It could become "this decade's Lord of the Rings"

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2016)

First things first: I watched the movie in German, I enjoyed the movie a lot, and I haven't played Warcraft. Before watching the movie, my knowledge of the franchise was very basic and essentially just the premise of the movie: The world of the Orcs is dying. They open a portal to the world of Humans, Azeroth, and try to conquer it for themselves. I'm not going further into story details.
The movie plays a bit inside baseball. And the pacing is a fast. If I had to choose, I prefer it to be fast rather than slow, but it could have been a tiny bit slower to drink everything in. It tries to explain a lot of things, so it is a bit "Information Overload" as well. You are also thrown in to new settings and are meant to just accept them. The first few location changes I was constantly thinking "wait, stop, let me look at it, don't jump to another place, I need some time to understand where we are". But after a while, you just accept that Azeroth is a vast, diverse and big place.
I loved the characters of Dorutan, Draka, Orgrim, Guldan, Medivh, Garona and Lothar. Khadgar grew on me, mainly because I wasn't too fond of the cast actor, but he did a fine job. Regarding casting, I had some issues there: I had a hard time believing the Queen and Lothar are actual siblings. I'm all for diverse casting, but at least give siblings the make ethnicity, okay? Also Lothar must have been 10 when he became a father. Other than that, the cast was okay with me.
The names of the characters themselves are a mouthful, and I'm not sure I wrote them correctly. My most favorite character arcs are the ones from Dorutan & Draka, Medivh and surprisingly Khadgar.
The conflict between Orcs and Humans, and Orcs and Orcs is explained well, as is the introduction of the orc race itself. In actuality, the movie tries to give humans and orcs the same amount of screen time and importance and gravitas, but I think everyone will root for the orcs (well, Durotan to be precise). They are just so well made and far more interesting than mere humans.
It takes itself very serious, with a few jokes here and there. The jokes don't feel out of place, so no cheese-fests like other Video Game adaptations. I actually liked that a lot, just simply because the setting *hint hint* is an actual war.
The visuals are good, but the CGI regarding the background is obvious. I hope on the small screen the CGI won't be as obvious. The Orcs look great, though. Dwarfs are hilarious and I wish we had seen more of them. Elves looked weird, as if they had a cartoon-y glow around them, but they only appear for like 2 scenes. With more screen time I probably would get around it.
Battle scenes are rough and brutal, something you would expect in an actual war, so don't expect choreographed battles like in most comic book adaptations. A big plus is the active use of spectacular magic in battles. Which is extremely stunning: Look forward to Medhiv, he will become one of your favorites. Comparing it to the other big two high fantasy franchises, magic is basically only hinted at and at most very downplayed in the Middle Earth films, and kind of non-existent in Game of Thrones. I would say Warcraft falls right in between both of those high fantasy franchises. Where 'Lord of the Rings' is a high fantasy story with downplayed magic and a 'let's save the world' 'good-vs- evil' style story, and 'Game of Thrones' is downplaying fantasy in general with no clear 'good or evil' characters in which anything can happen, Warcraft has definitely no set 'good vs bad' theme and anything can happen and it embraces fantasy and magic.
The movie is an obvious setup for a franchise, and after watching "the beginning" I want to see the sequel. The world is set up and now that everything is introduced, Warcraft has the chance to create really good and sophisticated stories.
If you are a fan of the high fantasy genre, you should definitely check it out. I enjoyed it a lot. I loved the character development of the main cast and the orcs in general. Neither me and my friends played Warcraft and we went in for this decade's new "Lord of the Rings" and none of us were disappointed.
I personally ranked it 8/10. Main issues were pacing and inside baseball.
I watched it in German. Orcs were speaking in a very bass heavy tone. Might be difficult to understand. The German dub is very well done. Of course as it always is with dubs, characters/actors loose their accents, which might or might not be a good thing. I can't comment on international voices.