Why can't I skip this cutscene!?

Rating: 3/10 (16 June 2016)

Three stars is being generous, mostly for the nice special effects and keeping to the game aesthetics. I can appreciate the good even in a dismal disaster of a movie like this.
First of all, every single actor brought their B-game and failed miserably. When you're trying to act, and a CGI orc is expressing more emotion than you, you are a failure. Travis Fimmel as Lothar came across more as a twitchy junkie with a lot of sass, rather than a stern and battle-hardened warrior. No matter what line he was delivering, he would get crazy eyes and start weaving his head around, kind of like a ghetto chick ready to throw down with another ghetto chick. Ben Schnetzer as Khadgar looks like he just got hazed at his local fraternity, and needs to shave that pathetic pedo-stache immediately. Ben Foster, who is usually pretty awesome in movies, must have been on buckets of xanax to sleepwalk through this movie and get his check. Even Paula Patton had nothing to do, trying to act confident and independent, only to be dressed up in rags and chains and saved by big strong white men every few seconds. Yikes, could they have made the racial undertones any more obvious?
Now that we've gotten most of the awful, unmemorable characters out of the way, let's move onto the plot. The bad guys' motivations come down to, "Felfire made me do it." Magical evil makes normal people evil, because the plot needs evil people. How typical. Meanwhile, the good guys are only good because everyone around them acts like morons in comparison. Durotar is the savior of the orcs and sides with the humans, because apparently he's the only dude who thinks a life- sucking warlock with glowing green eyes and bone-spikes growing from his back might not be such a nice guy after all.
You will expect every single plot beat before it happens. Oh, the main character's son is a soldier and wants to make his father proud? Yeah we know how that's gonna end up, no spoilers required. Big showdown between the hero and his nemesis? Forget imaginative choreography, let's just repeat the fight between Johnny Cage and Goro, because people loved that movie right? I think there were actually two brief moments that surprised me, a total of about 2 minutes in the 2 hour run time. For the rest of the 118 minutes, it was tedious and predictable.
Speaking of choreography, while the fight scenes look impressive, there is nothing happening in them. There is no ingenuity, no creativity, nothing. When it comes time for a powerful warlock to fight an orc chieftain, they just thrown down fists. I understand it's tradition, but the warlock never shows off any other skills besides "Drain Life." Gul'dan is the casul player who spams a single attack because they're braindead. What happened to Shadowbolt, DoTs, or summons? Mages are either shooting blue balls, surrounding themselves in blue balls, or teleporting in a blue ball. What happened to Blink, Fire and Ice spells? The magic is the most unimaginative part of this entire movie, which is an absolute shame since it could have been a real strong point.
The only good thing this movie has going for it is looks. It looks good, the motion capture is great, and it doesn't have a washed out monochrome color scheme like most blockbusters these days. I appreciate the aesthetics of the armor and locations, geography, and creatures, but without any emotion or soul behind all the pretty stuff, it just feels empty. This movie is like an empty suit of decorative armor on a pedestal, it serves no purpose but to look nice.