Warcraft

So once again, I threw my preconceptions aside and almost completely volunteered to go to the cinema to see Warcraft. I had no idea what orcs were beforehand, and I found their teeth and general appearance quite laughable. Honestly, in the first few minutes, as fans of the game began to excitedly whisper their first impressions amongst each other, I mentally cursed myself for being there. But fine, it'll get better. I'll at least try getting into the normal people who act in it. Yeah, that Lothar guy's pretty cute. The queen's not completely off base, either. Aside from the teeth, Garona's actually pretty cool, too. Screw the teeth, she's great. And Durotan is the best orc in the world. Oh, my God, I like orcs! Is it over yet? Why?! It was just so much better than I expected, and I really want a second one. 4 stars. (03/07/2016)

I'd hardly have anything to fault about it, except for the weird king character, whom I found rather bland and unhelpful given that he was a king and his decisions (however they were at the end of the film) had a big impact. I liked the story, basically I found most of the characters likeable, or at least I didn't develop any aversion to them. I liked Orc Durotan the most, of course, as did many others. But it just didn't have that something that makes you fall in love with it, that makes you leave the theater excited. Yes, it was a fine spectacle and I wasn't bored, but for all the magic the characters had in the film, it didn't quite have real magic. A very strong 3 stars and I'm curious to see the sequel. (18/06/2016)

It's like an intro to a computer game that I thought for a long time I'd like to play. But when it's over, my motivation is gone. It's a bit like a movie for people who have forgotten what a movie should be like. The storyline is provisional and the attempt to send it through several "deep" dialogues is absolutely amateurish. The characters are sympathetic but 2D. The world ends behind the scenes. I would love to see a full-blooded fantasy that awakens the imagination, but Warcraft rather exhorts to passivity with its "from action to action and in the meantime, don’t ask anything" model. It’s too bad. Duncan Jones is partly responsible for a new wave of clever sci-fi films, but his first fantasy will only amaze China. There, too, the imagination is limited and the audience can get drunk on cucumber dressing. (29/06/2016)

Duncan Jones tries to appeal to fans of all kinds of the source material, as well as those unaffected by Warcraft, but in my case, he only made it halfway, stumbling along the way. When unfamiliar characters appear a few minutes into the film, looking deadly serious and throwing around unfamiliar names, titles, or at least mysterious words like "Gul'dan," I didn't believe I could get into the story. Luckily, the whole mythology is not complicated, and everything starts to fit together, especially when combination with the adventure where something is always happening, and there is never a moment without one of the main characters fighting, enchanting, or at least flying around a battle or spell. The problem is that beyond the initial visual destruction or emotionally well-crafted soundtrack, there is nothing else. The battles, romances, pacts, and wars lack entertainment value, and the entire First Contact takes place without me starting to root for Lothar and his comrades. On the contrary, the only character who truly interested me and for whom I was rooting for dies in a shockingly routine manner. I wouldn't mind a sequel because with such breadth, there will always be something to develop, but here, there was a lack of soul that would have made this newly discovered universe feel close to me. 50% (15/08/2016)

I understand that it's hard to come up with something new when it comes to adapting a PC game, especially when you've got Blizzard's watchful eye on your back, and the thousands of fans who've spent hundreds of hours in WoW. Even so, the filmmakers could still have delivered more than just a recycled dumb fantasy cliché that you’ll immediately discard because you've seen it in plenty of other movies, computer games, or read it in the weaker fantasy titles that bookstores are full of. I was going to write exactly what Cervenak wrote, but he beat me to it, so I'll just repeat it - any 10 minutes of The Hobbit is more fun than 2 hours of Warcraft. I’m not going to mince words, it was boring. (13/08/2016)