why was warcraft movie so bad

 

Sure, the CGI isn’t great (because it was made years ago), but you get a sense of these two opposing forces, a sense of the conflict, a vague shape of what’s going on. If you’ve read any other reviews you’ll probably guess what happened next. She also reveals that she is hated by other orcs because she’s a half-breed, which means that of course the orcs would bring her through the Dark Portal on an important mission because that’s logical. This comes back to the CGI point a bit, in that for once I really liked that this movie felt a bit unrealistic and over-the-top. Oh, and you don't have to be a huge Warcraft lore buff to enjoy it. The plot is full of things happening without any sort of character motivation or driving compulsion just because the script demands it. It’s still worth noting. Whatever the case, I'd urge you not to simply take the Rotten Tomatoes score at face value and go see it for yourself. There’s no scene in which he comes to realize he was wrong or experiences growth or changes things, he just flops to a new position when the plot requires it. Or mana, one or the other. Then the orcish horde ambushes them all because Doomhammer sold Durotan out, only before he agreed with Durotan, so who even knows what he wants. Durotan in particular is just a tremendously great character. They're the films reviewers love to hate. It is, in fact, crap. Anyway, so we fly to Karazhan on the back of a gryphon (which is another historical bit of weirdness, since gryphons come from the Wildhammers and only entered Alliance use in the Second War), at which point we’re faced with a Karazhan that looks nothing like Karazhan does. Some video game movies aren’t too bad recently I liked Detective Pikachu and the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. In Karazhan, Lothar and Khadgar engage in slapstick combat against Medivh as he starts opening the Dark Portal. This is something I really can't wrap my head around. I hold none of this against the actors portraying these characters, mind you; Travis Fimmel and Paula Patton are both among the cast members working hard to put genuine emotion and human responses into their performances. At which point I’m running into my second major complaint about the fanservice: The film doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind about fidelity. I can't wait for the Director's Cut. No one in the film manages to reach beyond the status of being a one-dimensional character. This movie is so faithful to the source material that it incorporates rendering performance tricks from 2004. So I should be the ideal target audience for a movie like Warcraft, one that tries to turn the story of the First War between orcs and humans into a summer blockbuster. It's colorful and cartoony, and sometimes dark and frightening. That’s not very good writing. Seriously, it’s exposition for details that the audience already knows. You really feel the pain of these CGI characters when they suffer, and laugh alongside them when they joke around. Except that it’s also tied into Medivh’s whole “being evil” thing, but then… you know what? It’s not willing to wink at the audience or admit that this is silly or anything of the sort. Why in the world the whole film wasn’t made in CGI is a mystery to me; the greenscreen effects in the film are horribly jarring and give it an oddly surreal and floaty quality. Yes, there's tons and tons of CGI in Warcraft. The child is stillborn, he leeches the energy of a nearby deer and gives it to little Thrall, baby turns green and lives, title screen comes up. Warcraft springs into theaters June 10, and this hotly anticipated release got me thinking about other video game-to-movie adaptations. I hope they make a sequel or two. The cityscape that we see for Stormwind is a very solid recreation of what the kingdom looks like in World of Warcraft , with a great deal of attention to detail, and it’s all details that don’t match the time period . I’ve got nothing snarky to say about it; much like the opening scene with Durotan and Draka, it seems like one of the few bright sparks in an otherwise awful movie. But again, this feels like something that a Director's Cut might really patch up---not something that makes this a bad movie. Lothar is imprisoned because he tells Wrynn not to trust Medivh, but Khadgar breaks him out by polymorphing the guard. And here is where I have to start ranting because Stormwind in World of Warcraft is the city after it was rebuilt following this exact war. Video games have reached new heights over the last few years as a medium, but why have video game movies continued to be so bad? I think Warcraft is a pretty good example of this. Save your money and read a book. share. Now compared to orc racial in vanilla, second dps trinket and a chance to resist stun (15% combine that playing as a warrior makes 30% which is so good.). Have I already mentioned that? It’s an awful film, it deserves every awful review, and it is not worth your time. Snakes on a Plane, for example, is not a good film; it has an absurd plot, ridiculous solutions to problems, terrible dialogue, and one scene very clearly shot after the rest of the film simply to insert the Internet’s favorite fictitious line into the movie. He offers to help the king rescue people that he eventually plans to murder, and Wrynn says yes because the plot demands that he say yes now. Tassi explains three main reasons why movies of video games are so bad. Case in point, Medivh finds out that Khadgar was researching the portal thing, and so he destroys all of Khadgar’s notes on the topic. In a lot of ways, this rushed first entry felt like a really great setup for a better, more in-depth movie to follow. Why are video game movies usually