Review of Warcraft (2016) by Eruadan — 14 Jun 2016

I came into this movie expecting the worse, due to the critic reviews. I also came into Star Wars with low expectations despite critic reviews.

It would appear that user reviews are actually far more reliable.

While I am familiar with the lore, I don't play the game.

The movie's setting is as complete as it can be without overwhelming the audience with names of kingdoms, characters, races, which is an impressive feat, I did not think it would achieve.

If you are a hardcore fan, you might be disappointed in the lack of detail on the kingdoms/dranei/etc, but it makes it much more accessible to the general audience.

The original lore is much more intricate and complicated, and it does a great job of giving a simplified adaptation, which means it’s also a little bit far from the original lore, but it does it fairly well.

There are a lot of elements that are not fully explained, which from what I've read caused great anger from critics, who seem to have wanted to be spoon-fed every explanation.

That being said, while the movie is definitely internally-consistent, some of the missing details can cause confusion. It is like trying to collapse half a season of game of thrones into 2 hours.

This makes it feel a bit rushed, but that's not on the actors or the direction, rather on how much they tried to squeeze in, making the writing a very difficult task.

Because of this, they lost a lot on character development and we don't get to relate much to Durotan or the Orc culture.

The settings and art are beautifully done, the acting is adequate though limited by the fact that they couldn't develop that many characters concurrently.

The adaptation is impressive, albeit not loyal to the lore. It is worth noting that Warcraft lore is more of a history than a narrative.

Critics never really gave the movie a chance, and if you read the reviews, you can tell how they never tried to understand it.