Not as bad as critics are saying

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2016)

Based of one of the most popular video games of all time,'Warcraft' tells the tale of orcs and humans fighting for their world. The orcs world is dying and one big bad orc opens a portal to the human world where they can rebuild. Except, they don't want to coexist with the humans. They begin destroying towns and taking slaves. Naturally the other people inhabiting this place aren't very happy about this, and they fight back. Now, I have never played the game and am not really a fan of Blizzard games. Even though I have never played the games I feel like this movie was one for the fans. (Even though most of those fans say this isn't like the actual story.)
As I watched, there were many obvious things that were fan service that I didn't get. But when these things popped up they never really stayed for to long. I was happy that the film was actually trying to be a movie instead just fan service. That being said, this is a film that many people who haven't played the games will be frustrated with.
It never goes into much detail about, really anything. Very few things are explained or spoon feed to the audience. While I appreciate when a film does this, this one didn't really know what it should and shouldn't explain. There are many things that, because I am not a fan of the game, didn't make sense. This is unfortunate because a film shouldn't be dependent on the thing that it's based off.
You shouldn't have to read books or play games in order to get what is going on. This is the main problem with the film. There are far to many things that are left too vague. I shouldn't have to go through an extraneous process to get why a character is doing the thing that they are doing. I really had no idea who these people were and the film didn't do anything to show me who that person is.
Even after two hours with these characters I was no closer to knowing them. Not a single one had any personality other than the motive that drove them. Not knowing or caring about the characters made the middle portion of the film very tedious. It cut between almost every main characters backstory back to back in the most sloppy way possible.
It would show us a boring scene between two or three bland characters chatting about who knows what only to be cut off by a terrible transition. This happens nine or ten times. It seemed like the film knew it's characters sucked so it just jammed extraneous nothing into the middle and hoped you didn't notice. It made the 2nd act of the film so incredibly boring and tedious to site through.
If you were to pull the majority of the second act from the film you would actually have a pretty good fantasy flick. For a movie that is being panned by critics it does a lot right. Most notably thanks to Duncan Jones and his direction. Because holy crap is this film pretty to look at. What I loved about it was despite the large use of CG It never felt out of place.
This is mainly a product from having the majority of the sets be practical. Being in an environment rather than in front of a green screen seriously helps you believe that it really exists. But a lush world would be nothing without stirring music to capture the feel of the environment. And it does that very very well.
This is made even better by the great cinematography. Watching as the camera navigates between giant book shelves or take on perspective shots is pretty cool to see. Doing this shows a level of grace and maturity that you don't see from many other directors today. It showed that Jones really cared about what he was doing and the effort put into every shot makes that sing true.
Is it a perfect movie? No. But is it the disaster most critics are calling it? Of course not. The level of effort put into the technical aspect is unmistakable. It's very well directed and offers some really stunning visuals that your eyes can feast on. That being said, its story is pretty messy. It's uneven, poorly edited, and overstuffed. It tried to cram so much content in the film that it was impossible to really get involved in what was happening. If you're a fan definitely go see this but if not, it's probably best to stay away.