So I saw Warcraft: The Beginning yesterday on the first day of my vacation. And after sleeping on it for a night I’m ready to review the movie and to answer the most important question: is the movie any good?
Well, yes, it is.
It is actually a good movie, not a great movie (but then, what movie is?), but it’s a good one. You’ll get more mileage out of it if you’re a fan of the Warcraft games/setting, but even if you’re not it’s a good fantasy film.
Now let’s get into the meat of this. Unlike my review of Batman V Superman this time the review is spoiler free. And while I may gripe on some things I do recommend seeing this movie if you like Warcraft or fantasy movies, because I had a good time watching it and if you like either Warcraft or fantasy you’re in a good place.
Things I really liked
Special effects: This was one of my main concerns for this movie, based on the trailers, but I’m happy to report that the special effects were top-notch and not jarring at all. The setting looked great, the magic looked great, and more importantly the Orcs looked great. I loved the Orcs in this movie. For the Horde!
Orcs: Did I say I loved the Orcs in this movie yet? Well I do. Not only did they look really good, the characters I cared for most in this movie were Orcs: Garona Halforcen, Durotan and Orgrim Doomhammer were my favorite characters. I thought they were the most established in the movie and you really come to understand them and their plight.
Gul’dan: Best villain I’ve seen in movies in quite a while actually.
Medivh: I was looking forward to seeing the mysterious Guardian and Medivh didn’t disappoint. Since I know about Medivh from the source material nothing that happened with him was very surprising, but it was still very satisfying to watch. I would have liked to have seen more of him in two specific regards:
- a bit more backstory/motivation of what put him in the position he’s in
- more of him at the climax (he does something that is visually very cool, and there isn’t enough of that).
Given everything else that’s going on in the movie I get that wasn’t possible though.
Things I didn’t like
Pacing: The pacing of this movie was off to me, something that is glaringly apparent in the first couple scenes. There are so many scene shifts into different places, places that are cool if you’re into Warcraft lore, but if you’re not familiar you’re left with a chaotic mess you don’t give a shit about at the start of a movie. It gets better as time goes on, but the movie never loses that rushed feeling: there are too many characters, too many places, to really start caring for any of them.
Lack of character development: Save for the Orcs the character development isn’t very strong, and that’s because the cast of characters is (too) big compared to the two-hour runtime. As a result I didn’t really get to care much for most of the characters and the lion-share of this was with the human characters. I hope that if they do a sequel they’ll streamline this to a smaller cast.
Hero characters: The Warcraft strategy games have Hero characters leading the factions. And of course these Heroes lead the fights that happen in the games. This is fine for games, but in this movie they do what I hate and that is to put people who have no business being in a situation, such as leading an army, and then having them lead the army into battle.
Callan: I liked all the characters, to a greater and lesser extent, except for one. Callan. Why was this character there? He served no purpose, wasn’t acted well, and his fate in the movie was telegraphed so far in advance (trope) it was laughable.
Bird’s eye view: There was a scene in the movie that kind of gave an RTS-like overview of the different battles going on. The idea behind it is cool and it’s a nice homage to the source material, but because there were no other scenes like it in the movie it felt jarring.
Conclusion
This movie has some issues with pacing and character development that are a clear result of trying too much with too little time. I feel that if they’d streamlined the movie a bit more that it would have been a great movie. Regardless this is still a very entertaining movie that I very much enjoyed watching. I’ll get it on Blu-ray when it is released, so that should tell you something. If you’re into Warcraft and/or are into High Fantasy this is a good movie to watch.