A bit of a mess ...

Rating: 4/10 (19 June 2017)

I really wanted to like this movie, having been a fan of the games a few years back, but this movie really missed the mark. In my remarks, I will discuss key elements of the plot, which is why I gave it a Spoiler Alert. If you don't want to know certain elements of the story, then don't read any further.
The big problem with this movie is the storyline, which moves far too fast, and tries to encompass far too much. We end up getting little glimpses of a lot of characters, but don't get to know any of them. The character of Garona (played by Paula Patton) is a good example.
We are introduced to Garona fairly early in the movie, and realize she is "half-orc". (It's the green skin and the fangs that give it away.) She seems like she would have been a great character to revolve the story around, yet we learn next to nothing about her. Who were her parents? Her mother, she said, was put to death, but who was her father? How did she end up being tugged along in chains beside the orc hoard, and why was she there at all. Why drag along a half-orc slave girl when you are attacking a new world? Was it her language abilities? We were never told, so can only surmise.
Then Garona falls into the hands of the human leadership, who suddenly treat her like a long lost friend. They trust her so completely that she gets to wander alone freely throughout the castle, even down to the dungeons to chat with Anduin. At the end of the movie, she becomes paired with the king in the final battle. She vows to Anduin that she will "protect the king", yet we are never told why the king would rely on her protection in the first place. In a matter of days, and the timeline of this movie encompasses no more then that, Garona goes from a slave girl on a completely different world, to suddenly becoming a close confidant of the royalty of the kingdom. They never show us how this sudden relationship growth takes place, or why she would feel such loyalty and affection for a King that she just met.
The movie shows us little snippets that suggests that there is a budding romance forming between Anduin and Garona, but leaves that hanging as well, with nothing being resolved. Anduin, for his part, seems attracted to Garona, but again, he never really tells her. Just a lot of staring and mumbling on his part. In the end, Garona remains a complete enigma, which prevents the audience from feeling any kind of attachment to her.
So many elements of this movie are just thrown at the audience, who are simply expected to suddenly grasp the significance of characters and situations. Ben Foster's character, Medivh, is thrown at us with the explanation that he is "The Guardian". We don't know what or who the Guardian is, and it is never explained, so there is a disconnect. Then there is the young magician, Khadgar, played unconvincingly by Ben Schnetzer. We don't know anything about his origins except that he ran away from some school that we have to assume is for mages. Assume, again, because we are frustratingly not told anything. The movie drops these characters in our laps and then just moves on.
The Lord of the Rings demonstrated how to introduce an ensemble cast so that the audience would identify with the various characters, and care what happens to them. All of that is missing from Warcraft: The Beginning. This movie just tosses us back and forth between the orcs, the humans, the mages, back to the good orcs, then over to the bad orcs, and then back to the humans once again. Around and around like a merry-go-round, with not one single character being fully developed enough to care about.
Positive: Good CG effects.
Negative: Pretty much everything else.