Unexpected Surprise!

Rating: 7/10 (2 June 2016)

I am not a fan of the Warcraft games and was not expecting much when my mates suggested going to see Warcraft.
I have been a fan of Duncan Jones' other sci-fi films and was slightly disappointed when I heard he was venturing into fantasy. I had seen the trailers and thought it looked too CGI heavy and serious. Coupled with the initial poor reviews and my aversion to 3D I was not looking forward to spending £12 on two hours of Orc-y, Orc-y, talky, talky, Smashy, Smashey.
However I surprisingly enjoyed Warcraft. It was a bit silly in places and characters sometimes made daft choices, like stopping i n the middle of a battle to chat and further exposition, but it wasn't too serious and, as a newcomer, I really enjoyed the level they pitched the back story, it didn't spoon feed us and expected the audience to keep up. The CGI actually looked great on the big screen and I found myself actually caring for the great, big green and brown characters as much as the human characters. All the actors were decent choices, with Ben Foster and Toby Kebbell standing out. The film could have done with some breathing space for the actors to emote as certain scenes felt rushed or were cut strangely, in contrast to this the final battle seemed to be over quite quickly for a change!
You can tell that they are setting up for future films by leaving story strands unresolved, which is becoming an annoying trend in block- buster movies. In this case though I really hope that the Warcraft movie is a big enough success so that we can revisit this world and found out what happens to these characters next.
7/10.