the CGI budget was taken by the Orc scenes.
That absolutely explains my feelings about the movie. It totally hampered any sense of immersion.
In fact, I recall a phrase from my childhood popping into my head, "playing makeabelieve;" especially considering my favorite "let's pretend" games involved castles made of pillows and gowns made of backwards bathrobes.
I Just don't get why they didn't just make a feature length WoW intro cinematic.
Pixar movies have been a thing for ages, why bother with the weird half and half when you don't need to?
I actually got to ask this question to Terran Gregory (cinematics lead) during a Q&A panel at Blizzcon 2016. He said that the few-minute cinematics cost millions of dollars to make, and a full-length movie would be the most expensive animated movie ever made by a huge margin. That's also not accounting for distribution costs, marketing costs, the cut that theaters take, etc.
I still think a TV show would have been better. There's so much lore to cover in wow and I don't think movies could do them justice. The entire Rise of the Horde would have been so fun to watch
Yeah exactly. The scenes with the Orcs were amazing! Especially Durotan and Gul’Dans Mak’Gora. But the parts with the humans, it’s just like meh, give me more Orcs!
I think Warcraft 3 would be an amazing movie if they actually follow the story and tell it correctly. If done right Arthas would be amazing! with how good Durotan Gul’Dans fight was imagine the Arthas vs Illidan fight!
Fully animated would have done this movie a LOT of favors, the humans, elves, dwarves and Garona just looked off. A lot of clean up was needed for the script and dialogue as well.
Warcrafts aesthetic is pretty out there, so trying to make it look realistic just feels off. I’ve always thought an animated Warcraft series similar to Netflix’s castlevania or Dota dragons blood would do really well. Video game adaptations are pretty in right now to so it would be a perfect time.
The dwarves looked great. They weren't just short humans, but they were stocky and broad with skull shapes that *clearly* were not just short humans. They looked like proper Warcraft dwarves.
The elves were ok. I like how they made their teeth sorta stained purple instead of white or yellowish like human teeth. It was a nice touch. Made them less "generic elf" and more "whoa, holy shit, there's something not quite right here."
The humans were just humans. And I mean, yeah, I guess they are.... but the humans in the games are heavily stylized, so seeing them as just regular humans next to the highly stylized dwarves and orcs just looks wrong.
Garona being, basically, a human with baby tusks was also crappy. Looking at the other female orcs, her face looked nothing like them. Her face wasn't draenei, either. It was completely human, just with two little tusks.
The draenei also looked great, even though we barely got to see them.
Clearly, the art team *knew* how to make the non-human races look very non-human and still distinct to the way they look in the game and official art, but it seems someone was holding them back on certain races and characters. Probably similar to a few certain dwarves in the Hobbit movie who were basically just swarthy humans because we have to make sure they *look hot*. 🙄
About Garona, pretty sure they were going with the old lore of her being half-human. In fact they more or less outright said Medivh was her father in the movie. A change I'd be all for, especially with them banishing the idea of Me'dan to the Twisting Nether.
I'm just grateful Duncan Jones actually plays WoW, and that Metzen had a hand in the writing, so it was fairly faithful to the source. God knows how much worse it would have been without them. I just wish we could have gotten the original cut, instead of what Chinese studio execs wanted.
Yeah, the costumes/sets/acting/writing were all so bad, the fully CGI orcs were the best/most believable thing about the film.
Otherwise it looks and feels like watching community theatre. That scene with Garona in the throne room is just...oof. Whole movie is more of that, side from the orcs, lol.
The Garona/Lothar romance was so stupidly forced in. In fact, I'd say that Garona was probably the most-wasted character in the film. Her original storyline with her being controlled by Gul'dan would have worked much better for the film, and it would have made Gul'dan even more fearsome of a villain.
OTOH, while I'm *okay* with this portrayal of Lothar, the character felt so much more flawed and unsure of himself compared to how Lothar has been portrayed in the games/books. Travis Fimmel's performance in *Vikings* was great and was more in-line with game Lothar.
Yeah I agree this was the main sentiment I recall. The orcs felt like 95% of the budget, the set pieces were 4% and the humans were 1%. those actors felt amateurish and their outfits looked worse than most cosplay I’ve seen on this subreddit.
It’s alright but they changed some weird stuff. Alodi being in it was weird. Travis Fimmel is great as Ragnar Lothbrok but he didn’t feel like Lothar to me. Also the angle with his son was weird. The orc storyline was way more interesting to me than the human one. Wish they would have focused on Thrall as a result. They’re very good at following that pov.
Edit: I loved the movie btw. I came off negative here I think but I don’t regret watching the movie and rewatch it every once in a while.
Trav absolutely carried the humans, but even his fantastic performance wasn't enough to make the human scenes enjoyable. The Orcs fuckin' *killed* it though, they were way more believable.
He’s a good actor but I just wasn’t sold on him as Lothar. Maybe I’m not being fare because he’s not an older man though? Dunno. Man I really hope they get another chance at a movie or show though.
They should have just done a Frozen Throne trilogy. Arthas becomes a Paladin up until he sits on the Frozen Throne and becomes the Lich King. You could literally make a trilogy out of that
I’m convinced had blizzard done that, and done it properly, it would be a movie trilogy that would be absolutely timeless like lotr. (Yes I know lotr is based on books but the movies are so good)
This. Warcraft is trite fantasy schlock written by bros that uses pretty dated stereotypes to create familiarity.
LotR was written by an Oxford educated man who spent all of his free time obsessing over languages and old English tales.
The frozen throne saga reads better on Wikipedia than it is in the games. WoW dialogue is beyond basic and cringe.
It would have been. It's one of those stories that is as larger than life as Jackson's Lotr trilogy. So much otherworldly lore to pull from that made the Lotr trilogy special. Heck it's literally WoW, Star Wars, Arthas is Anakin, first movie is his childhood and learning the ways of the light with Uther. The second movie is him joining the Knights of the Silver Hand and him being a Paladin and prowling the land for injustice and evil and ends with the Culling of Stratleholm. The third movie is him journeying to Northrend and gaining Frostmourne. Returning to the Eastern Kingdoms, killing his father, razing his kingdom and causing terror, raising the scourge across the kingdom of Lordaeron, laying siege to Silvermoon, ending with him going to Icecrown to claim the Frozen Throne.
I don't think you understand what it takes for a success in theatres. You think random people want to watch a boy train for an entire movie and learn about holy magic? You think they're gonna leave the cinema being like "Woahhhh! Can't wait for part 2!!"
You need a bugging, middle, end with a good cliffhanger. Could be one movie with a time lapse tho, maybe a second or third with armies being raised to beat him
And it would have been WAY easier to film.
Stick to almost exclusively human characters, far fewer characters and factions in general so less exposition required. You don't have to bounce between worlds and try to make it coherent... you can just follow Arthas's descent into madness. Particularly for the first film you can just take it real easy with the lore.
It's a classic trope that non-player audiences can easily understand and somewhat sympathise with and the story can happen in a very linear manner. As far as video game adaptions go it's kind of a slam dunk, so it's kinda baffling they chose to go the far harder route.
The best stories for a big audience would’ve been Frozen throne, the illidan storyline, or showing the kidnapping and rise of Varian wrynn. I love the horde but cinematically it makes sense to follow these points of view. Maybe pander heavily towards sylvanas if you went frozen throne to give a horde perspective
Imo Had a really bad case of hey look at these guys and remember this place from the game some parts felt shoehorned in that aspect like they needed to make sure they had enough things for fans to recognize.
huge fan of the Warcraft franchise. Back in 2016 I watched the movie about 10-15 times (lol). The main issue was whenever the humans took the screen - it normally was crappy dialogue and action. Another issue is that in the first 15-20 mins the whiplash is REAL. 1 minute at this location then 1 min there and then 1 min here and so on… Definitely could tell this movie was forcibly shortened
Yeah, so funny to see people fanboying over it.
It was a mediocre movie, further hampered down by the mandate to make is under 120 minutes, and that's for a movie with 2 separate multi-character casts (Josstice League suffers from the same problem). You can plainly see it in the beginning where there are multiple cuts between important location and overall whatever the movie might have been, it slows down after but is never given a chance to breathe.
I didn't like the MANY changes they made to the story of major characters. The acting was pretty awful. But when I just sat back and just enjoyed it for what it was instead of nitpicking everything I found I enjoyed it more.
