Movie Review - Warcraft: The Beginning

Warcraft: The Beginning

I have had such hopes for Warcraft. The series has been a huge part of my childhood, and it was Warcraft -- not Lord of the Rings, not Dungeons and Dragons, not Elder Scrolls or other contemporary medieval-fantasy works of fiction that, well, introduced me to the genre. I probably put more hours into Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion The Frozen Throne more than any other game out there, and despite not playing its MMORPG sequel until relatively recently, I kept up with many of the storylines and lore parts simply because I loved Warcraft III so much.

I never got the chance to play the first two RTS games, but I am intimately familiar with the (expanded, and thrice-retconned) lore behind them as I read a lot of the tie-in novels that told the tale of the Dragon Aspects, of the corruption of Medivh, of the first two wars, of the War of the Ancients, of the origin of the Night Elves. And my love for the series has been rekindled by being insanely devoted to its spinoff digital card game Hearthstone, and recently finally cracking down and playing World of Warcraft for real... though only for the first 20 levels. 

I can probably rant about how the MMORPG system kinda ruins the storyline and character-driven appeal of what made Warcraft III good, but we would be here all day.

Nah, I'm here to talk about the new Warcraft movie that hit theaters last week. Reviews universally panned it. And while I don't exactly think it's a bad movie per se, I'm also not duped by my fanboyism to call it a good movie. 

First off, I'm going to say that, well, the movie is a visual spectacle. They eschewed having terrain realism for replicating the insane exaggerated feel of the games with the gigantic Black Portal and Kharazan's insane architecture. It's certainly a labor of love, and as a fan who's intimately familiar with how Warcraft Human structures should look, how orcish watch-towers and barracks should look, it's definitely a gigantic love letter for the fans.

The orcs themselves are really great, rivaling the likes of Avatar in great motion capture. They look animalistic and brutal yet still retain enough human features to make us sympathize with them. I really like the direction they took with the Horde, too, portraying the majority of the Horde as raging warriors bound by tradition, led astray by the villainous warlock Gul'dan who seeks only to gain more magic power and the patsy warchief Blackhand who's basically Gul'dan's puppet. Meanwhile, we get to see the Horde through more heroic characters like Durotan, Draka, Orgrim Doomhammer and Garona, a stark contrast to how the Horde must look to the humans.

The language barrier is done well, too, without having half the movie with the orcs talking in 'lok-tar zub-zub ishnu-alu-torah'. The scene where Garona explains that the humans and orcs have different languages -- and the audience just perceive it as English when it's their POV -- is brilliant. 

The big set pieces with the big battles, the gryphons and shit are all done well. We've got a lot of interesting characters, too. Garona is a half-breed slave who suffers at the hands of the Horde, but is treated like an animal by the Alliance, and only seeks to find a place for herself. Medivh, the Last Guardian, is apparently battling the demonic influences of Fel Energy and failing. Khadgar is a pariah among the mages of the Kirin Tor, and only seeks to figure out how Fel came to Azeroth, without realizing that one of his allies brought it here. Durotan wants to get rid of the corrupting influence of Gul'dan so the rest of the Horde can come through. Lothar is just a loyal soldier to his king, who loses his son halfway through and has some... weird... romance... with Garona?

The problem with this movie is that they try to have so many subplots, so many characters going on, that you would think the movie would be better served by paring down the POV characters to just Durotan, Lothar, Khadgar and Garona. We are told about the Kirin Tor and the Guardian, yet the movie never explains just what the Kirin Tor are (really, 'the mage order Kirin Tor' would've taken like two seconds to say) or just what the Guardian does. A short explanation from Lothar or Llane to Taria (who does jack shit in the movie) or Garona would've done wonders for the cohesion of the movie. Medivh is also instantly suspicious from the beginning, thus kind of ruining the big twist that, oh, he's actually corrupted by a demon!

The weird Aloni thing in Dalaran with Khadgar going into a giant black box and meeting... what I think is supposed to be Aegwynn... is also weird and came out of nowhere with a cheesy 'from light came darkness' prophecy, and really just having Aegwynn explain that she's a previous Guardian, or have her be replaced by Medivh's sanity, or just cut out the scene entirely and have Khadgar arrive at the conclusion on his own.

Garona's whole character is also a mess, though that's something she shares with her game/novel counterpart, so yeah. The big 'assassination' moment where she's forced to stab Llane in the back on Llane's orders so at least one of them will survive is definitely a great moment, one that is superior to what happened in the games, but the rest of Garona is just a big mess. She's a walking plot device more than anything, and why she suddenly struck up a friendship and the totally-random romance with Lothar, and the weird flower bits with Medivh, end up taking so much screentime for no payoff.

Speaking of no payoff, really, show-writers? You create that golem, have Medivh become demonic, and you don't turn the golem into an Infernal? Shame on you! That clay golem looks ridiculous, and really the only thing that could've saved it was putting it on fire. The golem fight is easily the most tiresome and bland fight in the entire movie.

