A decently (war)crafted game adaptation, but what's the hurry?

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2016)

Duncan Jones made a name for himself as a director of highly intelligent science-fiction movies with a fair dose of humanism, so he sounded like an ideal guy to deliver a game adaptation that would stand out as really good for a change. Choosing Warcraft was risky, however, since it has become a multi-game franchise over the decades, one with its own complex story lines, characters and mythology. Distilling a story thread out of a game's lore that is cinematically satisfying while still doing justice to the gaming experience is a trap that many a director has fallen into. So the question is: did Jones succeed? My answer is: yes and no.
Although I have played my share of Warcraft, I am no hardcore fan or connaisseur (I sort of lost interest halfway through WCIII: Frozen Throne), but I cannot deny that Jones delivered a pretty convincing visual representation of how I remember the Warcraft universe. The cities and castles look impressive and lush; the Orcs look physically imposing, realistic and dangerous, but they never become mindless beasts; and the colorful human armors and weapons are instantly recognizable from the games. The battle scenes look impressive and brutal, without going into much gory and appendage-shedding details (since teens should also be able to enjoy this). The CGI, often the scapegoat that disappointed audiences aim for, looks almost flawless here, and convincingly helps to create this universe. It was a prudent move of Jones to cast mainly Caucasian actors as the Orcs, because many directors before him had to battle allegations of racism for having a tribal people played by non-white actors. Both humans, Orcs and half-breeds are portrayed by a diverse mix of ethnicities now, which works fine.
But did Jones really need to be in such a rush to get the story told? I haven't kept a score, but the first 15 minutes introduces about 5 different locations, 10 characters and maybe 7 unique terms. It is as if the entire first act contains more information than both 'Moon' and 'Source Code' combined. I love a bit of fast pacing, but here I got exhausted to keep up with this frenetic storytelling. Jones' scripts are usually pretty well- written, but here it is easily the source of most of the movie's shortcomings, or maybe it is in the editing. I had the distinct feeling that this was originally a 3-hour movie that had to be cut back to 2 hours on studio demand. Many characters are thrown in with little to no introduction (it's usually not a good sign if you have to learn character names from the end credits); some of the peoples (Elves and Dwarfs mainly) are merely referenced, so you never get a sense that Azaroth is such a diversely populated world; and some sequences evoke the feeling that a lot of exposition is missing (even some of the action scenes lack coherence). That makes it difficult to get absorbed into the story, or care for the characters, despite some nice, unexpected twists at the end, which would have worked much more satisfyingly had we known the characters better. Maybe I am spoiled by Game Of Thrones, where I get to know and love the characters over the course of many hours, and feel genuine heartache when they get killed off, but Jones should really have put more effort in building a solid foundation with a backstory and the characters.
So, a nice visual attempt to make a faithful game adaptation, but again, the difficulty of translating game to screen is showing. I had a good time with it, but as the subtitle says: it is a beginning, and hopefully a good starting point for a better fleshed-out sequel.