There are probably two major barriers to entry on Warcraft, and characters with names like Gul'dan, Khadgar, and Medivh only represent one of them; the other one, and perhaps the bigger of the two hurdles, is that there's just too much here to fit into a two-hour movie.
The opening is breakneck, throwing characters, locations, and names around with enthusiastic abandon, but without really introducing any of them. It's a shame, because there are some valiant attempts at character work scattered throughout, but a huge amount of development feels missing - it often feels like they've left fast-forward on for long sections, as we whizz through (or, more often, past) the "craft" part for the sake of getting to the "war".
Full disclosure: I was a big WoW player for about seven or eight years, from just after launch in 2007 to about midway through Cataclysm. In that time, I was something of a lore fiend, and went so far as to read several of the tie-in novels. The point being, I already had some idea of what the plot of Warcraft was going to be before I even got close to booking a ticket.
I have no idea how confusing this film must be for someone without that reference point.
The plot itself is actually fairly straightforward: on the dying planet Draenor*, the orcs, led by the fel*-corrupted warlock Gul’dan*, open a portal to the world of Azeroth*, and send through a raiding party. Their objective is to capture enough of the indigenous people so their life-force can be drained to feed the portal, holding it open long enough to bring through the entire Horde*. Some of the orcs, led by the Frostwolf* chieftan Durotan*, don’t like the corrupting influence of Gul’dan’s magic, so they try to negotiate a truce with Azeroth’s native humans to help them kill him, and prevent the portal from reopening.
*this means something to people who play the games.
The CGI is fantastic, and includes some of the most subtle performances I've seen from a digital creature in a long time. The first scene of Durotan and his wife Draka is wonderful - understated, personal, and full of emotion. It's only unfortunate that the movie doesn't take as much time and patience when introducing any of the other characters.
Overall, the whole movie basically nails the look of Warcraft; the downside of that, however, is that Warcraft's art direction has never exactly been subtle, meaning that the overly-intricate armor and weapons can end up looking cheap and unrealistic, especially when compared with the more rustic look of the orcs.
Despite its problems, though, there are things in there that I loved; those couple of great character beats, background nods to the wider game world, and some of the action scenes are genuinely exciting. It has some really clever ideas in there, too, like how the different characters' languages sound to each other, with even the humans slipping into an alien "Common Tongue" when we're following an orc's perspective.
I'd heartily recommend Warcraft to anyone who's already a fan of the series, but anyone else...? I don't know. There are some bits in there that are genuinely great, but I'm not sure how well the whole thing really hangs together. It's doing absolute gangbusters in China, so a sequel is probably assured; maybe the 40-minute-longer director's cut that's been mentioned will see a release on blu-ray.
I'd be interested to see that; maybe it'd reinstate some of the groundwork that feels missing from this version.
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