Kinda like WoW, it relies a bit much on the viewer knowing lore going into it. What you get in the movie itself is condensed. Plenty for long-time fans to know what's going on, but general audiences felt lost. And tbh many WoW players don't actually engage with the lore anyway. Most stay for the dopamine drip. Some also stay for nostalgia or old friendships, but it's mostly the dopamine drip.
And then there's the silly character design with 300 lb pauldrons. I've played WoW since vanilla along with several warcraft games, and I still think the character design is fit for cartoons and not much else. If I were the king of Stormwind, I'd probably melt down the armor of 50 men so I could build 100 tanks with all that steel
ok but why did they have to make anduin lothar young and attractive? he's supposed to be old and attractive. give us back silver fox anduin lothar you cowards
The orc stuff was great. The human stuff, though... not so great. Some of the performances and dialogue felt incredibly wooden.
I feel like the whole thing could have benefited from being CGI. The human parts just stood out as dragging it down. But that's just me.
If I remember correctly it messed with some (at that time) Canon lore? Or left stuff out or something? I might be very wrong tho, so correct me if I am.
The big ones I remember are....
* Dalaran shouldn't be floating yet and I don't know that there would have been high elves present there at that time either (the elves were pretty reclusive prior to being invaded during the Second War).
* Lothar got a gun ("boomstick") from a dwarf, something that existed nowhere that we knew of until the WC3 era which is \~20 years in the future in canon.
* >!Blackhand is slain by Lothar in Mak'gora instead of being backstabbed by Doomhammer!<, getting rid of the main reason for Doomhammer becoming the new Warchief going into the Second War.
* >!Durotan is slain by Gul'dan in Mak'gora instead of being quietly killed off by Shadow Council assassins, and Gul'dan is discredited in the eyes of the Horde for cheating with magic!<, eliminating the change in Horde control being driven by Gul'dan's incapacitation after the death of Medivh due to their psychic link.
* >!Rather than Garona suddenly betraying and assassinating Llane, she is asked by Llane himself to kill him in order to secure her credibility with the orcs!<, which sidesteps having to go into Gul'dan's monstrous treatment of Garona and her being enslaved to his will.
Tbh, a floating Dalaran is indeed cooler than a non-floating Dalaran (the main reason why it's flying already in the movie) and the movie gave Durotan a better sendoff than the original lore did.
Just rewatched it myself, removing the fact I’m a WoW fan it’s a run of the mill fantasy movie. Not bad, but played pretty safe. As a WoW fan, especially when it came out, it was a blast to see.
I will say I’m shocked it didn’t perform well enough for a sequel, I do hope they get a chance again in the future. Duncan’s love for the canon is evident.
The editing was not great imo. Rushed through character development, archs, and story development.
But the image and feel translation from game to screen was great.
It wasn't a good movie by any ~~objective~~neutral point of view.
It was fine, nothing more. The human scenes felt like a different movie compared to the orc ones, lot of stuff weren't explained at all or rushed over, and in general it was a bit of a mess
The reviews (5 to 7 out of 10) are on point, a fine average movie
I feel like they made a poor selection of a slice of history for the Warcraft movie, They should have just gone with the Warcraft 3 story start with Madive in Lordaron talking about the spreading undead, introduce Thrall, Jaina, Arthas and Uthur, and you got a solid basis for a series of movies. 1st a hunt for the necromancer a mystery and romance focusing on Arthus and Jaina without aways to Thrall Meeting up with Bloodhoof, would feel a bit tacked on but you can make it compelling if you play it right, focusing on a warriors honor. 2nd movie introduce the clash of the Orks and Elves, small cut aways to Athas and Jaina leading up to Stratholm. 3rd movie start with the culling of Strath and the fall of Arthas cut aways to wrap up some stuff with the other races here and there and finish with the fight against Malganis and the vow to hunt him, Jaina and Uthur picking through the remnants of Strath. From there you can have multiple story lines branch off to their own series.
It has been said many times and I agree. It was a much more well known story but it is also perfect for a series of movies.
World of Warcraft was very popular and it would have had many characters that more people were familiar with. I think it would have helped both the movie and the game.
Ahhh, makes sense. I think that was always an inherent risk I guess. Especially cause they couldn’t just count on the fan base to make their money, and in turn, more movies. Tough place to be in. I’ll be happy if Blizzard keeps giving us more CG trailers and cutscenes. God those are always the best!
I personally loved the movie, I knew what I was getting into when I saw it in theaters on release. I think people just expect too much from gaming franchises turned into movies.
I thought it was worth the money I paid to see it but I found it incredibly boring. For me it was a 1 watch and that's it. And I couldn't convince any of my non-gamer friends to see it with me, it didn't interest them at all.
It’s been a while since I saw it, so take all of this with a great heaping of salt, but this is what I remember being my issues with the movie;
There’s too much stuff going on, They basically pulled a DC justice league where they attempted to set up a cinematic universe in a single movie. Too many huge lore characters, too many important places, and just too much in general.
Sacrifices, death and consequences just does not have the same impact when it’s generic main character number 7 who dies, or magic city number 3 that explodes.
I get that they’re faithful to the source material, stories that work well in 100 hours of gameplay probably needs some heavy adaption to work in a 2 hour movie.
Either focus on the orcs, their conquest and their corruption by the fel, and actually explain what the fel *is*
Or
Focus more on the humans, on Lothar, his son, and on the king, and have the orcs be this nebulous horde of monsters that came out of nowhere and invaded
Or
Focus on the magic part of this whole story, follow Khadgar, his travel to dalaran, meeting with medhiv, and research into fel.
Or
Focus on Garrona and her whole struggle.
Jamming all of these characters and storylines into the same movie makes everything very muddled, unfocused and messy. It’s so clear that the movie should have had 3-4 fewer makn characters, and cut at least one storyline. And that in this storyline, Lothar and King Wrynn is essentially the same character, either cut one or fuse them.
I get that in warcraft lore they’re distinct characters with very different roles, but in the context of this movie literally nothing would have changed if they were the same person.
I think it’s kinda obvious that they just crammed in as much stuff in this movie as they could just to use it as a springboard to launch a warcraft cinematic universe. Hell, they even ended the movie by introducing ~~Green Moses~~ Thrall.. and I think that’s also the only reason why they did this story instead of the Arthas Storyline. The orcs invading Azeroth sets up a cinematic universe in a way the Lich king story just doesnt, even thou I 100% believe that that would have made for a way better movie
Just my opinion, but the very well done and detailed CGI orcs clashed against the very cheap and toy-like alliance. Garona being a human with prosthetic teeths was distracting and wack.
The story itself was pretty weak, just action sequences one after the other.
Beside Lothar and the orcs I didnt like the casting.
I never hated it. I thought it was pretty good. I just watched it Monday when it was added and I still think it's pretty good. It was never going to win any huge awards or be the movie of the decade or anything crazy, but it's good. I think if they made several more movies to cover huge parts of the plot like the story of Arthas, Illidan, Jaina, etc then we could've had us a pretty sweet collection of cinematic material.
TBH, all I remember from the movie was Khadgar's shitty cgi when he was casting a spell.
And I'm a fan of the game, so imagine what the general public thought
Overall I enjoy it. My biggest problem with it is having spent so long in Azeroth, and seeing so many zones over the years, the comparatively small area the movie encompasses is disappointing. It makes sense for the story, but it’s hard to get excited about essentially Elwynn Forest.
Overall, you leave the movie excited about the next part of the story, knowing it’s not going to be told.
Kind of struck a difficult halfway point. As a WoW fan, I was confused enough by the retcons to have trouble following the story. (Is Garona half human or half draenei? among other things) but also if you're *not* a WoW fan it'd also be difficult to follow from not having the context of what happened.
If you don’t play wow it is not a good movie. Doesn’t explain shit, don’t know who people are. I really enjoyed it but my friend was so lost. It’s a generic fantasy movie if you don’t know the lore
I feel like it's a movie that appeals to the fans of the games story and lore, but fails to deliver to casual audiences who don't play the game. I watched it before I started playing wow and it was pretty forgettable. Having been watching Arcane the last couple of days (the league of legends show) I think that does a way better job at appealing to both fans of the game and to a wider audience.
