Fun to watch, hideously misunderstood.

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2016)

Warcraft is a movie that has an 'ok' story and fairly good visual effects, but is incredibly fun to watch for fans of the fantasy Genre.
The first problem with the movie is some of the casting choices, although the orcs were perfect and Travis did a fantastic job as Lothar, some other characters like Dominic Cooper as the king and Ben Foster as Medivh feel misplaced. In my opinion, all video game movies should only be made up of good actors who enjoy the actual video game, so they'll put more soul into their performance. -The other problem is some of the special effects. Don't get me wrong, most of it was absolutely mind blowing and we have never seen a film on the big screen with so much magic and spells, not even LotR. However there were some moments that the CGI looked a bit naff, such as the clay golem and the wall of lightning, but that might just be me. I also felt like Gul'Dan at points looked very video-gamey with his CGI. -The combat was a mixed bag. The large action scenes were epic and I absolutely loved the final battle, but there were points in some of the smaller scenes where humans were fighting orcs and it looked a bit clumsy and awkward, and even slightly cartoonish. -The story was easy to understand, but I feel it wasn't developed well, though it's understandable because of time constraints, but Lothar's son was hard to sympathize with, and the romance between Garona and Lothar felt forced as hell. - There were also some pointless scenes in there, such as the visit to Goldshire and Dalaran, those just feel like they were in there simply to show off the Lion's Pride Inn, and Dalaran. Also I don't know why Alodi was a woman but whatever. There was also Draka giving birth which was a bit weird, in my opinion.
However, there's much good in the movie which leads me to think this is the best video game movie to date. The first point is some of the performances were incredible, specifically the orcs Durotan and Ogrim, as well as Garona and Lothar. All were played extremely well. -The story follows WARCRAFT 1 not WORLD OF WARCRAFT, for all those people out there that say things like "The Warcraft movie isn't good because you can't make a good story out of World of Warcraft as it's a world not a story." No, it follows the game from 1996, not 2004, and that game has an extremely easy to follow story, and they portrayed it damned well on the big screen. Though the friends I saw it with had trouble understanding where the orcs came from, they knew what was happening and they know nothing about the Warcraft universe. Was the story original and unique amongst fantasy? Well amongst mainstream fantasy on T.V or the big screen it is, but sure, almost every fantasy story line has been done a thousand times. People compare this story to LotR, which is actually dumb because the only similarities it shares with those films is humans and orcs, and even the orcs are vastly different. The Warcraft movie story is how the orcs and humans meet, and it's easy to understand. - The soundtrack to the film was incredible, from the moment it opened I was blown away by that score done by Ramin Djawadi, the guy who has done many of the Game of Thrones scores as well. - The visuals were also incredible. As mentioned earlier there were problems with some of the CGI at times, but overall it was fantastic, on the levels of something like Avatar which had a far bigger budget than this. The world looked immense, the orcs looked incredible and the armour on the humans was the perfect blend between OTT Warcraft armour, and realistic plate armour. The set designers also did an incredible job with the Stormwind streets and throne room, although we didn't see enough of the former. - There were only two real 'villains' in the movie: Gul'Dan and Medivh. Both were very good. Medivh is discovered by Khadgar and Lothar to be corrupted by the fel, but he does a good job hiding it up until that point, and at first you do believe he is a good guy, which just adds to how well he was played. Gul'Dan is more of a stereotypical villain, but he certainly brought some incredibly dark scenes into the movie which was actually refreshing to see in a big- screen fantasy, and his fight with Durotan was epic. In all, both are great antagonists. - The ending was alright, although it was an obvious cliffhanger which kind of took away from it (I was expecting the fall of Stormwind), but the 'For the Alliance' moment gave me chills as an alliance player. But the final battle itself was great, and although it was a lot different to the Warcraft 1 story, it worked well and they did a good job with it.
In all, it isn't LotR or GoT, it is its own stand-out story. It's also based off Warcraft 1, which had a clear and easy-to-follow story. I haven't played Warcraft 1 or 2 and I only have basic knowledge of the lore around those games, but I still found it easy to understand and thoroughly enjoyable. Objectively it'd be a 6 or 7/10, but because I had such fun watching it and it is arguably the best video game movie to date, I'd say my experience was an 8/10 watching this in the cinema, and I enjoyed it as much as some much bigger films that are objectively better.