so bad? It's certainly also something you should see on as big a screen as possible. The Stormwind army attacks the orcs, shooting at them with guns while running toward the orcs armed with axes. in a show gives me goosebumps Who knows? Whether it's a one-on-one battle between orcs, or a huge battle scene, or a crazy (and really funny) magical fight, just about every action scene in Warcraft is really well done. He is a Shorty Award-nominated journalist and critic whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The National Review, Mother Jones, True/Slant and elsewhere. Then, because the plot demands it, Garona kills Wrynn because the portal collapsed and that’ll make her a hero among orcs or something. Whether or not you liked the Watchmen film adaptation, at least it didn’t spend its time recreating shots from the comic only to randomly have everyone refer to the glowing blue dude as Doctor Brooklyn. So many parts of this movie do not work. Anyway, the orcs march through, Draka starts giving birth, and then Gul’dan delivers the kid in what is both the shortest and cleanest labor in the history of childbirth. Spirit regen and stealth detect. So far, Warcraft is the worst reviewed blockbuster of the summer. You may opt-out by. I keep watching movies or playing games that all the critics seem to hate, that are actually pretty good---or at least not nearly as bad as everyone seems to make out. I want a (World of) Warcraft series so bad starting from Warcraft and going right into Shadowlands as the seasons progress and so on and forth with all future expansions. 3. The film even goes out of its way in many places to avoid having real actors interacting with the CGI characters, thus creating the sense of two separate movies being spliced together. This is a running theme in the film, wherein the lore is changed from the source material in a way that makes less sense than the original; it’ll come up again many times. It’s not “bad but entertaining”; it’s bad period. From fans to critics: what do you know?!! We’re told he was a great leader, but he didn’t lead anyone to do anything and his death accomplishes nothing aside from his being dead. People have claimed that this is a movie “for the fans.” I’ve been playing Warcraft games since Warcraft II was first released; I got a demo for the game, played it until the CD that contained it died from overuse, bought the game as soon as I could, and threw myself into it with a fervor. It's easy to think that a movie like this should distance itself from the video gamey stuff, and be a proper movie. The game is a mess, and not only that, some of the ways that Reforged is a mess actually impact the original Warcraft III. Though by no means a flop, Duncan Jones' movie adaptation of the religiously popular MMORPG series World of Warcraft failed to connect with audiences in an equally successful way as the games.. RELATED: The 10 Highest-Grossing Fantasy Films Of All Time (According To Box Office Mojo) Video-game-to-movie adaptations have always struggled with critics and audiences alike but the … They’re I’d be lying if I told you I knew this to be factually true, but it’s based on the video game series and novels set in the world of Azeroth. Is it as bad as critics say?SUBSCRIBE for Andre "Black Nerd" Videos! Gul’dan beats Durotan by draining his life, which upsets the orcs, but then he just drains the life of a few more and they all shut up, which means that Durotan accomplished absolutely nothing in the plot. Speaking of graphics, another thing that drew us to World of Warcraft back in the day was how lively the characters behaved. Warcraft movie producer Thomas Tull says it's because they are often made for the wrong reasons. Btw human racials was BiS for pvp for 4 expansions in a row. Note that in neither of the scenes of Lothar interacting with his son do we get any sense of who these people are. There were scary bits and some really dark magic at play. Not that you should care anyhow, since you shouldn’t go to see it. I did predict some of the film's twists, but I sure as hell didn't predict all of them, let alone some of the more tragic character deaths. She enjoyed it as well. The Daily Grind: Should international MMOs have global servers or regional servers? So he’s perfectly all right with stranding the remainder of the orcs – the people he claims that he wants to save – back on a world he admits is dying, leaving the surviving population as nothing but the fel-infested orcs who he outright says aren’t going to live peacefully with humans. Then there are movies like Maternal Instincts, which is so bad it's hard to tell whether or not it's supposed to be a spoof.The film is about a woman who wants to have a child very, very desperately, but also has cancer. Lothar tries to fly in to save the king but fails, and the orcs capture him and subject him to the same honorable duel as Durotan and Gul’dan had because…. This is half of what bothers me intensely about this movie’s approach toward fans, that it paid so much attention to the wrong details. When Avatar: The Last Airbender was still on TV, the creators told what each of the four nations ethnicities were based on. Also, Lothar and Garona hook up now in a scene with all of the dynamic chemistry of sand mixing with water. Do not go to see the film because you’re a fan of the franchise. Only it’s not a dramatic battle; we just stare at Lothar’s face until it becomes uncomfortable, then he ends the fight in two swings. There are also characters randomly able to stand around in the midst of a raging battle doing nothing without anyone so much as nudging a spear in their general directions, along with both of the mages in the cast having a strong knowledge of Plot Magic. