MOVIE REVIEW – “Orks & Humans” waged a bitter war in the first Warcraft game some 22 years ago and they are killing each other again in Duncan Jones big budget movie adaptation. As the trailers already shown, the high fantasy visuals are nothing short of extraordinary; still one might wonder if all this high tech and CGI extravaganza hide a good fantasy movie as well?

 

When Blizzard created its real-time strategy and MMO franchise, the core idea for the universe of Warcraft was to add a Tolkien-like world. As the base-building, RTS game itself was a copy of Westwood’s Command & Conquer so was the Warcraft universe all to similar to the Lord of the Rings – with a bit of Warhammer added as well. It didn’t matter at this time since the developer’s basic goal was to make a fun fantasy RTS game. Still, thanks to Blizzard and its now infamous MMORPG game, World of Warcraft, this rather simple and not very original fantasy world have grown into a very complex universe. However, the big challenge for Duncan Jones and his team was to make a movie adaptation from the very first, rather simple game…

 

“Orks & Humans”

Perhaps, that’s the movie’s main handicap: the lore and story of the very first game aren’t that interesting. I played through both campaigns (the Ork and Human), and I can hardly remember anything at all about the story.

That said, Duncan Jones could have told an interesting story if he would not stick so close to the original material. Yes, I am saying this, despite playing through all the Warcraft games and being a huge fan of World of Warcraft some ten years ago. Before Warcraft III, the story wasn’t that important in the first two Warcraft games, and it served only as a nice background to the RTS gameplay.

Fantasy clichés and clean-cut characters FTW

This world of Warcraft (haha) is pretty simple as conflicts go: there are good guys on both the human and orc side, who just want to defend their people, and there are also corrupt ones on the other side. Not much ground here for character development. I had the impression that Travis Fimmel was kind of “bradpitting” his way through the movie and one duel scene reminded me especially of Troy with Brad Pitt. I don’t blame him that much: his character was flat and pretty boring.

Same goes for the other characters as well: we have to good and brave king and queen, the young and also brave mage apprentice – flat characters everywhere. Same thing on the ork’s side: we have the hero warchief who stands up against the corrupted shaman and other warchiefs who either with or against him.

I know, I know: we have been spoilt by Game of Throne complexity, I am also aware, that you can’t change the lore that much, but still it doesn’t help the scenario being overly simple and full of boring clichés.

Saving graces

There are still a few rather well-developed characters like Garona the half-orc woman (who doesn’t know yet, that she’s not half-human but half-Draenei) but her love for Anduin Lothar feels badly developed. Ben Foster as Medivh is also a pretty complex character, even if I had the impression of looking at Merlin (the late Nicol Williamson) in Excalibur. There are also some surprise events and drama, but those can’t take away the bad taste of boring high fantasy chlichés.

Where Jones deserves most credit is in daring to kill named characters in a summer blockbuster. Admittedly, two of those might as well have “Dead Meat” tattooed on their foreheads, but most come as a surprise (at least to those of us unfamiliar with the history of Azeroth), and some are genuinely upsetting.

As far as the visuals go, the movie is full of CGI, which is rather spectacular – if looking a tad too plastic. The Orks looks exceptional and… still plasticky at the same time. I know that it sounds a bit contradictory, but that’s how I felt about it. While the story from the first Warcraft, the visual elements reminded me World of Warcraft, which was a nice “fan service” moment – but still felt a bit cheap.

 

High on fantasy low on complexity

Warcraft isn’t a bad movie, but not particularly good nor interesting either: it’s an average high fantasy flick in every aspect. Being a Warcraft fan myself, I still couldn’t care much about the characters. The combat and the CGI looks pretty good, but not to the point of being awed about it. I understand that Duncan Jones wanted to stay 100% true to the source material but it isn’t always a smart idea.

-BadSector-