We’re currently in the film franchise era, but sadly Duncan Jones’s Warcraft , the big screen adaption of the now iconic game series, is a rather awkward attempt to translate its sprawling mythology into anything that’ll compete with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings soon. I can understand the criticism of putting too much buildup for the next series entry at the expense of individual films, but Warcraft’s plot is so overstuffed with exposition and characters fighting for screen time that it’s hard for any single one to make a serious impression. A detailed plot like this would be more suited for a ten-episode miniseries.
It barely gives the audience any time to digest the rather impressive visuals, let alone too many of the cast’s backstories before we’re flung to the next event. Durotan (Toby Kebbell), a morally upright Orc warrior seeking to save his Frostwolf clan and their home world Draenor (which sounds like a cleaning product) from the evil shaman Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) is maybe the one character I had an emotional investment in, mostly because of his arc involving the protection of his mate (Anna Galvin) who is pregnant with the clan’s heir.
Using a weird green glowing power called the Fel, Gul’dan, who reminds me of your typical Saturday morning cartoon villain, organizes something of an Orc coalition and sics them on Azeroth, the realm where the human characters reside. Noble general Lothar (Travis Fimmel), who also serves as Warcraft’s viewpoint character, is one of the first to discover the evil power now in their realm. Sadly, the subplot involving his son hardly has any time to gel amidst everything else going on.
Accompanied by his BFF, the eloquently named Ogrim Doomhammer (Robert Kazinsky), Durotan decides to form an alliance between Frostwolf and the Azerothian King Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper). When Wrynn, whose position is gradually softened by his friendship with the half Orc captive Garona (Paula Patton, in maybe the film’s strongest performance) discovers the Fel is in Azeroth, he consults a guardian wizard named Medivh, who despite Ben Foster’s best efforts feels more like a plot device than he does a truly fleshed out character – and to be honest, Medivh’s protégé Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) gets to display more personality than him.
At times Warcraft feels like a patchwork edit of a far better fantasy trilogy. At least three movies’ worth of material is arguably crammed into one film that’s loaded with an excessive amount of exposition and random plot twists. The characters themselves aren’t too bothersome, maybe a few of them come off fairly bland but there wasn’t any performance I could point to and say “that annoyed me”.
Though even if the film was edited better, the stilted dialogue would still be another issue. Maybe I’m aiming too high for Warcraft given that it is a fairly over the top franchise, but aside from maybe Khadgar and Durotan at certain points, hardly anyone stands out as a distinct personality. Everyone generally speaks- about things obviously occurring before our eyes- in the same wistful tone. Warcraft doesn’t understand the idea of “show, don’t tell”.
Nor does it get “less is more”. The CGI is noticeably cheaper than most spring and summer epics, but design wise the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor are visually impressive. And speaking as someone unfamiliar with much of Warcraft’s mythos, there are aspects about its use of magic and its politics I genuinely thought were interesting and cool. But looking at it as an individual film as opposed to the start of a new franchise, it’s riddled with too much exposition and fantasy clichés I’ve seen before, and it doesn’t have enough wit to subvert them in a fresh way. Not recommended, unless you’re a WoW completist.