Review of Warcraft (2016) by Colin M — 04 Jul 2016

Despite the vaulted talent behind it, Warcraft's slick-looking bid to spin an epic video game into a standalone Tolkien-esque extravaganza ultimately proves to be as exciting as watching a feature-length round of Pong. Oh, it's visually stunning but intellectually and emotionally....well, let's just say that Warcraft is a Xerox of a Xerox of much superior fantasy works, which makes the overall picture much less vibrant at this oft-copied stage. Like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series and The Hobbit, there are orcs, dueling wizards, and inter-species boot-knocking. Like George R.R. Martin's "Songs of Fire & Ice" series, there are seven kingdoms, homogenized inhabitants, and combustible geopolitics at play. The amalgamation of all of this, however, amounts to something much blander and derivative. It doesn't hit the laughable lows of, say, Eragon, but it feels far from original and vital. Unlike the unique and relatable roster of characters in HBO's Game of Thrones, which run the gamut from striking beauties to pugnacious dwarves, all of the characters here are good-looking and uninterestingly straight-forward, despite the best intentions of the cast. Travis Fimmel plays a roguish Aragorn (of LOTR fame) knock-off to the hilt but the clichés assigned to this lover-solider come from pure fantasy stock, not ingenuity.

In this PG-13-rated fantasy, the peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another.

Sadly, so much more was expected of this production's controlling hand. Director-co-writer Duncan Jones gave audiences the beautifully acted and directed mind-bending sci-if thrillers Moon and Source Code, leading many to believe that he was the Chosen One sent to end the unbroken curse of all video games making horrible films. Instead, he gives moviegoers something they've seen before. Honestly, he would have been better served by turning out a popcorn flick at either one of two extremes-excellence or F-Grade. Instead, Warcraft frustratingly falls somewhere in-between, albeit flirting more with the lower end of the spectrum. He gains points for trying to make the Orcs (unapologetically unremorseful Big Bads in the game) complicated and sympathetic but loses that much more by sacrificing this caveat at the cost of having dynamic original storytelling on the whole. With lackluster lines like "Orc children have pets more fearsome than you," he's not exactly charting a brave new world of Warcraft, or any other. Sure, the CGI-rendered battles look ridiculously amazing and detailed, but can't compare with becoming immersed in the game as a player unless you're given a whole new and exciting playing field which its filmic iteration definitely does not.

Bottom line: The Bauble of the Five Armies.