WARCRAFT (2016)

WARCRAFT (2016)

Tagline:  Two worlds. One destiny.

(Action, Adventure, Fantasy) [PG-13]

You will travel far, my little Go'el. My world may be lost, but this is your world now. Take what you need from it. Make a home for the orcs and let no one stand in your way. You are the son of Durotan and Draka, an unbroken line of chieftains. And our people need a leader now more than ever.

I worked at a security company overnight for about 5 years at one point. There was this dude that worked with me that said he was so addicted to WOW (World Of Warcraft) that he had a controller cord that went to his bathroom and he could still see his game screen from the bathroom. Don’t try and picture it, it’s too much. Just know that the fans of this game are super into it, so making a movie was always going to be a challenge. There are hardly any, if any, movies that have successfully taken a video game to the big screen. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG might be one of the rare examples where gamers and moviegoers were both satisfied. 

In this one, the world of the Orcs of Draenor is being taken over by an evil magic called the fel. It’s basically turning everything into crap. The apprentice of magician Khadgar reveals that he has found fel magic in dead bodies in the area around the kingdom and decides to get the help of the Guardian of Tirisfal, Medivh to help. It turns out that an Orc horde is attacking the kingdom on planet Azeroth using a magic portal. Can the humans of Azeroth overcome the Orcs and the fel with the help of an uneasy alliance with Orcs Garona and Durotan who have seen the evil of the fel first hand? 

Got all that? No? Well, basically an evil magic is seducing Orc clans to attack the kingdom of man. That should simplify it a bit. First off, I want to say that the production crew didn’t blow it on the casting. It’s all pretty fantastic for the main characters. Travis Fimmel really stands out as Anduin Lothar and it's freakin epic that he gets to ride a griffin. I pretty much freak out whenever I see a griffin in any movie. Fimmel is probably best known for the TV show Vikings. Paula Patton is great as Garona, the main female Orc in the film. A lot of the storyline revolves around her. We also get an awesome performance out of Toby Kebbell who plays Durotan the main male Orc the movie revolves around. Kebbell also did the motion capture and acting as Koba in DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. 

I think it would have been near impossible to get all of the concepts from the game into the movie, but overall I enjoyed the heck out of this thing and even bought the DVD. It did well at the box office but probably not enough to do a sequel. Or at least as of the writing of this review it doesn’t look good. This thing has some fantastic creature design, some epic battles, and is just a blast all around. It also moves along and the 2 hour run time ends up seeming short. Director Duncan Jones says his cut would have been 40 minutes longer. Duncan’s father was the late David Bowie who died during the later part of the production of this movie. 

Overall I thought this was a great effort with some vivid contrast of dark and light and it gives you all sides of the war. For me, this is a solid 6 out of 7. Just the griffin scenes alone are worth watching this thing, but there are some editing issues where things are moving just a bit too quickly to enjoy them. Blinking is over-rated anyway. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF LEGENDARY ENTERTAINMENT AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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