First things first. I will be honest. This post is related to the movie Warcraft and not the World of Warcraft game specifically.
I have very little knowledge of the Warcraft world (I was an avid Starcraft player and have played everything minus the latest Protoss expansion for Starcraft 2). I played some of Warcraft III very long ago and found it difficult to manage an army of 80 resources or less. However this is not what my post is about; just setting up the tone for my experience in gaming and Blizzard.
To discuss the topic, I will first say that I absolutely loved the movie, specifically the visuals, the story, and he characters. When it comes to fantasy movies I'm a sucker and Warcraft was no different.
The visuals, in my opinion were outstanding. There was never a moment on screen where I felt like the real and cgi were not meshing. The orc scenes were beautifully done and choreographed. The way magic was not only displayed but executed left me waiting for each moment a mate would be on screen. And the one orc who was human was not soooo different enough for me to totally separate her from the rest of the group.
The characters are excellent at playing their respective parts. Initially I found myself watching as if I felt like I was at a renfair. However, as time passed, I found myself relating to the characters, mages, the knights, and the orcs. Character development was not overly complex and I didn't necessarily find myself questioning everyone's motives. If there was any character, there is only one that I found myself having a hard time relating to and that is Callan, the main knights son. But realistically I found myself wishing that this is what the renfairs were actually like.
The story in Warcraft was easy enough to follow albeit in sure my little experience with the third game at least laid the foundation for me. The plot moved along quickly enough despite being 2 hrs and I never felt it slog down. I'd say this is the part which made me realize that I loved the movie. I was genuinely anxious for more when the movie ended. I found myself sucked into the Warcraft wikia desperate for more material to consume. I also realized that I was experiencing the same pit in my stomach that I had when LOTR trilogy was over, the same when I realized that I had finished KOTOR. There isn't anymore to the story, at least not yet....
TL;DR - I hungry for more content after watching.
PS I posted this hear because I wanted to get the thoughts and discussions of others who enjoy this universe. This sub has 300,000+ subscribers and the Warcraft sub has ~3,000 subscribers. I perused the rules and didn't see anything specifically against a post like this.
If you want to dig into the canon lore, I'd HIGHLY recommend Nobbel87's channel on Youtube. He's great!
I second this! He is a true lore master when it comes to the Warcraft universe. I highly recommend the Sylvanas lore that he does, it's great.
I third this he´s THE GUY for Warcraft Lore
I agree, Nobbel is amazing. This video in particular was exactly what i was looking for, also recently watched the movie and been playing WoW for the first time last couple of weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ__nRnO2mE&index=199
The rhythm of his voice is so pleasing to listen to. "Heloooo everyone"
Go over to Blizzardwatch and read Know Your Lore by Anne Stickney and Matthew Rossi. They're really into the lore and write loads about it, but go more in depth and speculate as well, where Nobbel is retelling the story.
They also have a podcast, which is a bit easier to jump into (due to relatively low episode count).
God his knowledge is amazing, but even more so is his delivery! The guys voice is great for story telling and he has a real sense of timing and articulation. Hell they're almost ASMR-esque.
I like his content, but as a Dutch person myself I just cant listen to the heavy accent. Other than that; he does know his stuff!
I usually listen to him while I play
While Nobbel certainly makes a lot of videos, most of his content boils down to summarizing other sources.
Your first stop shop for all Warcraft lore should really be wowpedia, which is incredibly detailed, constantly updated, and heavily cited.
From there I'd recommend actually delving into the media itself. As you can guess from Nobbel's popularity, a huge number of fans actually experience the story primarily from secondhand sources rather than experiencing it themselves, which... well, in my opinion is less than ideal.
Apart from the games, World of Warcraft: Chronicle Vol. 1 is an essential compendium of the history of Warcraft, and Vol. 2 is coming early next year. If you buy any book, that would be the place to start.
As someone who read many of the books before listening to Nobbel, I can genuinely say that I prefer Nobbel to many of the books. Their pacing can be uneven and some authors are better than others. Still good, but Nobbel is in my opinion a better source.
The issue is that several core parts of the lore come from Knaak books. And Knaak is not many people's idea of a good author.
