Missed Opportunity - A Humorless Hard to Follow Mess

Rating: 4/10 (1 August 2017)

I wasn't expecting Lord of the Rings or a movie which strictly adhered to Warcraft lore. I was hoping for a good story populated with relatable characters. I was disappointed in that I saw neither.
The movie had no sense of itself or what it wanted to do. I felt like it was trying too hard to appeal to a broad audience and lost itself in the process.
There's a kind of charm to all the characters in the game that wasn't there in the movie. In the game, there's winks and nods in the form of pop culture references and humor abounds. This movie took itself way too seriously and what few stabs it made at humor fell terribly flat. I felt like the movie was saying, "I am epic! See how epic I am? Behold all my epicness! I am SOOOOO EPIC!... Ummm... do you think I'm epic?"
I had a very difficult time getting invested in the characters. When key characters died I found myself saying, "So?" and "Who was that again?" I believe the pacing was to blame along with splitting the viewer's attention between so many groups of people. I have to agree with other reviewers and say that I cared more about The Frostwolf Clan and Durotan than I did about anyone else. No offense to the actors playing human characters, but I thought they lacked charisma. It felt like they pulled actors out of a ren-fair and handed them a script.
Finally, the plot was convoluted. We were dropped in the middle of the Orc's exodus to Azeroth with no exposition. From there, we were jetted from locale to locale unsure of why we went there or where we were going next.
It's not Marlan Wayans Dungeons and Dragons bad. The acting was OK, the action was good, and they threw in a merloc so I'll bump it a point for that. All in all, I'm giving it a 4.