Review of Warcraft (2016) by Jonathan N — 07 Nov 2016

Warcraft is not the easiest film to write an opening paragraph for. A game series I know next to nothing about, and with a long line of painful to average video game adaptations littering the wasteland of video rental chains over the years you can forgive me for being a tad cynical.

But it does have some things going for it, a sizeable budget from Universal and a talented young director in Duncan Jones of Moon and Source Code success. However it is hard to see that in a film like Warcraft, which seems to take more from Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy than his Lord of The Rings masterpiece, in that it descends into a mess of hit and miss and overused computer generated imagery with precious little coherence.

I did quite like this peek into the world and imagery of Azeroth however, even when attached to what at best can be described as fantasy by numbers, it feels so incredibly generic, if that is what the world of Warcraft is like (heh) then it isn't really selling the games to a new audience, but maybe it is designed to preach to the converted.

As enjoyable as the generic fantasy is however, the main kicker of Warcraft is how the film is a two hour set up for bigger and (possibly) better things, there is no real conclusion and certainly no satisfaction, there are enough events at the end that make you question the motives and logic of what is going on to leave a mildly bitter taste in the mouth.

What I will say though is Jones and company have absolutely nailed the look of a video game cut scene, there were moments when I was absolutely convinced I was playing a game, but in terms of a big screen blockbuster that may not be seen as a good thing.