Warcraft: The Beginning - I wanted to like this so much

No, I’m not a die-hard ‘Warcraft’ fan on the computer games this film is based on.  However, I am a huge fan of its writer/director Duncan Jones (and of course his late/great father, David Bowie).  If you’re a fan of sci-fi then you really should check out Jones’ first two films: ‘Moon’ and ‘Source Code.’ They’re a great example of what can be done on a smaller budget with a decent script.  Therefore, my hopes were high when I saw the amount of money and resources being poured into ‘Warcraft: The Beginning.’ However, as many who have studied film since the mid-nineties will know… films based on computer games rarely work out.

If you have no idea what ‘Warcraft’ is (and my knowledge is based on playing ‘Warcraft II’ on the PC many years ago and that hilarious ‘South Park’ episode that rips into it) then it’s kind of like ‘Lord of the Rings’ i.e. a medieval-type world and an ongoing war between humans and Orcs.  Now, I mention ‘Lord of the Rings’ not just because of the (loose) plot similarities, but also because the trilogy is currently around fifteen years old and dealt with battles between green-skinned Orcs and humans.  Therefore, you may think that the special effects will also be fifteen years more advanced that what we’ve seen before.  Not in my opinion.  This was my first major gripe with the film – the CGI.  It just didn’t look real.  The dwarfs and elves looked almost comical and the Orcs were basically so blatantly made with computers it took me right out of the story.  Unfortunately, the costumes weren’t an awful lot better (and these weren’t even made with computers!) – they looked like what you’d see at a cosplay event and were way too clean without the rugged ‘battle-worn’ look that’s been displayed in Lord of the Rings.

Then we have the plot.  Yes, it could simply be described as ‘Orcs vs humans,’ but they at least try and mix it up a little with some good Orcs and some bad humans.  However, the characters are so one-dimensional that the baddies (or either species) simply come off as cartoonish (and doubly cartoonish if they’re already drawn on computers and look like a cartoon anyway!).  There’s a plot in there that kind of reminded me of ‘Avatar’ (for some reason) about inter-species relationships and working together to save both races.

The action was okay.  Yes, there are battles, but nothing that Lord of the Rings hasn’t done before.  All in all this film feels like painting by numbers.  It’s not terrible, but it probably could have been a lot better.  I could imagine a young boy (most likely) who hasn’t seen many films being totally blown away by this and loving it (and then going out and buying all the toys afterwards!).  However, I’m just too jaded and have seen all this before.  Maybe I should be more forgiving when it comes to films like this.  I guess it’s aimed at children rather than me.  But, love it, hate it or – like me – be kind of indifferent to it, I still have faith in Duncan Jones that he’ll come back with another awesome film.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights