4 out of 5

Directed by: Duncan Jones

The early critical reception of Warcraft seemed to have suffered from a VIDEO GAME… BAD!! reflex, something comic book films once struggled with before they kicked their way to maturity, bit by bit.  And that’s not a Warcraft fan opinion: I don’t play the games, don’t care about the games.  It’s an opinion of someone who’s read the reviews, and seen the film, and can’t rightly say that I agree with most of the disparaging points – the acting, the plot, the fill-in-the-blank – the critics are making.  Some people are closer to acceptance, but it’s still tinged with exceptions, as though hesitant to proclaim enjoyment.  And I don’t mean to suggest that the reviewers are outright denying something, like a conspiracy, rather that expectations cast a shadow across their viewing, and it’s hard to struggle through those.  Because, yeah: video game movies, traditionally, have not been very good.  It’s a scope problem, really, as well as a general adaptation issue: in bringing something like Super Mario Bros. to the screen, you can’t just capture the simple bop-bop fun for a movie, you have to give it a story… and we know that’s already lacking in most games.  And try to ape the experience too closely – a la Doom – and you wind up with something that feels, unfortunately, hollow.  Elsewise, you get a nut that’s too big and unwieldy to 90-120 minute crack.  LOTR introduced the “do it as a trilogy” approach to solve the same issue with book series, and Marvel figured out that it paid to do smaller scale origin stories first versus jumping right in to world-ending events.

All of this was in my mind, too, when Warcraft finally reared its filmy head, like a decade after it was announced.  It seemed an even more problematic tale than usual to approach, as it was both a large and small story: a very simplistic enemy versus enemy tower defense concept that took on lore as the series expanded.  So what do you do?  What’s the “in” to this story?

And that is, for sure, still a problem with Warcraft.  It moves quickly and stumbles along the way, with some jarring edits between scenes and some elements that are un-movie-like underplayed.  But by and large, it is a success, and has a focused director, great effects that support the actors, and a clear-as-can-be script to thank for that success.

We open, wisely, on the Orc homeworld of Draenor, quickly giving us a sympathetic non-human point-of-view in Toby Kebbell’s Durotan, the leader of a clan that’s just one small part of a giant army amassing to cross over to Azeroth, our human planet.  The means by which this is going to occur is the green magic hefted by main baddie Gul’dan, played by Daniel Wu, which is powered by death.  Death, to Durotan’s eyes, of everything; he suspects that it’s this same magic that has drained Draenor of its trees and wildlife, and that it will only be too soon before the same happens on Azeroth.  And so our main crux: the humans – led by King Wrynn (Dominic Cooper) and badass knight Lothar (Travis Fimmel) certainly want to stop the invading Orcs, but parlay with Durotan and come to accept – thus (the script hopes) the audience accepts as well – that the Orcs are a living, breathing race, and perhaps there’s a peace to be had here.  But it doesn’t get as heady as all that: Jones realizes this is an action franchise and so doesn’t skimp on the battles along the way, which are really excitingly choreographed affairs, with a surprising amount of nuance happening on all planes.  And sprinkled throughout is the lore that builds the world (and overstuffs the movie a tad), but more importantly gives our leads – including Orc half-breed Garona (Paula Patton) and fledgling mage Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) actual material to work with been plotty fisticuffs.  That the film somehow finds the time to make us feel for Durotan’s clan and to ground the sprawling Azeroth kingdoms and yet to make the Warcraft universe feel expansive is mighty impressive.  That the only sacrifice were some editing hiccups is almost a miracle.

A bit of the full-scale CGI stuff (the flying, the wolves) gets a bit dodgy, but the figurework is amazing, and, as mentioned, the battles are a fluid marvel.  The script may not exactly drop any surprises, but it’s handled with the right balance of sincerity and “here’re some funky terms now let’s move on” that I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe has softened us up to allow moreso as filmgoers.  And happily, audiences seemed to have responded well, despite the critical drubbing, so a sequel is presumably possible (and it’s of course set up for that).

However, the movie can only be as good as the people making it, so here’s a hope for Jones returning to direct and co-script again, or a team that shares his vision and approach.