A fairly bland fantasy tale

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2016)

*Thematic Spoilers below*
First of all, I want to get my baggage out on the table here. I played WOW for years and it's the greatest video game ever made, bar none. In recent times I've stopped playing. The game has lost its way but given my history with the game there was no way I was going to miss this film. My girlfriend simply refused to watch it with me, so I had to sheepishly go to the cinema on my own. I could feel the judgement.
Anyway, onto the film. I was never bored watching this film. I enjoyed it and think it is reasonably well made. The effects are outstanding, and it ambles along at a good pace. So why the rating of 6?
Well, it's hard to really pin down what's wrong with this film. I think one of the primary problems is that one never really engages with the characters, any of them, and there are a lot.
The grand thematic elements of the story that Duncan Jones had to tell aren't that great, so he had a difficult job on his hands to make this thing interesting.
The great parts of this story are rooted in the characters and their relationships (forged over years in the lore of the game), so the characters had to be sculpted well, and we had to be made to love them. This is no mean feat in 2 hours. That's where the film just completely misses the mark. Through the film several main characters die, and I felt nothing on each occasion.
I believe that the film just suffers from having too many characters that we barely know, whereas it should have 2 or 3 that we deeply understand, and come to love and root for. Then when they succeed or fall, we feel it.
All in all, this is a decent film. WOW fans will enjoy it, but I don't think there's a huge amount there for anyone else. I really hope that the film does well enough to enable the follow up, which I hope is the story of Arthas. Sadly, I don't think that will happen.