I watched it and liked it. I'm an American living in Asia, and haven't played video games in 15 years. I thought I would hate this movie but I actually liked the mind games of a few parts, particularly near the end where one character tells another to "bring peace" to the two races. No spoiler there, but if you saw it you know what part I mean =). Anyway, to each his own. I'd recommend seeing it even if you're not into gaming.
I went in with very low expectations (at the time it had a 22% RT score), so I kind of liked the movie too, since it wasn't that bad. Might even see the sequel, since warcraft starts slow but sets up some nice drama for the future.
It's absolutely ridiculous for the movie to have a 22% score. I'm not even into fantasy/role-playing or the warcraft series, and I thought it was done way better than Star Wars as a movie about conflicting sides and war. Really was an epic and finely done movie, I'd give it a 10/10. There was very little "cheese" factor which is what you kind of cringe about when you think of fantasy movies. They really did the movie in a mature, adult way, with no cheese factor, and I respect Blizzard for that.
I think Blizzard isn't used to the movie scene so didn't pay off the critics like most movie studios probably do -- so they got blackmailed. Terrible how that works..
>the critics like most movie studios probably do -- so they got blackmailed. Terrible how that works..
I'd say it had more to do with Duncan Jones making a fun movie for the fans, rather than some edgy gritty crap for the critics to sniff their own farts to.
> Might even see the sequel, since warcraft starts slow but sets up some nice drama for the future.
For sure. They're set up to be a great fantasy series
The movie is based on the books. There are a ton of Warcraft books - I haven't read them but after seeing the movie I might.
22% on RT is ridiculous. I bet that goes up a lot over time. This story of good/evil people, where each group has good and evil people within it, along with good and evil magic is as good as star wars in my opinion, just in 2016-level graphics instead. It's another lesson that races, religion, etc. don't define whether people are good or not.
reading a lot of the reviews, they seemed to be from a lot of older people who had a clear disdain for the type of movie. they seemed not to understand what fell was or orcs or anything and saw it as for dungeons and dragons nerds
The number of Western Films allowed in China is limited, and they all tend to do well. It's a soft power Beijing has learned to wield deftly that has led to some marked changes in the film industry.
I’m from China. What you said is partly true. But the reason why the success of Warcraft in China is that this film is produced by Legendary Pictures owned by Wanda, the one that owns the largest number of cinemas in China. And Wanda is very good at marketing.
Maybe the plot was sort of wuxia-ish? I haven't seen the movie so could be compleeeetely off base here, I was just trying to imagine what about the trailer I saw could map onto something that worked surprisingly well in China.
Warcraft made more money in China than the most recent Star Wars movie. The reason I've read is that Star Wars came out back before China had big cinema attendance, while Warcraft (1994) came out when China was modernizing. It's a big cultural hit.
This movie probably wouldn't have even been made if not for China. It is just one of those things that would make studios fearful, and someone then says "but china..."
I saw it with my wife who was an avid Chinese WoW player back in her college years. It was pretty much as expected: visuals are good, story was edited to heck, and the acting was...just bad. The reaction from other movie goers weren't that positive either...we heard people complaining about the story on the way out (this is Beijing BTW), though I don't think anyone thought it was "bad."
Young people in China has a special bond with the Warcraft franchise, which is absent almost everywhere else in the world.
Consoles were banned in China for two decades--basically a whole generation had limited access to games except on PC. In addition to this, there was the censorship that excluded many other foreign games, further condensing audience population on games like Warcraft.
For Chinese young people born in the 80s and 90s, Warcraft is something like Star Wars, it's one of the things that gets to represent their childhood memory and teenage years.
The Red Alert series, also hugely popular for the same generation of people, despite being banned, would probably have enjoyed similar success in China.
Interesting. Just got back from watching this tonight and thought it was great. I think people watching this will certainly need to have a understanding of the lore, names, and landscapes presented to really enjoy the movie, however.
> I think people watching this will certainly need to have a understanding of the lore, names, and landscapes presented to really enjoy the movie, however.
That is an interesting remark. Usually film adaptions go the other way and frustrate those familiar with the books/games/whatever by spending a bunch of time explaining the setting, presumably on the assumption that most of the audience is coming in knowing nothing.
terrible movie, same old plot, bad guy, good guy, bad guy loses to good guy. i played warcraft and warcraft2, but not a lot of wow so perhaps i'm missing something.
i would say in china, the fascination was more about the hype, most people probably never played any of the blizzard games that went to see the movie
Having played Warcraft 3 and a lot of Wow, and not having seen the movie yet, I have no idea who you think is the good guy and who you think is the bad guy (don't tell me!) So the games, at least, did pretty well IMO to create more complex characters than that. (Alliance thought they were the good guys but were usually racist assholes with anger management issues, Horde were superficially painted as the bad guys but really just wanted to be left alone, and generally behaved well aside from a few very notable exceptions).