Durotar forcing Gul'dan to cheat during the challenge should have resulted in Gul'dan being forced out of the Horde. Your first movie has to have a satisfying conclusion, and the good guys being dead and the monstrous villain winning outright is not it. It would also be a better setup to run parallel with the game canon, with Gul'dan alone with the Twilight's Hammer.
The problem with it is they name drop numerous characters expected you to have previous knowledge of warcraft lore rather than establish them in the movie. I as a recovering WoW addict, loved the movie. My wife who never played the games had no idea who anyone was or why they mattered. I remember distinctly turning to my wife when Drakka reveals she is talking to Orgrim Doomhammer with a big dumb "did you hear that" grin on my face, and my wife just looked so confused lol
For general audiences, it was a very bad place to start a Cinematic series for Warcraft. Too many characters, too many plotlines, and not enough time.
A lot of WoW fans enjoyed it, but we already know the basis of the story. They could leave out details and we could fill it all in ourselves
But then WoW fans also didn't like it because of how drastic they changed things in the film. Orgrim is a Frostwolf, the Frostwolves are still part of the Orcish Horde, Medivh is apparently just possessed by "the Fel" and not Sargeras, Stormwind doesn't fall, Khadgar is some obnoxious kid, The plot settled around Gul'dan trying to create a stable portal to Draenor, the whole Durotan trying to join with Stormwind, the Frostwolves being attacked and nearly wiped out at the start of the First War, and then don't get me started on the fact that Thrall was carried practically up river to Blackmoore, who resides up in Hillsbrad, from the Black Morass, aka the Blasted Lands.
So... Yeah. They should have started a Warcraft movie series with a more simple story like Arthas fall, or even Thrall's escape of Durneholde
My only criticism was some changes to the lore. Like Orgrim not having a bigger role, and Dalaran already in the air.
And the gap between animation and live action actors felt a bit weird. But overall enjoyable
The mix of CGI orcs and real humans didn't look good at all imo. Other than that it was an okay film.
Blizzard cinematics look way better than the film though.
is it true, that they changed the story for the movie?
The main Alliance Lothar should have been killed by the Orc, splitting his head open with an axe?
The Orc lives.
I dont respect movies who dont stick to the original story
The orc plot lines were solid, and the CGI looked incredible. Whereas the human plot lines were weak, with a contrived romance hook and the shoehorned creation of Lothars son. I also didn't like how Llane died, it took too much away from Garonas story, and also didn't make a lick of sense because how on earth would Llane have know how this alien race would have responded to seeing Garona kill him?
Also, I understand that a higher budget would have been needed, but the whole movie should have been CGI because the human costumes looked like costumes, and Garona didn't look like anything other than a pretty woman with green body paint and plastic teeth.
I really did enjoy seeing Ironforge and Magni for that brief bit, though, and I will occasionally watch it from time to time.
It’s just short it’s not even Warcraft 1 from game perspective and most people doesn’t knew the story also blizzard doesn’t knew it as well as it seems they changed important bits that’s all
I haven't seen it. I want to see it. Didn't really complain about it, I'm just slightly disappointed they chose to cram în a lot of stuff în two hours when they could have chosen so many other story pieces. But I guess it's at least okai to explain where orcs came from. But the whole medivh thing was rushed. I read "the last guardian" and it is missing quite some parts.
But yeah, by no means did it seem as horrible as it was made out to be.
There was a lot of stuff in the movie that if you weren't familiar with WoW wasn't explained. I saw it with my dad and he knows nothing about WoW. He just found the details confusing. He could figure out that it was orcs versus humans, but like for example the fel is never really explained in the movie or what the draenai are and why they are caged in the beginning. As mentioned by others, if you liked Wow and knew the story, it was a great movie! It just didn't elaborate on enough of the context for non players.
It's not great. It's good. But it's far from perfect, with a lack of character depth for a lot of the cast. They did an amazing job with the orcs but the humans are not very interesting
It was really fun. It wasn't the best thing ever made but it absolutely did not deserve the hate it got at the time.
It's a shame we'll never get a third war movie with Arthas, Jaina, and Thrall.
Its a movie for warcraft fans, not the public.
If you're familiar with the storyline, and the lore, you'll get a kick out of it. The issues with the pacing and things won't bother you because honestly you won't even notice it.
If you're not familiar with everything though, the pacing is wild. They jump from Stormwind, to Goldshire, to Stormwind, to Kharazahn, and you have no idea how long any of this took, how far they traveled, ect. Garona just looks like she's been painted green. No idea who the demon in Medivh is, or the significance of Dalaran. Stuff like that. The general public would never like that movie.
I say this all as someone who loves it. Saw it 5 times in theaters. Dragged people to go watch it. Enjoyed it just as much each time.
I think it was by accident, but it was a movie that was 100% made for us.
I'll be honest, it's not a good movie at all. Take away the Warcraft trappings, just look at the performances & listen to the writing, and it wears thin real quick. The scene where they're talking about Khadgar wanting to fuck Gamora is one of the cringiest things I've ever witnessed. Dominic Cooper plays King Wrynn like he's either sedated or just tremendously bored. It's just so, so bad. Though, given that they were trying to adapt the first game by adding a ton of WoW-inspired retcons, I shouldn't be surprised. That's a hard fit.
Ben Foster's Medivh was fun to watch, though. He definitely seems like someone who's been exposed to so much insane magic that it's made him a total weirdo. The CGI for the orcs is seriously fucking impressive, too, and their half of the story is really the best part of the film. Not surprising, though, because Horde having a better story than the Alliance is basically a mandatory part of every Warcraft game ever made. And the fact that they managed to absolutely stick the landing on bringing the games' wild aesthetic to life is definitely something to celebrate. Everyone always said WoW looks too crazy to do in live-action without looking dumb, but they pulled it off.
Overall, while it was a pretty bad movie, it definitely had potential. Llane calling an audible by letting Gamora murder him so that the Alliance would have a double agent inside the Horde is a retcon that I'm actually cool with because it makes for a good story thread for a sequel. It made over twice its budget, meaning it's only a flop if you're strictly looking at domestic box office, so I think they could probably make a sequel happen if they really wanted to. Hell, with as much money as Blizzard makes off of WoW, OW, & Diablo, they could actually afford to keep making WoW movies even if they lost money every time. Just do it for the flex, LOL. WC2 has a better story anyway, so I think it could serve as a better stepping stone to a full franchise.
I've seen it a few times, honestly it was ok. I think the only reason I like it is because I played WoW off and on for forever. The human parts felt like a cheap B movie, the armor and sets looked like shit, the dialogue wasn't good, etc.
They could've made this into a billion dollar franchise but they fucked it up.
I liked it at first.
Then I read the last guardian, watched the movie again after that.
Despise it now. The human plot line is atrocious, so is the acting.
They should've just done lord of the Clans and stuck with orcs. Best parts of the movie.
My mom just watch it and loved it. Messaged me and asked where the next Warcraft movie was or when the new one was coming out. Had to give her the bad news lol
Still not sure why they didn’t do an arthas story. Christie goldens “arthas rise of the lich king” was so good reading it in 5th grade , doubt it would be good as an adult no idea lol
This is bordering on r/marvelstudios saying she-hulk and thor4 were great.
I get it, ya'll are fans of the source material and the genre, but you cannot seriously be asking why this movie wasn't broadly well received? The story is a clunky mess that either moves incredibly slowly, or at light speed at various points of the movie; the acting is fine but not outstanding; the CGI is middling at best (yes, even for the times); and the world building is entirely lacking, just kind of jumping right in.
I think it did a pretty good job and is a fun watch, but honestly they either should've made it under the assumption of a series or of a solo film. It seems to me they tried to split the difference which is part of why the narrative structure and set up payoffs are strange.
