A mess, comparable with Dungeons & Dragons or Jack The Giant Slayer.

Rating: 4/10 (15 October 2016)

Opinions are clearly divided about this movie, so I will keep my criticism to a few points:

This movie drags. The pacing is really uneven, even though the plot seems to be pretty lean. Perhaps its the large cast, so the action is always jumping around to contend with different threads. Eventually a lot of it isn't surprising and a number of twists get telegraphed way in advance.

Travis Fimmel phones it in, which is a problem since he is the lead. He also appears to often be the comic relief, which is an issue since he is one of the tragic characters as well. His jokes mainly fall flat. Contrasted to his role in vikings, there is none of the screen chemistry that makes him so watchable.

Overall the acting is tonally all over the place. The director didn't seem to pay much attention to guiding his actors.

The special effects are good, but also very clearly special effects. At times it felt like an animated movie. This constant shift in tone doesn't help suspension of disbelief.

Some design is great, especially among the orcs. But then some design or costume choices seem really dumb. The king looks like a parody of the prince from Men In Tights and in some parts it is clear when sets were recycled for different shots.

The lead female Orc looks like they painted someone green and stuck halloween fangs in their mouth. A far cry from the detailed designs of the other orcs. Again, this is a leading character, so it is very jarring. This lack of coherency can be found all over the movie, as if they paid too much attention to some areas and totally slacked on others. Sometimes you'd go from a gorgeous CG render of a building exterior to what is clearly a prop interior.

Ultimately, though, the real problem is that the movie tries to do too much. It is so focused on setting up a franchise and establishing characters that it forgets to be a standalone movie experience. So it commits the ultimate movie sin: Warcraft is just confusing and boring.