Fun! Fun! Fun! Awesome start!

Rating: 9/10 (5 July 2016)

I've been a fan of Warcraft since the very first game and I must say I really had fun watching this movie. Is it perfect? Not at all! Not even close. But from the beginning I had the clear feeling that "perfection" was NOT the main goal. The main goal was to introduce events leading to a huge lore that has potential for a pretty good franchise and Duncan Jones nailed it. The story overall was not very detailed, but I can see why... if they wanted to go into details from the beginning, the movie would have been 4 hours long, instead of 2 hours. Several characters were there simply to get things going. For example King Liam was there simply to introduce Anduin Lothar, who has a much bigger role in the events of the first two "great wars" against the Horde. Dwarfs and High Elves are just touched (and the elves really looked cartoonish, but it didn't really bother me that much), and really they didn't even need to be there, except to show the different races of Azeroth. Purists probably would mind, but the majority of movie goers simply wanted to have a bit of context and "that's it"! CGI for the orcs was absolutely fantastic and the armours of the Human soldiers was "spot on"! Lots of reviewers are saying that this movie was ONLY for people with Knowledge of the games and the Warcraft lore.... couldn't be more wrong. Went to see it with my wife and she loved it.. Yes there were bits here and there she didn't get, but she understood everything and she actually really liked it. Nothing a little explanation after didn't clarify. The locations were amazing and superbly detailed (loved the Griffon landing platform in Stormwind). Overall a good start, room for improvement of course, but really a good start. Editing was fine... not sure why some people are complaining about it.... "Games of Thrones" is waaaaaaaay worst than that and nobody is saying anything about it.... Another point, I thought that putting this movie as a G, was a mistake, but actually it worked (strangely enough). Plenty of violence and some pretty graphic scenes, but they were able to keep it to a level that would please to a wide public, instead of targeting just a small demographic.
Job well done.. and don't listen to some "professional" critics... 3/4 of them never even touched the games, so they are maybe a little alienated! Just my opinion!