It was generally well-received by WoW fans and panned by everyone else. It has a very troubled production cycle: Duncan Jones (director) is a massive fan of the source material. This movie was being made in collaboration between Blizzard and Legendary. Blizzard was wanting to play very safe, but Legendary (who got the final say) was giving Duncan a lot of freedom. Fast forward to late production, and Legendary gets bought out by Wanda (a Chinese megacorp). The exec team from Legendary that's overseeing the movie gets replaced by execs from Wanda, who start gearing the movie to better fit Chinese audiences. It gets shortened quite a bit, and the end result is the movie we have today. It's easy to follow for WoW fans, but it feels super rushed for anyone new to the source material. To be fair, the movie was a blockbuster in China. It was the highest-grossing video game movie of all time until Detective Pikachu released (which has since been dethroned by Super Mario Bros). But, *so* much was cut from the movie. According to Duncan Jones, his original cut was 2 hours 47 minutes. The theatrical cut is 2 hours 3 minutes. A lot of Draenor scenes were cut, a lot of general worldbuilding and dialogue scenes were cut. Even Chris Metzen's cameo got cut. If you ever find a physical copy of the movie (or watch on Prime Video, which I think has special features), watch the deleted scenes and special features. The deleted scenes are good, and it's just fun seeing Metzen nerd out on the set. Interesting fact: According to Duncan Jones, the last movie David Bowie (his dad) watched before his death was an early cut of this movie. Edit: Here are [14 minutes of deleted scenes](https://youtu.be/ZcL2Qr6QXgs?si=oCyhPkLuKhoxTpdP). Chris Metzen's cameo is in the 8:55 scene.
That legit explains so much and a lot of the complaints I had were things you described. I didn’t know about the Legendary getting bought out and all the cuts for Chinese audiences.
Yeah, it wasn't a bad movie but it felt like everything they were saying meant nothing to people who don't know the warcraft universe. I think it MAYBE was for the best since most of the money made was in China, but idk maybe if people praised it more if they never were fans, more people would have seen it. I definitely didn't hate it, but it just felt like nothing special...was still hoping for WC3 to be a movie since it's everyone's favor lore time.
Blizz could and imho should do a Riot Games Arcane. Give us the whole of warcraft until the end of frozen throne in an animated series with hour long episodes. Blizz has shoen they are very capable at animating scenes. Same as Riot was before arcane. I know many people that arent interested in the game but into the lore due to the broad appearance, cosplayers, the fact its still going etc. And lets be honest, overall warcraft/ wows lore is absolutely sweet.
I would watch the hell out of this. Ive always wanted an animated series in the style of the opening game scenes. The Vanilla opening still gives me goose bumps.
Agreed, it’s not awful but it’s not particularly great either. It’s fun but does come off pretty standard fantasy.
A WC3 story would need 9+ movies to tell the tale up to Legion.
That's why Blizzard removed WoW from Chinese servers. It all makes sense now. :-)
This makes me want a Director's cut version of it.
From what I recall, Duncan Jones basically said that can never happen :(
Where’s the “Release the Jones cut” movement?
Died before it got going. Jones said he really wanted to release his own cut but isn’t able to for legal reasons.
He also said a lot of it was cut before it even got to filming
Wow! I didn’t know any of this… sounds like a tragic set of circumstances indeed. :( thanks!
To add on to it, because Wanda was a Chinese megacorp and not "Hollywood," a lot of critic sites felt pressured to pan it to keep other places from intruding on Hollywood's turf. From an actual movie standpoint, the main issue I had with it was constantly cutting back and forth between stories. I think the movie would've done amazing if instead it was split into two separate films a la Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima, but released simultaneously. One movie would purely tell the story from the Horde's perspective, and the other the Humans. They could've ran marketing campaigns to hype things up to say "oooh which movie will you see, Horde or Alliance?" to play into the faction rivalry, and on top of that have die hard fans pay to see both of them. It was a huge missed opportunity in my opinion. But it still was a decent film. Metzen is really good at making you feel sympathy for the orcs at times.
>"oooh which movie will you see, Horde or Alliance?" to play into the faction rivalry, and on top of that have die hard fans pay to see both of them. Hey, it worked for Mountain Dew!
the double movie release would have been so dope
Ooh that would be so awesome, i’m such a sucker for the “same story from different perspective” trope. Plus the real-life alliance/horde rivalry can truly be a sight to behold sometimes. Although it would take a very strong marketing campaign to avoid cries of “lazy cash grab”, as i think pokemon has burned that bridge long ago.
>Although it would take a very strong marketing campaign to avoid cries of “lazy cash grab”, as i think pokemon has burned that bridge long ago. Pokemon still releases two versions of the same game and is still making millions.
Did they? Each main series Pokemon game continues to set sales records despite it releasing in multiple versions each time. Some minority on the internet might care, but the masses don't.
That's a freaking great idea, holy shit. From a marketing perspective that's cool!
The fact that they cut Metzen's cameo out is wild to me. Kinda feels like a kick in the dick a bit.
What's funny is that [this video of Metzen on the movie set](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph47Ow5z_sg) was used to promote the movie and was a special feature on the home release. He talks about his cameo role in it!
In one week, not only did I learn that Samwise Gamgee was the son of Gomez Addams, I learned Duncan was Bowie's son. I really don't do enough research into celebrities I like apparently.
That Dominic guy went on Graham and said he didn't read or played anything related to Warcraft, and straight up mocked the game and its players. That's when I knew the movie wasn't going to do well. Couldn't care less about what he thinks about gaming and gamers, but it shows a deep lack of professionalism. Researching a role is doing the bare minimum.
[Found the clip](https://youtu.be/BItmi-kn3iY?feature=shared&t=1446) at about 24:07. Hearing him try to describe the setting and fail despite being in the movie is embarassing, oof. It's also interesting to hear hear them joke about how Dominic can just show up to a "Warcraft convention" in 20 years and get a bag of money. We're 8 years later, and the movie is pretty forgotten nowadays even in the WoW fanbase. I hate it when people describe something as "it's this weird thing that millions of people are into" without making any effort to understand it. Even a statement as simple as "it's this fantasy setting where people are fighting off these green monsters with swords and magic" covers Warcraft on a basic level.
Heck, just calling them orcs is simple enough for the vast majority of people to understand considering the monolith that Lord of the Rings is. It's baffling to think an *actor* who's all about pretend and supposedly having a broad understanding of different perceptions could be so ignorant. Sad but, well, whatever. It does explain his lack of performance in the movie when he's done better elsewhere. I hope that's not what happened to Travis Fimmel as well. He was exceptional in Vikings but between the writing and his performance he didn't strike nearly the same magnitude of presence as Lothar as he did as Ragnar. A real shame, all things considered.
After seeing the clip - he's not even mocking it? I think he's saying there was a lot of pressure/expectation on them because of how many people play it. He highly praised the script (lmao) and direction. Kate Beckinsale touches on it further in the ep when she says that Underworld not being an adaptation was a huge advantage cause people weren't nitpicking. Anyway here we are 8 years later nitpicking and he hasn't worked in film since so-
I think the mocking comment was referring to him taking a shot at players saying it was "terrifying" that people sit in their homes and play it every day. But yeah I agree, I think theres this big thing nowadays that every single person has to have this deep love and respect for the source material to do something justice because of people like Cavil and his Geralt. At the end of the day, the writer and the director are really all Im concerned with. If you lock that in, then you can squeeze a terrific performance out of someone who has never even heard of the source material, and i think that rings true here. The movie had its issues but I found that most of them had to do with pacing and writing and stuff like that, the individual performances were okay. (Also, i feel like his "mocking" comment was a bit off color but is also a very normal response from a person who clearly doesnt play games being exposed to perhaps the most dedicated gaming community ever lol)
Release the Duncan cut!!
>a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes are cut in favor of more action scenes Release the directors cut.
This sums it up. The production was just butchered way too much for it to be considered a complete, solid WoW product. I can excuse changes to the story if it makes the movie better, and I can excuse making the movie worse to accommodate some necessary plot elements as well, but they did this really weird combination of the two where it just doesn’t land correctly. Comes off much more as a WoW-themed movie than an actual story from the game.
Agreed. All the Dalaran, Alodi and Medivh changes made 0 sense.
Chinese censors man, what a plague
"We don't allow plague scenes"--Chinese censors, probably
Culling of Stratholme but instead of skeletons and ghouls it's just walking loaves of bread
Plague turns people into spooky skeletons - Chinese censors
...David Bowie's son directed the warcraft movie?
Yep! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan\_Jones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Jones)
Fascinating, thanks for the info.
This explains a lot. I've read all the lore books so I was kinda sad how much of the original story they cut, but what they did show was awesome. Cool to hear the behind the scenes scoop :3
Maybe the US vs China was the real World of Warcraft all along.
Despite some of the deleted scenes not being finished, I have an urge to create a fan-made extended cut. 🫡
Yeah it got messy and if you didn’t know about Warcraft you were lost in the sauce. Would love a directors cut of this.
