Review: ‘Warcraft’ has no moviecraft

Warcraft panders too much to the World of Warcraft loyalists for it to be an enjoyable film. Even then, those familiar with the lore will be cringing in a constant state of confusion from start to finish.

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The film’s first scenes take you to Draenor, the orc race’s original world, where the warmongering race is preparing to enter Azeroth, the human home world, through a dark portal opened by the evil warlock Gul’dan. That sentence gives you more than what the movie actually tells you. They never tell you the name of their planet, where the portal leads to, or even why they’re leaving in the first place. They do tell you further along that their planet is being destroyed, but not the source of its destruction. This senseless pattern continues throughout the entire movie.

The next scenes aren’t any different. The movie barrels you through scenes from Azeroth without explaining what they mean. In five minutes, you’re taken through human city after human city. Warcraft assumes that you already know what Stormwind, Ironforge, dwarves, and elves are. In fact, all those things make up for just five minutes of the entire movie. Dwarves, elves, draenei, demons, and even the mages have little to no involvement in pushing the plot further.

Warcraft was peppered with surprise cameos of elements from the universe such as a surprise murloc in one scene. The murloc fit as set decorations, but when other races were given the same treatment, all its cameos were too short to gratify fans and too unnecessary for casual audiences to care.

The Warcraft universe is filled to the brim with stories and characters. The Warcraft film chops away all this potential. What makes it worse is that the story Warcraft is going for is half-baked at best. Its problems start with its lackadaisical writing, but they don’t end there. Sadly, even its acting and cinematography falls flat of a well-made film.

Warcraft stars known actors and actresses such as Travis Fimmel (Vikings), Paula Patton (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), Ben Schnetzer (The Book Thief), Ben Foster (X-Men: The Last Stand), and Dominic Cooper (Captain America: The First Avenger). They play as Anduin Lothar, Garona Halforcen, Khadgar, Medivh, and King Llane Wrynn, respectively. These characters make up the most of the live action side of things. Their performances were workable, at best. Not outstanding, but not terrible. They were definitely not helped by poor editing.

The movie’s editing was shoddy. It was as if a giddy child trimmed the film reel and left all the good scenes lying on the cutting room floor. Some scenes were awkwardly prolonged while some were cut too short to let the moment linger. A few examples of this movie’s cringe-worthy scenes are Khadgar staring supposedly in shock at the camera for way too long and a victory scene cutting in mid cheer.

Warcraft’s costume and design were commendable, however. Minus the comical enlargements, the armor and clothing in Warcraft were on point with the originals. The set design also maintained that classic Blizzard feel. Supplemented by immense CGI work, the orcs popped to life in Warcraft. There were some quips to the art, though. Warcraft focused a lot of its resources on orc design that they seem to have forgotten the other effects. For example, the mages of Kirin Tor were supposed to shine with a bright light to symbolize their magic. Instead, the movie version looked like they had glowing and unfitting white patches on their eye lids. Garona’s enlarged teeth were also laughable. They looked too much like a cheap pair of vampire teeth for Halloween. Cringe.

All that visual work would have been amazing if it weren’t for the lackluster writing, though. Somehow, I can’t get behind actors doing their best impression of Batman v. Superman’s serious grittiness while wearing what is essentially cosplay attire. Warcraft had its share of visual gags but they just didn’t feel right overlaid onto its story that took itself too seriously.

Warcraft is ultimately based on a fun multiplayer game. Sadly, the film lost all the fun that made its game attractive to 50 million subscribers. Warcraft falls flat when it had the potential to soar. Instead, we have a final product that makes even the cutscenes from the original Warcraft RTS games worthy of an Oscar. Looks like the curse continues.