At least video game movies are going somewhere now

Rating: 5/10 (21 June 2016)

It is no secret to anybody, video game movies are rarely good. Mostly because the source material is ignored by the producer or simply because the point of a video game is the gameplay, story can still be a big thing in video game, but transferring it into a actual movie you now see how that story isn't really that good actually.
I am an avid video game player and also a movie buff and throughout the many years of countless video games I touched, I played trough the Warcraft games. At a young age, the first one so I don't remember everything about it but I played some good hours of Warcraft 2 and 3 and also, World of Warcraft. Not the biggest fan of the franchise, but I still love it and seeing that the were a movie going to be made actually by the studio of those games, Blizzard, it was actually a really good news for me. Finally somebody that knows it's video games will make a movie about them and Warcraft has a lot of story to tell and to turn it into a cinematic experience might actually be really good!
Unfortunately, after many years of waiting and being skeptical after that first trailer, I left the theater not so impress. I will say first that most of the CGI effects are really good, the orcs were believable and so are most of the landscapes and decors. Where to movie falls flat is actually because of the actors and the dialogues. I found the orcs being better actors, you know there's a problem when virtual actor are more believable.
The story is quite simple, the place where the Orcs are living is no good anymore and they need to find a new place to live. They found a portal to transport them to another world, where the humans and all other races are living. No need to say after that there is war going on to try to overtake that land and the humans to defend it. The are some little plot twist, but I am not here to spoil anything.
The first act of the movie is actually quite good, though the pacing is not perfect because things feel rushed, but you are into the universe and orcs are not one dimensional monsters, but have actually good development. The are also a lot of odes to the video game franchise, the fans will love it while the ones that doesn't know about the it just won't notice, so no harms done here.
Where the movie is starting to struggle is after about the first hour, where things starts to slow down and you see humans more than orcs and it just feels like it's dragging on and the acting was terrible and most of the lines were not good to the point that I even some times cringed my teeth and at some point, died of laughter because of how terrible some of the deliveries are. The worst offender is the king, he was not believable and I couldn't stand him when he was on screen. That mage that looked like a kid also was really annoying. The only one that was okay was the main actor, but even then he was border line.
In the end, Warcraft gives us some good actions scenes that are really well made and you wish you could see the orcs more often because they really were the stars of the movie. I am being harsh on the critique here, but I really couldn't stand the second half of the movie and the ending, it really broke it for me and it is just not a really good movie, if there was no Warcraft name after it it would get more destroyed than it is actually because in the end it is just a generic fantasy movie and to be quite frank, we are saturated by those movies and they are rarely really good.
Fans of the franchise will defend the movie and love it probably, that movie was made for them, the rest of the crowds will see an enjoyable flicks with nothing special to it, it is entertaining and worth a watch, but wait for a rent, it is not worth the whole Imax experience or 3D.
As for it's standing in video game movies, it is a good step, a really good one. Finally a video game that respect it's source material and attempt to do something with it and if a second one is made and they correct the problems of this one, we might have a good future movie franchise here.