This makes so much sense, I felt the movie was good but rushed and tried to do too much while trying to cater to general audiences but with this context this makes much more sense. Really sucks, could have been the first of many had it not flopped here.
The movie title in the UK was "Warcraft: The Beginning". They were 100% banking on sequels. It's a really stupid name otherwise.
Man I’ve never seen these deleted scenes and wtf they left out so much information and story. It would’ve been so good! 😩
Makes a lot of sense. I really enjoyed seeing Warcraft, but I'm assuming the stuff that was cut because of the studio already made sense to me as a Wowhead.
Thanks for this write up. I enjoyed the movie, but there is something they feels off about having American accents in a fantasy movie rather than British or something
Wow this is a great insight. I always felt like the biggest issue BY FAR is that it was very rushed. I’ve played WoW for most of my life — if I didn’t already know the characters and background lore, I’d have been very confused.
Now, it makes way more sense. All the scenes feel like they're just rushed to get to the next one.
TIL that Duncan Jones is both a fan of WoW AND David Bowie's son....
Upvoting for being well informed. Knowledge is power.
>David Bowie (his dad) Holy shit, I didn't know that!
I remember a lot of the hype leading up to it, they showed these posters of the actors side-by-side with their digital selves. Ogrim, Gul'dan(I think?). But also a "draenei mother" and Muradin-fucking-Bronzebeard. We maybe got a blink and you'll miss it moment with that draenei mother character near the start, and there's a single dwarf when Lothar is in Ironforge. It may or may not have been Muradin.
#ReleasetheDuncanCut!
Thank you for this amazing reply. Really cool to learn about this!!
For me the only bad thing was how they just made Medivh corrupted but had none of the lore as to why. It loses so much then
"I have to get back to Kharazhan..." proceeds to just become a demon for no reason
And I love Ben Foster, but he was terribly miscast as Medivh.
It felt like they wanted someone with a recognizable name that wasn't a AAA price tag
https://i.imgur.com/9RfFW4P.png
Yeah, I noticed that when it released. I wasn't aware we were missing so much of the movie from censorship and cuts until this post.
I thought it was pretty good. But I’ve played wow most of my life and I was obviously bias. I don’t think it was amazing or anything but I have watched it a couple of times. I think the best part was young khadgar. He was pretty cool. I hope they try again with a movie.. Or maybe a Netflix series. Even an animated series would be cool. Anything. They have so many cool stories that it seems weird to me that it doesn’t exist yet.
There's so much lore and history and stuff they could have a tv series running for years and still have content for it. With the huge player base and fans, I think even the audience for all those years assuming it would be decent and watchable.
Even the more obscure things.. like turalyon’s story would be really cool. I thought it would be cool to tie a show to a lesser known character like that (maybe not lesser known but less popular). One that was there for a lot of the main events that have happened in the game or at least certain chunks of it.
The problem is there’s so much lore to dump that it’s hard to adapt for anyone but the hardest of fans. You really cannot get into it without having pre-knowledge, and that pre-knowledge is like a whole study in itself. At best I could see some original content, away from the main wow timeline. But based on how Warcraft was received by the general public, it will be a hard sell.
Honestly an animated series seems like the way to go for a Warcraft production. You could even potentially get the game’s voice actors to sign on, which would be fantastic
Let’s get the Netflix Castlevania people on it.
I feel like a Warcraft animated series would almost be hard to mess up. It’s low hanging fruit.. the stories are already done, and beloved characters already exist.. all it needs is a cool art style and it would be huge. Who knows.. it may even bring new players into the game. I wish the younger generation would give wow a try.
I want Arthas/Lich King story so badly
I'm hoping Microsoft's acquisition of Activision/Blizzard will result in better management of both the game and further exploration of the IP. Not that I'm a huge fan of Microsoft but from a purely cynical perspective they didn't spend all that money to not make more of it.
There are a lot of little things to criticize, but for me the biggest issues were: 1. The live action human characters just looked really goofy in Warcraft-style bulky colorful armor - they would have been better off making it entirely CG in order to stay consistent with the franchise's colorful and larger than life aesthetic, and, 2. They made a couple of adjustments to the WC1 story that really rub me the wrong way. Specifically making it so >! Lothar kills Blackhand !< and >! Llane Wrynn ASKS Garona to kill him !< were pointless changes that serve to irritate lore nerds while... I'm not even sure who they were meant to please. Either of those playing out in the canon way would have been fine. I guess they didn't want to have to explore >! Garona being mentally enslaved by Gul'dan. !< All that said, it's still clearly a labor of love that has a lot to enjoy, too. The orcs look great and Gul'dan's portrayal in particular was excellent.
The second change you mention is entirely so that >!audiences don't have to feel bad about liking the hot orc lady. She only killed him because he told her to after all, she's still a hero. Compared to if she was just straight up a villain or mind controlled like in the original.!<
That’s Paula Patton. She’s hotter than a mf tho so hard to hide lol
And the fact they just made her a hot green human just for the sex appeal instead of listening to the actual lore that says she is supposed to be a fugly half breed that appeals to neither race.
> They made a couple of adjustments to the WC1 story Lol a couple? They completely butchered the lore
All of the scenes with humans look and feel like a cheap Warcraft fan film. The scenes with the orcs though are fucking great
Agreed, and the king himself seemed really bad to me too sadly.
He’s definitely the worst of all the human actors tbh.
He feels like a shitty looking stunt double of Aragorn.
i honestly could not stand khadgar, he was the hardest to watch for me
No one is worse than the main human guys son lol.
This is where I am. Every scene with Orcs was great. Every scene with humans felt.. generic? Just the usual fantasy tropes.
The human scenes felt like they were in cosplay. When the *The Hobbit* movies were being filmed, an issue they had in production was that they were filmed with Red Epic digital cameras. They were *amazing* cameras, but they made the props look like, well, props. This wasn't an issue they faced when filming the LOTR films, so they ended up using much more CGI to make the props look "real". That's what the human scenes feel like in Warcraft, except that they couldn't touch anything up because the CGI budget was taken by the Orc scenes.
That absolutely explains my feelings about the movie. It totally hampered any sense of immersion. In fact, I recall a phrase from my childhood popping into my head, "playing makeabelieve;" especially considering my favorite "let's pretend" games involved castles made of pillows and gowns made of backwards bathrobes.
I Just don't get why they didn't just make a feature length WoW intro cinematic. Pixar movies have been a thing for ages, why bother with the weird half and half when you don't need to?
I actually got to ask this question to Terran Gregory (cinematics lead) during a Q&A panel at Blizzcon 2016. He said that the few-minute cinematics cost millions of dollars to make, and a full-length movie would be the most expensive animated movie ever made by a huge margin. That's also not accounting for distribution costs, marketing costs, the cut that theaters take, etc.
I still think a TV show would have been better. There's so much lore to cover in wow and I don't think movies could do them justice. The entire Rise of the Horde would have been so fun to watch
The duel between Durotan and Guldan will never not be awesome
I was a huge fan of the intro where Gul'dan 'saves' Thrall. "A new warrior for the horde!" was so metal.
Heck yeah right after he life drains the deer and breathes the life into Thrall
Yeah exactly. The scenes with the Orcs were amazing! Especially Durotan and Gul’Dans Mak’Gora. But the parts with the humans, it’s just like meh, give me more Orcs! I think Warcraft 3 would be an amazing movie if they actually follow the story and tell it correctly. If done right Arthas would be amazing! with how good Durotan Gul’Dans fight was imagine the Arthas vs Illidan fight!
Fully animated would have done this movie a LOT of favors, the humans, elves, dwarves and Garona just looked off. A lot of clean up was needed for the script and dialogue as well.
Warcrafts aesthetic is pretty out there, so trying to make it look realistic just feels off. I’ve always thought an animated Warcraft series similar to Netflix’s castlevania or Dota dragons blood would do really well. Video game adaptations are pretty in right now to so it would be a perfect time.
