Surprisingly Good

Rating: 8/10 (17 February 2017)

It's hard to get video game movies right, and we all know how nauseating they can be when they're done badly. I really wasn't expecting much going into this - a movie about World of Warcraft? "How good could that be" I thought, and perhaps that bit of initial trepidation was just what I needed to enjoy it, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well done this movie was. I don't know how interesting the movie would be if you've never dabbled in World of Warcraft, but having played some myself, it was pretty interesting. If you have played it, you'll probably be familiar with how little the plot really matters when you play. I personally barely ever even read the quest descriptions. I think most people miss a lot of the lore for that reason. That's what was most interesting about this movie for me - I never really thought about the mythos of the world before, and I never really realized how deep the lore is. It was also pretty fun to see the game environments, the cities and locations, represented in a real world way. Very strange, but fun. All that being said, this is still a movie you need to take with a grain of salt. It's still a pretty silly thing to make a movie out of, and you can't expect it to be the best movie you've ever seen. What you see is what you get with this movie. It's a dumb action movie and it has all the trappings of that genre. Trappings such as forced romance between two characters who just met, characters who are from opposite sides of a war, characters who start out being enemies. In this movie that forced romance is between Garona and Lothar, and it's probably the weakest plot point in the movie. It feels very forced and awkward and just doesn't work very well. It's very clear that it's only there in order to check the romance box on their list of action tropes. It's a shame that Hollywood thinks this is such a necessary ingredient, but I suppose we can't really expect a World of Warcraft to push the boundaries. Overall, it's a pretty decent watch, especially if you've played WoW at all. It's pretty predictable and a bit campy at points, but decent nonetheless. It's basically exactly what you expect it to be. Nothing more, nothing less.