Great waste of potential

Rating: 4/10 (5 December 2016)

I vividly remember standing in 2004 in freezing cold of new jersey gamestop parking lot with 500 nerds huddling like penguins. We all participated in beta release of the game...and now with great reluctance of employees who were forced to stay through the night selling copies, trying to keep us from freezing to the pavement, all of us walked out frostbitten and sleep deprived.
I consumed myself in the game, played 60-80 hours while working full time, going to college full time and sleeping on a school bus between classes. I explored the world, the game, the lore (much akin to JR Talkien creating history behind a story). Years later I was still hooked. I had to walk away from the game with a heavy heart in 2009 but it was a choice that I had to make. At that time we heard feint rumors of blizzard considering putting together a movie. General consensus was that it was not warranted but if it did happen, movie would have to live up to expectation of millions upon millions of fans. As of 2 years ago it was 100 million people in 244 countries. You heard that right, 100 million people. 1.4% of entire planet and if you consider that 3 billion people do not have access to civilized technology that comes out to 2.5% of population. That is huge.
And so you would think that after spending years and years making arguably one of the best video games in the world with one of the best stories ever told with one of the most developed story lines and plot lines and interesting characters and folklore and music and ambiance and islands and mountains and forests and races and just about everything... this had every single making of becoming Lord of the rings 2.0.... except it did not.
Casting for the movie was absolutely atrocious, except for maybe Garona character. Storyline was so condeluted that I felt like I was watching a made for TV pax program. Graphics were amazing but hey what do you expect.... blizzard has all the tools at their disposal.
But the movie just plain sucked. It felt like watching a horrible concoction of monty python mixed with power ranges and one of those cheesy dragon movies. It felt like story was not told, it was rushed through. It felt like people who were in charge of entire thing literally had no idea. Main cast were borderline cringe worthy. Mage looked like the world's biggest dungeons and dragons nerd. All other characters were just cheesy. And yes with all the marvels of technology unfolding before our eyes in spectacular cinematic.... but none of that compensated for a very dull, very pointless and very unremarkable story that did not need to be told.
I genuinely felt violated in more ways than one. They literally had the story line and the script from the game. They literally had characters. They had the world and designs and animations and models and every little single thing.... and they still failed.
Director has produced 2 remarkable movies prior but you can't put a man in charge of a game when the man does not play said game. He had no comprehension of what the game was really about. Producer is known for butchering great concepts and then making a mockery out of them. I can go name by name and explain why each and every producer and executive producer was a wrong person for the job.
The biggest fear in 2009 was that if blizzard was to ever produce a movie, they would not do it justice. I can't believe I am saying this but after doing it justice in graphics department, blizzard blew it... movie flopped... barely recovered enough to cover the costs. Last I heard they needed 20 more million dollars to even break even. Sweet lord... this could have been a beginning of something beautiful... maybe 6 or 9 movies... I just hope in next version they learn from their mistakes.
I hate for them to have made a mockery of the incredible tale that is world of warcraft but honestly I am not surprised.... their qualifications are producing batman movies, wrath of the titan movies and that is about it. In other words they are wrong people for the job.
This job should have been given to James Cameron or something of the sort with a team of people who are capable of delivering.