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film gets a 26% "rotten" from critics, with 83% of viewers liking it. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. report. It also fails as fanservice, with an attention to pointless and incorrect details in some places while completely ignoring details elsewhere. We then jump promptly to Stormwind, which has been recreated in loving detail… from World of Warcraft. The film was first announced in 2006 as … Unfortunately Its 2016. There are no character arcs, no development, no sense of people doing things for reasons but just because the plot says that they do these things now. I write about video games, entertainment and culture. It would be like very carefully making sure that everyone was using appropriate 1990s-era personal computers in a movie set right after World War II. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society BrandVoice, ‘Luigi’s Mansion 3’ Review: The Joy Of Sucking, ‘WWE 2K20’ Review: The Good, The Bad, The Bottom Line, ‘NASCAR Heat 4’ Review: The Good, The Bad And The Bottom Line, ‘Dragon Quest XI S’ Switch Review: Still One Of The Best Role-Playing Games Ever Made, ‘Doug Flutie Maximum Football 2019’ Review: The Good, The Bad And The Bottom Line, ‘FIFA 20’ Review: The Good, The Bad And The Bottom Line, ‘Daemon X Machina’ Review: Ignore The Casuals, This Is A Proper Mecha Game, ‘Zelda: Link’s Awakening’ Review: An Amazing Remake Of The Best ‘Zelda’ Game Ever Made. Garona (Paula Patton) has tons of potential to be a really interesting figure in the sequel, which I hope we get. Here, then, is part of what bothers me about saying the movie is “for the fans.” The fans are the people who will notice this is wrong. The latest example of this is the Warcraft movie, based on the games and characters created by Blizzard Entertainment. Except it’s not the Dark Portal; it’s some sort of proto-Dark Portal. We also see Lothar’s kid, who interacts with his father exactly twice but is supposedly very important to his dad. My only complaint is that we didn't see more of him. Multiple key characters in our film are women and are not love interests. I always thought that the military application of ranged weapons involved using the “ranged” aspect, but let’s rush into melee combat anyhow. Everything from the soundtrack, which does a great job incorporating the games' scores, to the sound effects and visuals makes this feel like a video game movie. The movie obviously took a big hit on the chopping block, whittled down to a comfortable two hours when it should have been bolder and gone on for closer to three. My biggest complaint is that it wasn't long enough, and that it tried to pack in too many things at once. It's plenty violent and plenty dark, but it retains much of the humor and imaginativeness of the games, which is wonderful. Instead, I was often reminded of the Warcraft games, whether through character voices or melodies. Man, back in the early 2000’s you couldn’t get livelier than a WoW character. Orcs and humans both bounce around and move like this was a Merrie Melodies bit rather than what’s supposed to be a serious fantasy film. Years have passed since we watched the Warcraft … Realized how terrible that was too, and gave up after a few chapters. Apparently, the portal needs lives to fuel it, so the orcs are going to send some people through, grab some humans, and re-open the portal from the other end. Director Duncan Jones didn't pull any punches with the film's main characters. 5) The Production Really Makes It Feel Like A Proper Video Game Movie. That seems suspicious, right? Losing so many features from the base client, as well as the base client itself, is a slap in the face of Warcraft veterans who have stuck with the game for the past 17 years. The thing is, it's not just another terrible video game movie. Note that for all the talk of Gul’dan needing souls to fuel the portals, both portals open fine with minimum of any such souls, almost entirely due to Medivh. It’s accompanied by a very obviously CGI orc menacing a human who is very clearly pacing in front of a greenscreen with a level of conviction that makes The Phantom Menace look realistic. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The Animations Don’t Look So Bad for Early 2010’s Graphics. … Finally, as a side note, this isn't going to be a great film for a lot of kids, as some of the stuff is really scary and dark. Ye dude let’s blame Orc racials 15 years ago for Ally being bad in BG’s in BfA LMAO. Erik Kain writes a widely read and respected blog about video games, entertainment and culture at Forbes. Right, we were in Stormwind. Archived. So I should be the ideal target audience for a movie like Warcraft, one that tries to turn the story of the First War between orcs and humans into a summer blockbuster. John Carter springs to mind. This is some Attack of the Clones nonsense right here, two capable performers creating an awkward romance scene because it’s shoehorned in and doesn’t have the script to support it. People realize they are spending hundreds of hours on the game and getting no real life benefits. The film ends with Lothar giving a speech and proudly proclaiming “For the Alliance” despite the fact that, again, the Alliance does not exist at this point. But it never acknowledges this fact. Posted by u/[deleted] 4 years ago. The first scene, unfortunately, sets the tone. *1. In addition to the fantasy elements shared with other genre defining films, some key players from the game will be making an appearance, including many of the more popular orc and human characters. What follows is the first real fight scene in the film, and… boy, there are a lot of problems going on here. Started the movie, realized how terrible it was after 15 minutes or so, and turned