A shadow of what it could have been

Rating: 6/10 (12 June 2016)

So I watched the Warcraft movie and I found it underwhelming. Not in terms of visuals, of which I found amazing despite being mostly CG, but rather in terms of buildup and relate-ability. The pacing was slow, the characters were walking stereotypes, and the whole conflict could be resolved in a few minutes if people were listening to common sense instead of ignoring the obvious. Hey guys, that green magic thing is not good. Why are you all pretending you don't see it? Then it's the world building that despite feeling like there is a lot to it, they never go beyond surface level. You see Dwarfs and Elves, flying magic islands, lots of kingdoms, and none of them have any personality or lore to distinguish them from any other fantasy setting. Yes, there is definitely a lot of that if you play the game but the movie does not attempt it because it assumes you are already familiar with all that. This does not excuse how bland it feels for anyone who hasn't played the game, and even I who play Hearthstone daily, I found it to be very dull.
Then it's the scene transitions which felt very sloppy at many points. They were showing a few seconds of something, before jumping to something else, resulting to not giving you enough time to comprehend or care about its importance. I understand that there are time restraints in moves, you can only do this much in two hours, which begs the question of why did they stuff so many characters when they knew there isn't enough time to flesh them out? They should have a smaller cast or the movie should instead be a series. With everything being bare-bones and shown in a hurry, you are just not engaged.
Terrible pacing aside, the story is not special either. It's a pretty straightforward scenario of two civilizations clashing for survival. The concept is OK for making a mediocre war drama out of, but when the solution is so obvious and yet everybody is blind to it, then you cannot take anything seriously. Not to mention how vague everybody's motivations are. Why did the warlock resurrect the baby? Why did the female orc reveal everything about her people right away? Why didn't the wizards sense fel magic when it's everywhere? Why did the orc chieftain challenge the warlock to a duel before he brought all the orcs on Azeroth? There is no clear answer to any of that.
Also, they were abusing magic to make anything possible way too often. I lost count of how many times the guardian teleported or opened portals to wherever the hell he wanted. There is never a sense of distance because they can fly or teleport anywhere they want, and the sudden scene transitions are making you assume the whole world of Azeroth has the size of a small country.
It is not a complete travesty of a movie, since the colors are pretty, the battle scenes look amazing when magic is not involved, and it doesn't have a typical fairy tale ending. It was actually pretty grim and almost depressing. If you just want to have mindless fun based on a video game you play for years, it's going to be a blast. Other than that, it's only a shadow of what it could have been if it was a series.