

The CGI actors are under no such limitations. The humans are human, Garona is human except for some tiny tusks, and the orcs are all motion capture it may surprise you to know that the CGI characters are for more sympathetic and interesting than the humans, who seem overwhelmed by the green screeniness of it all. In tribute to the game, where you can play either side, neither Orcs nor Humans are shown to be bad they just have bad leaders who get them to start mixing it up while stealing souls, murdering villages and being generally unsociable. The plot, which takes place in the hazy long ago before the game time, involves running around and being alarmed about this and that, sort of like the game mechanics. Oh and there’s a half orc named Garona played by Paula Patton, who ends up being a go between as these factions fight and frolic.

Meanwhile, the human contingent is led by Sir Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel) and good King Llane (Dominic Cooper), a both brooding and disengaged wizard named Medivh and a young upstart magic user named Kadgar. He has a wife and a newly born green baby, a sidekick and an antagonist: a tough orc captain called Blackhand who is mocapped by Clancy Brown, who makes a living playing tough captains of one species or another so hooray fro typecasting. The orc conscience is represented by Durotan, mocapped by Toby Kebbell. It involves an Orcish invasion to Azeroth from another dimension, led by the sinister warlock Gul’dan. It does stick to the details and feeling of Azeroth, however, so even for a dabbler like me there was a welcome familiarity.
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Supposedly I’m one of some 50 million devotees, so no danger of Gul’dan and the totally disappearing from the world’s consciousness just yet.Īnyway the movie films based on video games are notoriously wretched, and Warcraft The Movie will do little to persuade anyone to start playing.
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I’ve actually become mildly addicted to Hearthstone, the free to play CCG version of Warcraft that works on phone, tablet or computer. (Last report was a mere 5 million players a month.) The reasons for its decline are varied: the rise of mobile gaming, player maturation, not enough updates…my suspicion is that things like WoW simply cycle out as new forms of entertainment take over. Since its 2010 high, WoW has gradually declined to the point where they don’t even say how many subscribers it has any more. It’s a dorky reduction of everything that I love about high fantasy, with the added satisfaction of smashing things. There’s always a bit of a thrill, for me, when discovering some new land, its towers gradually rendering beneath a hippogriff’s wings. I’ve never been a paid subscriber, but I’ve used it to while away the winter months a few times. In case you missed the last decade, World of Warcraft is one of the all-time most successful games, a fantasy MMORG that at its peak in 2010 had 12 million subscribers who paid $20 a month to wander around a world called Azeroth where humans, elves, dwarves, Orcs, Taurens, and hundreds of other creatures wandered a richly detailed fantasy world while chatting it up with pals and killing one another.
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Director Duncan Jones literally begged to make this movie (his previous films Moon and Source Code were imaginative low budget SF films.) Apparently he’s a gamer and felt a connection to the material, and even co-wrote the script with Charles Leavitt ( In the Heart of the Sea, Blood Diamond.) Maybe it was my lowered expectations, but I sort of enjoyed Warcraft. I was chatting with someone in PR prior to going to see a screening of Warcraft yesterday and he said in a comforting tone “It isn’t as bad as they say.” Considering it’s at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, it would have to be pretty bad indeed.