it off. 7 comments. Warcraft (alternatively known as Warcraft: The Beginning) is a 2016 American action fantasy film based on the video game series of the same name.Directed by Duncan Jones and written by Charles Leavitt and Jones, it stars Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Clancy Brown, and Daniel Wu.. "World of Warcraft" movie adaptation is an epic fail of fantasy adventure cliches directed by Duncan Jones, starring Travis Fimmel, Ben Foster and Paula Patton. So Khadgar goes to talk with Lothar about what just happened, and Lothar just says, “Eh, probably no big deal.” Yet not five minutes later, Lothar is saying that Medivh isn’t reliably present and is acting odd. The merry band heads off into the woods to investigate an orc attack before themselves being attacked by orcs, which seems like a slightly absurd ambush, but what do I know? Related: Cats' Re-Release Doesn't Save The Film (It Made It Worse) Cats has grossed just over $58 million worldwide, with reports projecting close to a $71 million loss for the studio. So I’ve said before that the whole Saurfang thing was a classic example of discrediting a character to make another character look better by comparison. This part, I will happily say, was a genuinely cute moment and a nice nod to the fans, right down to Khadgar mentioning that it only lasts for a minute. That can be a problem in some films. A lapsed Warcraft fan and a complete Warcraft newbie walk into a cinema, to watch the new Warcraft movie. Sure, in the original lore she was Gul’dan’s personal assassin, a secret infiltrator who faced a great deal of personal conflict when she was ordered to kill the only people in her life who actually treated her well, but it makes much more sense if she has every reason to hate the orcs and no reason whatsoever to like or trust them, right? Well, that part isn’t clear. Some of the death scenes are really gross, and the orcs can be pretty frightening. No one in this movie seems to want anything beyond the most vague directives, the sort of thing that literally anyone would want. It feels convincing. I have strong feelings about Kul Tiras; almost no one even seems to remember that Kul Tiras exists. 3. Without spoiling much (only minor spoilers follow) here are some things I really enjoyed about Warcraft: 1) The World Is A Rich Fantasy Tapestry With Excellent (and abundant) CGI. You’ll also note if you’re familiar with the series lore that this isn’t how things originally were. It’s like having Captain Picard running around in the background of the Star Trek reboot films; fans will be wondering why the heck he’s there, and non-fans will just be wondering who the bald dude is. hide. Maybe expectations are at fault. Why Are Movies So Bad? In two hours, we were introduced to a handful of characters, while the others are also as important in the game lore, in Warcraft they were trying to tell a small narrative of a very big and diver universe. It commits every single storytelling sin you can think of and more besides; it’s neither shot nor scored well; it’s filled with bad acting and awful dialogue that is not helped by fake accents which careen all over the map. But here, it really works. Plot Magic ends this particular fight by killing all of the orcs invested with fel energies because that’s how the plot says this battle ends. The Water Tribe is based on Inuit people, the Earth Kingdom is Chinese, Fire Nation is Japanese, and the Air Nomads are Tibetan. Khadgar is motivated by a desire to not have his entire world overrun with horrible demons, which says pretty much nothing about him beyond the fact that he likes to not be killed by orcs. Something's rotten, but I'm not sure it's the film. Fel is associated with the Burning Legion, who aren't shown in the movie, but are the real bad guys of the Warcraft universe. A griffon descending on a horde of orcs and tearing into them with abandon. You recreate Stormwind down to the smallest details for the wrong era, but you can’t be bothered to recreate Karazhan? I believe why Detective Pikachu did well is because the source game is a very story driven game so it is easy to put into a movie and with Sonic the Hedgehog it didn’t try to hard to be a sonic movie it felt more like a kids movie that had plenty of Sonic references. People choose random methods of transport in this movie all the time; one minute people fly, then they ride on horses, then they teleport, then we’re back to horses, and so forth. Why does "Warcraft" movie has so many bad reviews on Metacritic ? Let’s chat about the basics here before dissecting the film and the reasons why it’s so bad. Gul'dan (Daniel Wu) is dark and evil, but it's a wickedness that we know is influenced by an even deeper evil. But it was a very entertaining film, and thus exactly what it set out to be. While the official credits only listed one man, Peter Buchman, with screenplay credits, the behinds the scenes process was way more chaotic. Gul’dan then sloughs off his robes to reveal that he is absolutely ripped, and I could not decide at that moment whether that should be accompanied by the “Kylo Ren has an eight-pack” joke from SNL or just this music. The next scene is probably the one good scene in the whole film, with Durotan and Draka talking about their kid and going through the Dark Portal. Decided to give the book a try. Ouch! Because the plot says he doesn’t believe Khadgar yet. So loud has uproar among fans been, and so damning the shortfalls of the project, that Blizzard has begun offering instant refunds to anyone who bought WarCraft 3: Reforged. People are pretty much split on this weekend's big movie release, Warcraft, which is based on the very popular video game series and novels. 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