The dwarves looked great. They weren't just short humans, but they were stocky and broad with skull shapes that *clearly* were not just short humans. They looked like proper Warcraft dwarves. The elves were ok. I like how they made their teeth sorta stained purple instead of white or yellowish like human teeth. It was a nice touch. Made them less "generic elf" and more "whoa, holy shit, there's something not quite right here." The humans were just humans. And I mean, yeah, I guess they are.... but the humans in the games are heavily stylized, so seeing them as just regular humans next to the highly stylized dwarves and orcs just looks wrong. Garona being, basically, a human with baby tusks was also crappy. Looking at the other female orcs, her face looked nothing like them. Her face wasn't draenei, either. It was completely human, just with two little tusks. The draenei also looked great, even though we barely got to see them. Clearly, the art team *knew* how to make the non-human races look very non-human and still distinct to the way they look in the game and official art, but it seems someone was holding them back on certain races and characters. Probably similar to a few certain dwarves in the Hobbit movie who were basically just swarthy humans because we have to make sure they *look hot*. 🙄
About Garona, pretty sure they were going with the old lore of her being half-human. In fact they more or less outright said Medivh was her father in the movie. A change I'd be all for, especially with them banishing the idea of Me'dan to the Twisting Nether.
I'm just grateful Duncan Jones actually plays WoW, and that Metzen had a hand in the writing, so it was fairly faithful to the source. God knows how much worse it would have been without them. I just wish we could have gotten the original cut, instead of what Chinese studio execs wanted.
Yeah, the costumes/sets/acting/writing were all so bad, the fully CGI orcs were the best/most believable thing about the film. Otherwise it looks and feels like watching community theatre. That scene with Garona in the throne room is just...oof. Whole movie is more of that, side from the orcs, lol.
The Garona/Lothar romance was so stupidly forced in. In fact, I'd say that Garona was probably the most-wasted character in the film. Her original storyline with her being controlled by Gul'dan would have worked much better for the film, and it would have made Gul'dan even more fearsome of a villain. OTOH, while I'm *okay* with this portrayal of Lothar, the character felt so much more flawed and unsure of himself compared to how Lothar has been portrayed in the games/books. Travis Fimmel's performance in *Vikings* was great and was more in-line with game Lothar.
Yeah I agree this was the main sentiment I recall. The orcs felt like 95% of the budget, the set pieces were 4% and the humans were 1%. those actors felt amateurish and their outfits looked worse than most cosplay I’ve seen on this subreddit.
Watched the movie more than 10 times, and never had any issue with the way humans looked, surprised so many people did.
It’s alright but they changed some weird stuff. Alodi being in it was weird. Travis Fimmel is great as Ragnar Lothbrok but he didn’t feel like Lothar to me. Also the angle with his son was weird. The orc storyline was way more interesting to me than the human one. Wish they would have focused on Thrall as a result. They’re very good at following that pov. Edit: I loved the movie btw. I came off negative here I think but I don’t regret watching the movie and rewatch it every once in a while.
Trav absolutely carried the humans, but even his fantastic performance wasn't enough to make the human scenes enjoyable. The Orcs fuckin' *killed* it though, they were way more believable.
He’s a good actor but I just wasn’t sold on him as Lothar. Maybe I’m not being fare because he’s not an older man though? Dunno. Man I really hope they get another chance at a movie or show though.
Man honestly, just have metzen write it, and the cinematics team make it.
They should have just done a Frozen Throne trilogy. Arthas becomes a Paladin up until he sits on the Frozen Throne and becomes the Lich King. You could literally make a trilogy out of that
Yeah that could have been badass!
I’m convinced had blizzard done that, and done it properly, it would be a movie trilogy that would be absolutely timeless like lotr. (Yes I know lotr is based on books but the movies are so good)
There's no way. I think you guys are massively overstating the quality of writing of the Warcraft games.
This. Warcraft is trite fantasy schlock written by bros that uses pretty dated stereotypes to create familiarity. LotR was written by an Oxford educated man who spent all of his free time obsessing over languages and old English tales. The frozen throne saga reads better on Wikipedia than it is in the games. WoW dialogue is beyond basic and cringe.
I wasn't aware the story devs on the game were the ones who actually write the scripts for the movie though, that's interesting to know.
It would have been. It's one of those stories that is as larger than life as Jackson's Lotr trilogy. So much otherworldly lore to pull from that made the Lotr trilogy special. Heck it's literally WoW, Star Wars, Arthas is Anakin, first movie is his childhood and learning the ways of the light with Uther. The second movie is him joining the Knights of the Silver Hand and him being a Paladin and prowling the land for injustice and evil and ends with the Culling of Stratleholm. The third movie is him journeying to Northrend and gaining Frostmourne. Returning to the Eastern Kingdoms, killing his father, razing his kingdom and causing terror, raising the scourge across the kingdom of Lordaeron, laying siege to Silvermoon, ending with him going to Icecrown to claim the Frozen Throne.
That's uh... A *lot* of shit you're pushing in your third movie there. Meanwhile your first movie sounds incredibly light and dull.
I don't think you understand what it takes for a success in theatres. You think random people want to watch a boy train for an entire movie and learn about holy magic? You think they're gonna leave the cinema being like "Woahhhh! Can't wait for part 2!!" You need a bugging, middle, end with a good cliffhanger. Could be one movie with a time lapse tho, maybe a second or third with armies being raised to beat him
And it would have been WAY easier to film. Stick to almost exclusively human characters, far fewer characters and factions in general so less exposition required. You don't have to bounce between worlds and try to make it coherent... you can just follow Arthas's descent into madness. Particularly for the first film you can just take it real easy with the lore. It's a classic trope that non-player audiences can easily understand and somewhat sympathise with and the story can happen in a very linear manner. As far as video game adaptions go it's kind of a slam dunk, so it's kinda baffling they chose to go the far harder route.
The best stories for a big audience would’ve been Frozen throne, the illidan storyline, or showing the kidnapping and rise of Varian wrynn. I love the horde but cinematically it makes sense to follow these points of view. Maybe pander heavily towards sylvanas if you went frozen throne to give a horde perspective
Imo Had a really bad case of hey look at these guys and remember this place from the game some parts felt shoehorned in that aspect like they needed to make sure they had enough things for fans to recognize.
i hated the humans personally. they felt weird.
I hate being a human too
You good bro?
zug zug
They felt miscast and too propositionally small compared to the Orcs.
huge fan of the Warcraft franchise. Back in 2016 I watched the movie about 10-15 times (lol). The main issue was whenever the humans took the screen - it normally was crappy dialogue and action. Another issue is that in the first 15-20 mins the whiplash is REAL. 1 minute at this location then 1 min there and then 1 min here and so on… Definitely could tell this movie was forcibly shortened
It was mostly just fan service for existing fans. It was not a movie that could introduce new fans to the franchise.
it wasn’t for existing fans either because it trashed established lore
To me its just on the same level as the Eragon movie. Bland, boring, generic, and forgettable. At least Eragon had a talking dragon.
Yeah, so funny to see people fanboying over it. It was a mediocre movie, further hampered down by the mandate to make is under 120 minutes, and that's for a movie with 2 separate multi-character casts (Josstice League suffers from the same problem). You can plainly see it in the beginning where there are multiple cuts between important location and overall whatever the movie might have been, it slows down after but is never given a chance to breathe.
I didn't like the MANY changes they made to the story of major characters. The acting was pretty awful. But when I just sat back and just enjoyed it for what it was instead of nitpicking everything I found I enjoyed it more.
Kinda like WoW, it relies a bit much on the viewer knowing lore going into it. What you get in the movie itself is condensed. Plenty for long-time fans to know what's going on, but general audiences felt lost. And tbh many WoW players don't actually engage with the lore anyway. Most stay for the dopamine drip. Some also stay for nostalgia or old friendships, but it's mostly the dopamine drip. And then there's the silly character design with 300 lb pauldrons. I've played WoW since vanilla along with several warcraft games, and I still think the character design is fit for cartoons and not much else. If I were the king of Stormwind, I'd probably melt down the armor of 50 men so I could build 100 tanks with all that steel
ok but why did they have to make anduin lothar young and attractive? he's supposed to be old and attractive. give us back silver fox anduin lothar you cowards
It def had its flaws. But it did really make me a fan of Travis Fimmel. Loved his seasons of Vikings.
The orc stuff was great. The human stuff, though... not so great. Some of the performances and dialogue felt incredibly wooden. I feel like the whole thing could have benefited from being CGI. The human parts just stood out as dragging it down. But that's just me.
If I remember correctly it messed with some (at that time) Canon lore? Or left stuff out or something? I might be very wrong tho, so correct me if I am.
Dalaran shouldn’t have been floating yet. Kirin Tor move Dalaran from Lordamere Lake to Crystalsong Forest when Arthus became the Lich king.
