Review of Warcraft (2016) by Dillon G — 05 Mar 2017

In a niche MMO setting, "Warcraft" offers a great visual interpretation to fans of the series (can anyone say "Mrrgrrlllmrrrgl"?), but will leave newcomers in, at best, a slight fog of confusion.

The casting was pretty solid overall - I'm especially fond of Ben Schnetzer (Khadgar) and Daniel Wu (Gul'Dan). The acting is believable - neither too serious nor too comical across any role, even if the story is darker than the film lets on - in fact, the film does more justice to the dark reality of the events than even the game at times.

Fans of the Warcraft legacy will appreciate the adaptation (inconsistencies aside, like why Dalaran was already a floating city decades earlier than it should be?), but newcomers will likely find themselves confused by not knowing the encyclopedia's-worth of story beforehand.

Overall, as a long-time Warcraft fan, I found the film to be wholly enjoyable. The special effects are worthy of praise and, luckily, the international appeal is enough to warrant future installments.

Blizzard's monolithic franchise has literal novels of story to tell, and I'm eager to see future film adaptations of a story almost 30 years in the making.

If "Lord of the Rings" can do it, so can "Warcraft".

To be fair, this installment attempts to condense roughly 20 years of in-game events into a single film, when honestly, it would take several films per "Expansion" to detail all the events.

If you're somehow new to the MMO behemoth that Warcraft has become, you'll likely have lots of questions - luckily, chances are at least one of your gamer friends can fill you in, and happily so.