A Warcraft Missing its World
Even if you don't know what it is, you've probably heard of World of Warcraft (WoW), Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) adaptation/continuation of its Warcraft real-time strategy (RTS) game franchise. After its launch in 2004, WoW became a gaming sensation with its huge and meticulous world of Azeroth, wide array of playable character choices (you can choose what you want your character to specialize in), and the adventures born from journeying into neutral and enemy territories while on a quest.
If you neither are familiar with nor care about any of the stuff you just read, Warcraft is not the film for you. (And I say that as a fan and onetime player of WoW who lands somewhere near the middle of the spectrum ranging from disinterest to die hard fan.)
The story of director/co-writer Duncan Jones' Warcraft adapts the first RTS game's story. As Draenor, the orc home world dies, Powerful orc warlock Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) opens a portal to send an army of his people to the human world of Azeroth to conquer their new home. Durotan (Toby Kebbell), an Orc chieftan who travels through the portal with his wife and clan, is wary of Gul'dan's use of fel magic—nasty stuff that turns orcs green and bloodthirsty, and powers the portal along with life sucked from living beings—and plans to negotiate with the humans and warn them of Gul'dan's powers. Meanwhile, Lothar (Travis Fimmel), chief military commander in Stormwind (the human capital of sorts), joins young, rogue mage Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) to investigate the new presence of fel in their land as the king (Dominic Cooper) prepares for battle with the orcs.
That's a lot of story, and I didn't even mention all of the major characters in the film.
I didn't really play the RTS Warcraft games, and my only gauge as to how well Jones and co. adapted the original story is through the big Warcraft fans with whom I saw the film (they seemed to think it hewed pretty closely to its source). My main interest in the long-in-development Warcraft movie had more to do with how the vast and unique world I wandered through in WoW would be adapted, and like the film as a whole, that aspect was a bit of a mixed bag.
Jones is a self-proclaimed fan of the Warcraft series from long before landing the directing gig, so every aspect of the film was approached from the viewpoint of making it faithful to the games. Visually, Warcraft is a stunner, with gorgeous scenery, props and sets (and they did build quite a bit in real life, not just on a computer), and photo-real creatures that all make it feel as though you're playing the game on the highest graphics settings known to man. The orcs in particular are astonishingly real despite their cartoonish, lumbering movements and oversized weapons. Motion capture and jaw-dropping CGI from Industrial Light & Magic give the orcs skin, hair, eyes, and muscles that look as real as any of the humans' features.
Warcraft's environments are also lovingly recreated here, from the sprawling Stormwind and its surrounding forest to the dwarven city of Ironforge. Unfortunately, as beautiful and accurate as it all looks, the film doesn't spend enough time to make the world of Warcraft feel as alive and unique as in the game. I used to rove around Ironforge—which is a city built inside of a snowcapped mountain, filled with taverns, inns, an auction house, weapons shops, etc...—and just absorb the sights and sounds of the city. Blizzard created an incredible atmosphere with WoW that made it feel like a real, living world, but in the film Azeroth is simply a backdrop.
The main reason the environments' rich character can't be absorbed is Warcraft's breakneck pacing. Just as a new place filled with tremendous little details in the background is introduced, the film whisks us away to yet another interesting location without letting it make much of an impression. The film's quick pacing is an asset as it keeps things moving despite its thinly-drawn characters and overstuffed plot, but it's also a hinderance by posing quite a few "refrigerator questions" (those parts of a movie that, once you're home and standing before your open fridge have you think, "Wait a second, that doesn't make sense..."). Motivations are sometimes questionable, and somethings go unexplained, but for the most part the film doesn't leave space for you to ask those questions as the story unfolds.
Another place of strength and weakness for Warcraft is its cast. Kebbell makes Durotan the most interesting character in the film, and he and his fellow orc actors do a wonderful job of inhabiting the orc physicality through motion capture. Fimmel is a charming and sometimes funny Lothar, though his pairing with Schnetzer's Khadgar isn't always a recipe for success. Schnetzer gives the most anachronistic performance, feeling more like a normal guy with magic powers than someone inhabiting this other world, but at times he feels right, particularly when using his abilities, which is more physical here than waving a wand or staff. Paula Patton's half-human, half-orc Garona has an interesting, if poorly developed, conflict regarding where she belongs in the world, and Patton manages her best with the role. Ben Foster—playing Medivh, essentially this film's wise old wizard—similarly does well with the premise of his character, though at 35 Foster doesn't always feel like the right choice to play a wizened master (if I'm not mistaken Medivh is relatively young in the game as well). The actors all do their best with the material they're given.
Duncan Jones wanted to make a film that would satisfy fans and newcomers alike, but his Warcraft manages to play like a run of the mill fantasy film made with a visual attention to detail akin to that in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Warcraft isn't a good enough movie to draw in the universally interested crowds that Jackson's Middle-earth saga did, and those films' longer runtimes and deliberate pacing would have gone a long way toward fleshing out the characters and world of Warcraft. It's a lovingly crafted, noble failure of a film that tries very hard to hit multiple targets that at least manages to land couple a shots dead center.