The whole demon corruption angle ends up feeling rather bland and unpolished. Gul'dan and Medivh working together could've been foreshadowed, really, by something more than weird pages in a book, and maybe have Gul'dan actually commune with Sargeras the demon himself promising to feed souls to him? Have Medivh answer to a 'master' that takes a different appearance? I dunno, so many ways to make this coherent.

The ending, I know, is supposed to set up for the Alliance/Horde war in the future, but it rang a little hollow and haphazard. The Baby Thrall bit makes no sense in the overall story unless you know who Thrall is, Lothar seeing the dagger in Llane's neck and being out for blood is a bit of a downer ending, and Gul'dan lives and is still on Azeroth, with only Garona's tenuous influence holding him back. Wouldn't it be better to just lob Gul'dan back through the portal?

Gul'dan is a very entertaining villain (and I never realized those spiky shit on his back are actually demonic growths instead of accessories) but ultimately his motivation ended up being boiled down to 'mwahaha more Fel'. The other orcs have motivations ranging from standing within the Horde to saving their race from their dying world, but the human Alliance's entire purpose is just 'oh no defend our land kill the orcs' which is honestly a bit too simple and boring. We don't really build the world to see why we care about Azeroth, we don't really build a lot of the characters to care why a lot of them die or live... and really, Medivh and Garona are two characters that take up so much screentime without any of them really deserving it.

Anyway... did I enjoy the movie? Damn well I did, it was a beautifully crafted movie. Was it a good movie? Nah. It's got a clunky scripting and really could've stood with less grimdark and more light-heartedness that Warcraft is known for. Or, hell, simple character-building for the actual main characters

Warcraft Easter Eggs Corner:

• Yeah, I'm having this because not every part of the movie really makes it clear to viewers what's going on. The blue-skinned humanoids rounded up by the Horde at the beginning and used to power the Dark Portal is the Draenei race, which used to cohabitate the orcs' homeworld of Draenor before war with the orcs nearly wiped them out. The surviving Draenei would later join the Alliance in World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade as a playable race.
• Garona was initially introduced in the first Warcraft game as a half-orc, half-human, but when the first war was condensed to take place over the course of a short period of years, she ended up being retconned into half-orc, half-draenei. 
• Llane's wife and Lothar's sister, Taria Wrynn, was never named nor expanded upon in lore, and is wholly original to this movie.
• During the scenes where we briefly saw Dwarven and High Elven delegates in the huge council, we can glimpse what is clearly meant to be an adaptation of the Dwarven king Magni Bronzebeard. The dwarves and high elves will eventually join the human kingdoms in the second war to form the Alliance.
• Durotan and Draka's baby Go'el would be raised by humans under the name Thrall, and would later become the Warchief of the Orcish Horde, leading the orcs away from mindless bloodlust and into a far more heroic incarnation compared to the version of the Horde led by Gul'dan, Doomhammer or Blackhand.
• Orgrim Doomhammer was actually from Blackhand's Blackrock Clan in the games/novels, and his closeness to Durotan of the Frostwolves was actually a rarity among the orcish Horde. In the original lore, Doomhammer would usurp Blackhand as Warchief at the end of the First War, while Gul'dan remained Warchief back on the other side of the portal.
• During the orcs' ambush of Lothar's party, we hear the orcish warcry "Lok-Tar Ogar", translated roughly as "Victory or death". 
• While Khadgar and Lothar's party are travelling back to Stormwind, we briefly see a Murloc in a river, with the characteristic mrglglglgl sound.
• We briefly see orcs that match Grom Hellscream and Kargath Bladefist to a T, most clearly when the portal goes down and the remaining refugees come face-to-face with a host of orcs. Kargath is the orc with pale grey complexion and two giant blades for lower arms; Grom is the orc with a painted lower jaw and the axe Gorehowl.
• We briefly see Llane's son Varian, who, of course, is named. Varian Wrynn, of course, would later be the king of Stormwind and the leader of the Alliance for nearly all of World of Warcraft's life.
• Aloni's role as a mysterious woman that knows more than she should and warns Khadgar about Medivh's insanity is traditionally taken up by Aegwynn, Medivh's mother and the previous Guardian, who had previously also been corrupted by the demon Sargeras. 
• Khadgar turns a guard into a sheep, which is the classic Mage spell Polymorph. Khadgar explains the selectiveness of the Polymorph spell in the various games as 'only working on the simple-minded for a time', and indeed Polymorph only affects lesser units and transforms them for a time.
• Blackhand's role in this movie is taken from the 'normal' Blackhand, but his mutated appearance with a giant demonic arm and a crapton of spikes is taken from Alternate Draenor Blackhand.
• Every single location from Ironforge to Elwynn Forest to Stormwind to the Black Morass to the Redridge Mountains to Blackrock Mountain to Kharazan are all lifted directly from lore.