Warcraft

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)

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)

This is surprisingly good work. It pulls at the gate without hesitation with the vigor of the Horde to engage the imagination of the Alliance at times. In the first case, it offers monumental and clear battles, in the second good personal moments, catchphrases, and even emotional highlights of heroic self-sacrifice. Jones' flick would have deserved another half-hour to introduce that world in a little more detail so that the viewer could get a better look at the inner threads of each side of the feud. However, I understand that the studio wanted a decoy that would score better if the viewer was fooled by the special effects artists and Djawadi's thunderous vibrations so that it could serve us a distinctive trilogy thanks to the earnings. I already consider Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill to be good video game adaptations, but Warcraft will hopefully break the genre floodgates to quality cinema for others. (05/08/2016)

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)

Warcraft has high production value with a gorgeous fantasy world and great costumes, visually polished down to the last detail. I didn’t mind the absence of bigger stars, as I consider Ben Foster a great actor in his own right. My issues with the movie lie with my ignorance of the game, the rules of its world and types of spells, as well as with the dramaturgical simplicity of the story – I wasn’t too engaged by the racial conflict, had to divide my attention between too many characters and the deaths of some of them were given too little space with respect to their importance in the story. (27/06/2016)