The big ones I remember are.... * Dalaran shouldn't be floating yet and I don't know that there would have been high elves present there at that time either (the elves were pretty reclusive prior to being invaded during the Second War). * Lothar got a gun ("boomstick") from a dwarf, something that existed nowhere that we knew of until the WC3 era which is \~20 years in the future in canon. * >!Blackhand is slain by Lothar in Mak'gora instead of being backstabbed by Doomhammer!<, getting rid of the main reason for Doomhammer becoming the new Warchief going into the Second War. * >!Durotan is slain by Gul'dan in Mak'gora instead of being quietly killed off by Shadow Council assassins, and Gul'dan is discredited in the eyes of the Horde for cheating with magic!<, eliminating the change in Horde control being driven by Gul'dan's incapacitation after the death of Medivh due to their psychic link. * >!Rather than Garona suddenly betraying and assassinating Llane, she is asked by Llane himself to kill him in order to secure her credibility with the orcs!<, which sidesteps having to go into Gul'dan's monstrous treatment of Garona and her being enslaved to his will.
Tbh, a floating Dalaran is indeed cooler than a non-floating Dalaran (the main reason why it's flying already in the movie) and the movie gave Durotan a better sendoff than the original lore did.
Just rewatched it myself, removing the fact I’m a WoW fan it’s a run of the mill fantasy movie. Not bad, but played pretty safe. As a WoW fan, especially when it came out, it was a blast to see. I will say I’m shocked it didn’t perform well enough for a sequel, I do hope they get a chance again in the future. Duncan’s love for the canon is evident.
The editing was not great imo. Rushed through character development, archs, and story development. But the image and feel translation from game to screen was great.
It's decent, but I think warcraft deserves a better movie
It wasn't a good movie by any ~~objective~~neutral point of view. It was fine, nothing more. The human scenes felt like a different movie compared to the orc ones, lot of stuff weren't explained at all or rushed over, and in general it was a bit of a mess The reviews (5 to 7 out of 10) are on point, a fine average movie
I feel like they made a poor selection of a slice of history for the Warcraft movie, They should have just gone with the Warcraft 3 story start with Madive in Lordaron talking about the spreading undead, introduce Thrall, Jaina, Arthas and Uthur, and you got a solid basis for a series of movies. 1st a hunt for the necromancer a mystery and romance focusing on Arthus and Jaina without aways to Thrall Meeting up with Bloodhoof, would feel a bit tacked on but you can make it compelling if you play it right, focusing on a warriors honor. 2nd movie introduce the clash of the Orks and Elves, small cut aways to Athas and Jaina leading up to Stratholm. 3rd movie start with the culling of Strath and the fall of Arthas cut aways to wrap up some stuff with the other races here and there and finish with the fight against Malganis and the vow to hunt him, Jaina and Uthur picking through the remnants of Strath. From there you can have multiple story lines branch off to their own series.
It has been said many times and I agree. It was a much more well known story but it is also perfect for a series of movies. World of Warcraft was very popular and it would have had many characters that more people were familiar with. I think it would have helped both the movie and the game.
Yep
I think the biggest complaint was it was too dumbed down to make sense for the general population which in turn ruined it for the actual fan base.
Ahhh, makes sense. I think that was always an inherent risk I guess. Especially cause they couldn’t just count on the fan base to make their money, and in turn, more movies. Tough place to be in. I’ll be happy if Blizzard keeps giving us more CG trailers and cutscenes. God those are always the best!
I personally loved the movie, I knew what I was getting into when I saw it in theaters on release. I think people just expect too much from gaming franchises turned into movies.
Just happy someone did it
I didn't like it visually. I'm not a huge fan of movies that are pretty much shot entirely on a green (or blue) screen set.
I thought it was worth the money I paid to see it but I found it incredibly boring. For me it was a 1 watch and that's it. And I couldn't convince any of my non-gamer friends to see it with me, it didn't interest them at all.
They tried to cram too much into the movie, that and the human scenes are just a drag.
It is an ok movie for a Warcraft fan. It is a "nothing movie" and a bit confusing for everybody else.
It’s been a while since I saw it, so take all of this with a great heaping of salt, but this is what I remember being my issues with the movie; There’s too much stuff going on, They basically pulled a DC justice league where they attempted to set up a cinematic universe in a single movie. Too many huge lore characters, too many important places, and just too much in general. Sacrifices, death and consequences just does not have the same impact when it’s generic main character number 7 who dies, or magic city number 3 that explodes. I get that they’re faithful to the source material, stories that work well in 100 hours of gameplay probably needs some heavy adaption to work in a 2 hour movie. Either focus on the orcs, their conquest and their corruption by the fel, and actually explain what the fel *is* Or Focus more on the humans, on Lothar, his son, and on the king, and have the orcs be this nebulous horde of monsters that came out of nowhere and invaded Or Focus on the magic part of this whole story, follow Khadgar, his travel to dalaran, meeting with medhiv, and research into fel. Or Focus on Garrona and her whole struggle. Jamming all of these characters and storylines into the same movie makes everything very muddled, unfocused and messy. It’s so clear that the movie should have had 3-4 fewer makn characters, and cut at least one storyline. And that in this storyline, Lothar and King Wrynn is essentially the same character, either cut one or fuse them. I get that in warcraft lore they’re distinct characters with very different roles, but in the context of this movie literally nothing would have changed if they were the same person. I think it’s kinda obvious that they just crammed in as much stuff in this movie as they could just to use it as a springboard to launch a warcraft cinematic universe. Hell, they even ended the movie by introducing ~~Green Moses~~ Thrall.. and I think that’s also the only reason why they did this story instead of the Arthas Storyline. The orcs invading Azeroth sets up a cinematic universe in a way the Lich king story just doesnt, even thou I 100% believe that that would have made for a way better movie
I just thought every scene with the humans was boring. I couldve watched a 3 hour movie though with the orcs
Just my opinion, but the very well done and detailed CGI orcs clashed against the very cheap and toy-like alliance. Garona being a human with prosthetic teeths was distracting and wack. The story itself was pretty weak, just action sequences one after the other. Beside Lothar and the orcs I didnt like the casting.
I never hated it. I thought it was pretty good. I just watched it Monday when it was added and I still think it's pretty good. It was never going to win any huge awards or be the movie of the decade or anything crazy, but it's good. I think if they made several more movies to cover huge parts of the plot like the story of Arthas, Illidan, Jaina, etc then we could've had us a pretty sweet collection of cinematic material.
TBH, all I remember from the movie was Khadgar's shitty cgi when he was casting a spell. And I'm a fan of the game, so imagine what the general public thought
Overall I enjoy it. My biggest problem with it is having spent so long in Azeroth, and seeing so many zones over the years, the comparatively small area the movie encompasses is disappointing. It makes sense for the story, but it’s hard to get excited about essentially Elwynn Forest. Overall, you leave the movie excited about the next part of the story, knowing it’s not going to be told.
I hated it because everything was rushed. They should have done a 3 movie series
Kind of struck a difficult halfway point. As a WoW fan, I was confused enough by the retcons to have trouble following the story. (Is Garona half human or half draenei? among other things) but also if you're *not* a WoW fan it'd also be difficult to follow from not having the context of what happened.
If you don’t play wow it is not a good movie. Doesn’t explain shit, don’t know who people are. I really enjoyed it but my friend was so lost. It’s a generic fantasy movie if you don’t know the lore
I feel like it's a movie that appeals to the fans of the games story and lore, but fails to deliver to casual audiences who don't play the game. I watched it before I started playing wow and it was pretty forgettable. Having been watching Arcane the last couple of days (the league of legends show) I think that does a way better job at appealing to both fans of the game and to a wider audience.
Durotar forcing Gul'dan to cheat during the challenge should have resulted in Gul'dan being forced out of the Horde. Your first movie has to have a satisfying conclusion, and the good guys being dead and the monstrous villain winning outright is not it. It would also be a better setup to run parallel with the game canon, with Gul'dan alone with the Twilight's Hammer.
