A very solid fantasy movie (which are scarce)

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2016)

My first review on IMDb and that says something.
I grew up on fantasy. Read all of the Dungeons & Dragons books, was fascinated by Warhammer, Read LoTR and Silmarillon, read the whole thing by Tad Williams (much better than LoTR btw, read it again a year ago just to make sure). Ultimately, when I was younger, everything was captivating: the landscapes, the power, the EPIC of it. You can find it all in Warcraft the movie. I was trying to find a comparison, or a contender to this movie. There are none. The only thing that comes to my mind is the Huntsman for their fairy tale world. People keep comparing this one to Game of Thrones, or LoTR, saying that this is not it.. well it's not, neither it was supposed to be. And this is by design. What Warcraft proposes is a completely new quality, a different approach, visual and narrative, to hundred years old tales. Spoiler: it doesn't use the ash filters very much. And people in it are not generally looking sad, or malnutrition-ed.
I gave it a 7, in my opinion it's closer to 6.5 and I believe that this is fair. The story is the same one reinvented, the story about power and the corruption it brings. About its price. A story about loyalties, responsibility (for your kin, for your clan, for your race). And the story unfolds steadily and with proper pace.
There is a couple of things that might be counted as the movie vices: - there is a lot of CGI, and I mean A LOT - it is generally pretty good, but if you're not a fan, then you might just as well skip the whole thing (and if you're a fan I can recommend Final Fantasy: Advent Children, Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell 2) - The motivations of the characters included are not always sufficiently explained - and upon reflection, this is pretty big, I mean we can imagine them, but can't know for sure and this affects a lot of characters in the movie. I think that the only motivations we know for sure are the group character - Horde, Anduin Lothar, Durotar and Garona, maybe Llan Wrynn, but certainly not Gul'Dan, Medivh, Khadgar, or the Kirin Tor mages. Which brings us to the next point - this is the first installment and the amount of things it is trying to convey is head spinning. I get it, first installment, you need to set the stage, but LoTR 1 did it over 3 hours and there wasn't much fighting in it, so it could really develop the story. You didn't have this comfort, so the script should've been reviewed. - The CGI in a couple of instances sucked - like in that fight scene in the mountains, or the last fight scene - generally not a big thing, just needs noting
Majority of the movie thought was excellent, I am just trying to be fair. The things to look for and those that were particularly good: - depiction of magic - magic play a big role in fantasy movies, however people generally don't know how to show it, this movie does an excellent job of it - (as said previously) good storytelling tropes showed in a fresh way - well paced, well balanced - high fantasy without the obvious: beautiful people are good, ugly orcs are bad attitude
All in all 6.5 is fair. Even if you never heard of Warcraft but is remotely interested in fantasy as a genre, you would do yourself a favour to go and see this movie. I know that the previous sentence is an oxymoron, but I choose to end with it, Thanks for reading!