Warcraft

Warcraft

Starring Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper

Directed by Duncan Jones

The Story:
To flee their dying homeland of Draenor, the orcs travel through a magical portal to the human world of Azeroth, and begin taking over their land.  Orc soldier Durotan (Toby Kebbell) becomes wary of his leader, and begins questioning their violent overtaking of this new world, fearful it will just turn into like his previous home.

Meanwhile, Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel) is a knight serving his fair king Wrynn (Dominic Cooper), and when the orcs attack, he organizes a full-scale retaliation, with the help of their "Guardian" (Ben Foster), a man endued with great magic designed to protect the land.  They capture half-orc, half-human Garona (Paula Patton), who might hold the key to ending the battle.

The Synopsis:
First of all, I have never played a second of Warcraft, so this movie was specifically not geared for me.  However, when you want to make a film that's financially successful, you shouldn't alienate a large chunk of movie-going audiences.  People who never read "The Lord of the Rings" weren't excluded from the magic, wonder and amazement that was the film.  Those who never turned a page of the "Harry Potter" books weren't ostracized from their movie counterparts.  Yet, it seems that's what "Warcraft" fails to do.  It immediately jumps in with weird character names, odd settings and events that seem tailor-made for those who spent thousands of hours in front of their computers - while the rest of us are already left dumbfounded with what we're seeing.

So I decided to make the synopsis to the lowest common denominator:
"Warcraft" is a film about a race of beings who have totally screwed up their homeland, and decide to take over another land in hopes of survival.

Sounds familiar?  "Avatar," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," heck, even "Independence Day" share this same skeletal storyline.  However, unlike "Warcraft," these other films take time to tell the story, instead of just assuming people know what's going on at the very start.  We're given words like Azeroth, Gul'dan, draenei, fel magic, Lothar and Medivh like we're supposed to have known these terms and names since birth.  It left me at the very beginning of the film feeling very lost, and my brain immediately began a long string of nonsensical thoughts that weren't collected to a cohesive whole, much like this film.

This was what was going through my mind while watching this movie:
Orcs are bad.  There's a council of humans.  Dwarfs and elves are around.  I see a mountain of fire.  No ring though, except those on the orcs' teeth.  Weird place for rings.  CGI is incredibly over-the-top.  There's magic.  A fight.  An orc baby...hey, I know what "Warcraft" was about!  It's about the birth of "Shrek!"  Because the baby was green and sorta resembled Shrek.  I can't wait for the story of Donkey's origin is told.  How is Ben Foster a magician?  There's eagles here, or are they griffins?  Where's Harry Potter?  The final battle location looks like the final battle scene in the "Shadows of Mordor" game.  Paula Patton looks incredibly good for being half-orc.  If she's half-orc, half-human, how the heck did a human mate with an orc?  Why would they?  Wouldn't they get crushed?  Green magic is bad, blue magic is good.  That tower should get an elevator.  There's a sorta love story between a human and the half-orc, like Aragorn and Arwen in LOTR.  The lead actor looks like Aragorn.  What's going on?  What's going on?  Look, a scene that resembles Moses being laid among the reeds.  It's over.  What did I just see?

What I did appreciate about the film is how they managed to get Aragorn from "Lord of the Rings" to appear here.  He did a great job in rallying the human troops and...wait, what?  That WASN'T Aragorn?

Hm, could've fooled me.

Alright, well, I can then appreciate how "Guardians of the Galaxy" star Gamora came to bring peace to both...wait, what?  That WASN'T Gamora?

Hm, yet they look alike AND have similar names (Gamora/Garona).  Are you sure Gamora wasn't undercover here?  I thought I saw Groot as an extra in one of the scenes.

Anyway, so getting away from the fact that I totally got the main characters confused from better films, what this film did have going for it was...uh...hmm...

The Summary:
If you've been playing Warcraft since you were in diapers, you might enjoy this flight of fancy.  For the rest of us, it's a two-hour tale we've seen in many different films before - and done way better.

The Score: D+