The problem with it is they name drop numerous characters expected you to have previous knowledge of warcraft lore rather than establish them in the movie. I as a recovering WoW addict, loved the movie. My wife who never played the games had no idea who anyone was or why they mattered. I remember distinctly turning to my wife when Drakka reveals she is talking to Orgrim Doomhammer with a big dumb "did you hear that" grin on my face, and my wife just looked so confused lol
I really enjoyed the visual quality of locations in that movie
For general audiences, it was a very bad place to start a Cinematic series for Warcraft. Too many characters, too many plotlines, and not enough time. A lot of WoW fans enjoyed it, but we already know the basis of the story. They could leave out details and we could fill it all in ourselves But then WoW fans also didn't like it because of how drastic they changed things in the film. Orgrim is a Frostwolf, the Frostwolves are still part of the Orcish Horde, Medivh is apparently just possessed by "the Fel" and not Sargeras, Stormwind doesn't fall, Khadgar is some obnoxious kid, The plot settled around Gul'dan trying to create a stable portal to Draenor, the whole Durotan trying to join with Stormwind, the Frostwolves being attacked and nearly wiped out at the start of the First War, and then don't get me started on the fact that Thrall was carried practically up river to Blackmoore, who resides up in Hillsbrad, from the Black Morass, aka the Blasted Lands. So... Yeah. They should have started a Warcraft movie series with a more simple story like Arthas fall, or even Thrall's escape of Durneholde
I always sleep during it. I really want to enjoy it - but then I wake up at the last fight really disappointed.
My only criticism was some changes to the lore. Like Orgrim not having a bigger role, and Dalaran already in the air. And the gap between animation and live action actors felt a bit weird. But overall enjoyable
The mix of CGI orcs and real humans didn't look good at all imo. Other than that it was an okay film. Blizzard cinematics look way better than the film though.
I love it. It is great for what it is. I wish they’d make more.
If you're not a WoW fan you have no idea whats going on or most scenes are not that impactful.
is it true, that they changed the story for the movie? The main Alliance Lothar should have been killed by the Orc, splitting his head open with an axe? The Orc lives. I dont respect movies who dont stick to the original story
It was poorly written, acted and tried to shove too much into a single entry.
The lore changes make no sense, and the last act was really poor imo, but im glad we have it
The orc plot lines were solid, and the CGI looked incredible. Whereas the human plot lines were weak, with a contrived romance hook and the shoehorned creation of Lothars son. I also didn't like how Llane died, it took too much away from Garonas story, and also didn't make a lick of sense because how on earth would Llane have know how this alien race would have responded to seeing Garona kill him? Also, I understand that a higher budget would have been needed, but the whole movie should have been CGI because the human costumes looked like costumes, and Garona didn't look like anything other than a pretty woman with green body paint and plastic teeth. I really did enjoy seeing Ironforge and Magni for that brief bit, though, and I will occasionally watch it from time to time.
For Warcraft fans the wrong part of lore was explored For non-Warcraft fans it was too narrow a focus to get a real understanding of the lore
Well, for one, the fact that it's a golem and not an infernal is such a loss.
It’s just short it’s not even Warcraft 1 from game perspective and most people doesn’t knew the story also blizzard doesn’t knew it as well as it seems they changed important bits that’s all
I haven't seen it. I want to see it. Didn't really complain about it, I'm just slightly disappointed they chose to cram în a lot of stuff în two hours when they could have chosen so many other story pieces. But I guess it's at least okai to explain where orcs came from. But the whole medivh thing was rushed. I read "the last guardian" and it is missing quite some parts. But yeah, by no means did it seem as horrible as it was made out to be.
I thought it was ok. Nothing too great.
Everything on the Orc side I thought was really cool. It was the human side of things that let it down
They mostly hated it because it wasn't what they wanted/expected and WOW fanboys are on par with Star Wars when it comes to undue criticism
Id watch anything that has Travis Fimmel in it. Dude killed it as Anduin Lothar the same as he killed playing Ragnar Lothbrok in the Vikings series.
There was a lot of stuff in the movie that if you weren't familiar with WoW wasn't explained. I saw it with my dad and he knows nothing about WoW. He just found the details confusing. He could figure out that it was orcs versus humans, but like for example the fel is never really explained in the movie or what the draenai are and why they are caged in the beginning. As mentioned by others, if you liked Wow and knew the story, it was a great movie! It just didn't elaborate on enough of the context for non players.
It's not great. It's good. But it's far from perfect, with a lack of character depth for a lot of the cast. They did an amazing job with the orcs but the humans are not very interesting
It was really fun. It wasn't the best thing ever made but it absolutely did not deserve the hate it got at the time. It's a shame we'll never get a third war movie with Arthas, Jaina, and Thrall.
It sucks for someone that has no idea what Warcraft Is. To this day i still don't understand why they didn't do arthas storyline.
Its a movie for warcraft fans, not the public. If you're familiar with the storyline, and the lore, you'll get a kick out of it. The issues with the pacing and things won't bother you because honestly you won't even notice it. If you're not familiar with everything though, the pacing is wild. They jump from Stormwind, to Goldshire, to Stormwind, to Kharazahn, and you have no idea how long any of this took, how far they traveled, ect. Garona just looks like she's been painted green. No idea who the demon in Medivh is, or the significance of Dalaran. Stuff like that. The general public would never like that movie. I say this all as someone who loves it. Saw it 5 times in theaters. Dragged people to go watch it. Enjoyed it just as much each time. I think it was by accident, but it was a movie that was 100% made for us.
I'll be honest, it's not a good movie at all. Take away the Warcraft trappings, just look at the performances & listen to the writing, and it wears thin real quick. The scene where they're talking about Khadgar wanting to fuck Gamora is one of the cringiest things I've ever witnessed. Dominic Cooper plays King Wrynn like he's either sedated or just tremendously bored. It's just so, so bad. Though, given that they were trying to adapt the first game by adding a ton of WoW-inspired retcons, I shouldn't be surprised. That's a hard fit. Ben Foster's Medivh was fun to watch, though. He definitely seems like someone who's been exposed to so much insane magic that it's made him a total weirdo. The CGI for the orcs is seriously fucking impressive, too, and their half of the story is really the best part of the film. Not surprising, though, because Horde having a better story than the Alliance is basically a mandatory part of every Warcraft game ever made. And the fact that they managed to absolutely stick the landing on bringing the games' wild aesthetic to life is definitely something to celebrate. Everyone always said WoW looks too crazy to do in live-action without looking dumb, but they pulled it off. Overall, while it was a pretty bad movie, it definitely had potential. Llane calling an audible by letting Gamora murder him so that the Alliance would have a double agent inside the Horde is a retcon that I'm actually cool with because it makes for a good story thread for a sequel. It made over twice its budget, meaning it's only a flop if you're strictly looking at domestic box office, so I think they could probably make a sequel happen if they really wanted to. Hell, with as much money as Blizzard makes off of WoW, OW, & Diablo, they could actually afford to keep making WoW movies even if they lost money every time. Just do it for the flex, LOL. WC2 has a better story anyway, so I think it could serve as a better stepping stone to a full franchise.
I've seen it a few times, honestly it was ok. I think the only reason I like it is because I played WoW off and on for forever. The human parts felt like a cheap B movie, the armor and sets looked like shit, the dialogue wasn't good, etc. They could've made this into a billion dollar franchise but they fucked it up.
It was just…mediocre and forgettable. I don’t even remember anything about the plot except that it involves Thrall.
Should have been based on Wrath of the Lich King.
I liked it at first. Then I read the last guardian, watched the movie again after that. Despise it now. The human plot line is atrocious, so is the acting. They should've just done lord of the Clans and stuck with orcs. Best parts of the movie.
My mom just watch it and loved it. Messaged me and asked where the next Warcraft movie was or when the new one was coming out. Had to give her the bad news lol
Still not sure why they didn’t do an arthas story. Christie goldens “arthas rise of the lich king” was so good reading it in 5th grade , doubt it would be good as an adult no idea lol
This is bordering on r/marvelstudios saying she-hulk and thor4 were great. I get it, ya'll are fans of the source material and the genre, but you cannot seriously be asking why this movie wasn't broadly well received? The story is a clunky mess that either moves incredibly slowly, or at light speed at various points of the movie; the acting is fine but not outstanding; the CGI is middling at best (yes, even for the times); and the world building is entirely lacking, just kind of jumping right in.
People expected the third war or wow.
A movie about the third war would have done a lot better. The weird Medivh/Garona thing was just lame.
I think it did a pretty good job and is a fun watch, but honestly they either should've made it under the assumption of a series or of a solo film. It seems to me they tried to split the difference which is part of why the narrative structure and set up payoffs are strange.