A fantastic delight for fantasy lovers.

Rating: 10/10 (17 June 2016)

Warcraft is an amazing fantasy spectacle. The movie delivers on what it promises - orcs are lifelike and truly become relatable characters, magic is plentiful and portrayed in an interesting way and the world looks beautiful with stunning sceneries. Movie's director Duncan Jones has managed to perfectly captured the essence of Warcraft, taking all that makes the renowned video game so great and adapting it to a format suitable for big screen. Even humor is there and it's not over the top.
In its core Warcraft is a character driven movie. While on the bigger scale the movie is about conflict between forces of good and evil each character has their own motivations and personal struggles. During the movie it becomes evident that lines are not as clear cut as it seems at first glance. It's a great story of conflict and tragedy.
The plot is made easier to understand for those unfamiliar with source material. The movie tells you most of the things you need to know while subtly hinting there's more to that and old fans can pick up those familiar clues. Attention to detail is just uncanny - there are probably hundreds of Easter eggs woven into the movie but none of them are distractive for the uninitiated.
The story is amongst some of the most faithful ones to source material ever seen on the big screen. There are changes but none are so major as to change the overall story, some are purely cosmetic and none are really out of character. Most of them really do work to make the story more fluid.
With all that said the movie is not perfect though. The movie's final cut is a bit too short for a fantasy epic of this scale. It shows in some places where the pacing suddenly seems off and it feels that too much was left out. Hopefully they will release an extended version later on Blu-ray.
Overall it's a great movie that does a good job with setting up the Warcraft universe on big screen and leaves you wanting for more. A delight for any true fantasy lover.