Also WoW is/was absolutely huge in China and their business model there is different (you pay per hour to play at net cafes rather than buying the game and your own subscription) so there's a good chance that many of the people seeing the movie have at least played some WoW.
My criticism of the movie has to do with the pacing, acting, and the scope of the movie, but the premise is not too bad. You have Orcs who need to colonize a new world in order to survive (what other choice do they have?), and you have humans who understandably don't want Orcs to start moving in. There are good guys and bad guys on both sides.
That was the worry before even the movie came out. The movie is based off warcraft1, which was literally "orcs came to attack humans" and nothing more. It wasn't until warcraft 3 that they actually tried to describe the motives, but still you can't really change much of what was already made. However, if they manage to make a trilogy, they could utilize the arthras turns to lich king story in warcraft 3, which is much deeper.
I haven't seen the movie but I have read the synopsis. And those "that changed for the movie" you mention is probably the background information of Warcraft1 that was added as flashback in Warcraft3. However, that was still a patch job for what was already written one dimensionally, hence still rather one dimensional despite the improvement. In short, what I meant as "based off warcraft1" is including the extra information from warcraft3, which understandably is still weak in story.
At least there are some good guys among the bad and a bad guy among the good; so it adds some drama.
Tell me what action/fantasy/sci-fi movie is not good guy vs. bad guy ? More specifically, bad guys have an evil plan to do something destructive, and good guys somehow ruins it. Star War, X men, all the superheros ones, 007, and I can keep name more (at least that is the theme of the individual movies, if not the theme of the whole sequence).
The critique Warcraft received most is about the lack of character development; lack of a clear lead actor/actress. In some sense, it is not necessarily a bad thing because it breaks the old "one dude with protagonist aura that never dies" Holywood pattern.
An old and maybe not terribly popular one is Enemy Mine. There are bad guys, but they're humans, and they only play a role near the end. But they aren't primary to the story. It's mostly a story of two people thrown together in a shitty situation and learning to get along despite their initial hatred for each other.
There are lots of scifi movies where the story only barely, rather than primarily, deals with the idea of good guys versus bad guys, if it puts them together directly at all. Moon, The Martian, Gravity are recent ones. Interstellar, in its way.
Less true of fantasy which pulls its stories from the idea of grand epics with noble warriors fighting monsters and villains.
Action movies without an idea of good guy and bad guy is a challenge. Maybe I'll think of one while I lie in bed tonight but off the top of my head there aren't any occurring to me.
"Wanted" Kinda. The villain wasn't really a villain cuz he was trying to save his family (along with himself), while the protagonist isn't really a good guy either.
though not sci-fi, but check out hiyao miyazaki's anime, really well done and he has this way of never portraying characters as bad, everyone is good, very consistent across all his movies, princess mononoke, porco rosso, my neighbor totoro, etc
guessing china didn't grow up with star wars 4-6 or the disney renaissance but they did with WC so this particular IP naturally did better at the theatres
Just from watching the trailer I got the impression of this being another 'Dungeons and Dragons' disappointment (if you haven't watched that movie, you totally should. It's beyond of being horrible).
It's a pity if you have watched the CGI animations in Blizzard games. I think that was what most of the people were waiting but they decided to use real humans (which small bodies don't match at all with the overbuild bodies in CGI) with a terrible acting instead.
It was a cool movie. But the direction and acting were both pretty terrible. You could tell that the humans were standing in front of green screens. It really failed at immersion.
Scripts enabled required article, not bothering to read.
Similarly, Hollywood in general has shown me every other time that I've given 'film adaptation of X' in my life that the original form was better. Were I interested in the story of WoW I suppose the best form to experience it in would be in the actual game (I've heard players of that game admit that parts of it are better left un-played and that they are this fine with the now more rapid ascent to newer content in the game).
It's a common refrain that films based on other stuff are always worse, but I think it's sampling bias. When a movie is based on a mediocre source, people often just don't realize that the movie isn't original. The fact that a movie is "based on" is more likely to be known if the source is good, and reversion to the mean means that these are likely to have movies that aren't as good.
For one example, Forrest Gump is based on a pretty crappy book. It's mildly entertaining but it's pretty wacky and definitely not the amazing classic that the movie was. For another one that turns up a lot, The Godfather is said to be a lot better than the book, although I haven't read it myself. One more, Pirates of the Caribbean, while not exactly deep and meaningful, is a pretty fun movie based on a pretty mediocre amusement park ride.
I will admit that I can't come up with any good movies based on a video game.
Another source of trouble, I think, is that a movie based on something well known can survive on name recognition, so it doesn't have to be good. A Warcraft movie could be good in theory, but they probably haven't bothered.
Prince of Persia Sands of Time. I liked that movie quite a bit. :) Only video game based movie I've seen and liked. Granted, it's only related by name from what I understand.
WoW takes place way later than the movie. The story shown in the movie is during the events of the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans real time strategy game (from 1994).
I also liked the new Alice movie..