Warcraft gains zero experience points for a compelling fantasy movie, but something for amazing effects and battle scenes

Rating: 3/10 (14 June 2016)

One memory that will last from college was simply passing through my dormitory. Why that? Because most of the open doors became ironic statements when most of the students were at their desks with headphones in as they placed themselves in a fantasy world. This adventure they were a part of was the World of Warcraft. While I've seen it and even saw the episode tribute on South Park, I have never played the online sensation that still remains one of the biggest selling computer games of all time. Like anything popular, Hollywood is going to want to take a shot at it at some point.
The issue once again is that Hollywood has a terrible track record for video game movies. Hit-man: Agent 47 and Ratchet and Clank have proved that the material is simply incompliant in a cinematic light. Is it the people making the game? Is the people in front of the camera? It's hard to say, so Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, has taken more a production role to try and ensure a proper adaptation. They've even hired Duncan Jones, the creative genius behind Moon and Source Code. With the game company and a good director in tow, does Warcraft finally crack the video game adaptation problem?
We begin in the fictional world of the orcs, Dreanor, where the planet is dying. Several orc clans follow the direction Gul'dan (played by Daniel Wu) and his magic through a portal that leads them into Durotan, the world of the humans. One of the orcs that made it, Durotan (played by Toby Kebbell) joins Gul'dan's war band as they raid several villages to take the land in their name. The humans of this world are a part of a medieval kingdom as run by King Llane Wrynn (played by Dominic Cooper).
Top knight commander Sir Anduin Lothar (played by Travis Fimmel) does his best to strategize against the bigger orcs which prove to be a bigger problem then anticipated. He starts to work with a mage (magical person) Khadgar (played by Ben Schnetzer) who consult the guardian wizard Medivh (played by Ben Foster). They gain their first clue when they can trace bits of the magic that the orcs have been using. While scouting, they encounter a half-orc woman Ganrona (played by Paula Patton) whose caught in the middle of this invasion. Meanwhile, Khadgar is questioning the intentions of Gul'dan as both sides face each other for the first time.
Did you get all of that? I hope so, because Warcraft spews A LOT of fantasy elements that I assume are from the source material. I'll take a wild guess that the movie follows the game very closely, because this made me feel like the guy coming to a comic shop trying to eves drop on a bigger group of fans trying to understand what their talking about. The problem here is definitely the script that has trouble trying to create some history and understanding of the orcs. This seems like the best thing would to have simply made the villains evil.
Now what's interesting is that the orcs are the best element in Warcraft. The motion-capture and CGI is some of the best I've seen. They way the skin tones react to the light really make you forget your watching animated characters. The story of orc Durotan was the most intriguing side to hear from, so why couldn't they have done the same for the humans. I could care for any of these people cause all, not some, but all of the human actors were terrible. They only got good when the battle sequences happened, which were also well staged and shot.
I'll give this three copies of World of Warcraft out of ten. If the other video game movies made the mistake of hiring a director with little knowledge of the source, then this is the other extreme; hiring someone who can't translate everything into an entertaining fantasy movie. Warcraft had a lot of potential but will be seen as too much work for a mainstream audience. Even if I did know the material, I doubt the movie would still be good.