I agree with you, and am mildly irritated by 'content creators' like Nobbel who just use another company's IP to get channel views.
I realize I just have a stick up my bum, though. Obviously people like him, but I 100% recommend people actually go to a core source instead.
Nobbel gets his information from wowwiki, the books, etc. It's readily available to everybody.
Anne Stickney and Matthew Rossi over at Blizzardwatch write Know Your Lore and they do an awesome job as well, but they go into more speculative things as well, even doing Thin Foil Hat Editions.
Need to mention that everyone should avoid wowwiki. It hasn't been properly maintained in years, the info is generally out of date and the layout is... not good.
Everyone should use WoWPedia. :P
I'm really happy to hear a non-Warcraft fan enjoyed it. Mainstream critics were far too harsh on it, in my opinion, though the film did have a lot of issues.
Did you buy the Bluray? It comes with a code that gives you World of Warcraft (base game up to the Warlords of Draenor expansion), so you can start playing on Azeroth as well!
IMO, the acting just plain sucked ass in the movie.
It had a Warcraft flavor to it, it FELT like Warcraft. It had done everything very well.
But the acting just felt stiff, and disjointed. And that seriously detracted from the movie for me. I watch movies specifically for the acting and anything beyond that is a bonus. Warcraft had beautiful visuals and captured everything Warcraft. But there was just some sort of tension, or awkwardness between the actors that just hung its head over the movie the entire time. And that made it go, for me at least, from an 8/10 to a 4/10.
The romance of the movie was very awkward and confusing
People in general have become too harsh on movies, everyone thinks they are a critic.
Eh, I fet their harshness was well deserved, and I'm a fan of Warcraft. There were no positives to the movie for me.
Amazing to see this opinion is still downvoted months after the fact. Even Star Wars TFA critics have their day in the echo chamber that is r/StarWars nowadays
It was an up voted opinion around release. Just not anymore I guess.
I'm impressed you knew lothar's kid's name, I just referred to him as fking lothar's kid cos that's how little I cared for the humans in that movie.
I had a hard time understanding Garona's name until the subtitles were turned on. And forget the Orcs. Only orc I got from the whole thing was baby Go'el. And his badass father Duracell (/s).
Up voted for Duracell hahahaha
he's the most important of them all anyway.
His kid had a name?
Callen I think...
The ones who were 100% CGI did. Most of the human actors were nothing like they were supposed to be, and delivered such poor performances even for their movie characters that I could not sympathize with them.
Lothar in-lore: Very tall, bulky, balding. Always acts calm and collected, and is intelligent enough that it seriously surprised Khadgar. He was 51 years old when the First War started and had no family or son.
Lothar in-movie: Lean, with lots of hair. Acts as a drunk idiot for most of the movie.
Garona in-lore: Vicious assassin, tall and muscular by human standards. Has mind-control switch built into her consciousness by Gul'dan, which is why she ends up killing King Llane during the siege and razing of Stormwind.
Garona in-movie: A damsel-in-distress with green body paint and tooth issues. Spends a good chunk of the movie being confused and crying. Again, she is an assassin artificially raised, trained and conditioned by Gul'dan. Crying.
Khadgar in-lore: average-looking young man. Extremely clever. Gets aged into an old man with white hair and beard during the fight against Medivh.
Khadgar in-movie: A comic relief. For some reason he is a runaway student now, but that ended up not adding anything to the plot. (He was originally sent to become Medivh's apprentice and spy on him.)
Medivh and King Llane were bearable, and since their in-game counterparts had little personality established for the First War era, they couldn't really disappoint.
The movie was okay for a video game movie.
But it's still not a good movie, partially due to how poorly the main actors performed and how many dumb/unnecessary changes there were.
I will still watch a sequel if we get it, but if it ends up like this first movie I'll probably pass on any others that may come.
Agreed. Especially Sir Anduin Lothar's movie personality baffled me. I quite liked how he was portrayed as the sturdy, cunning ol' veteran in the main universe.
Additionally, regarding Medivh, I would have liked to see an actor with more 'crow-like' features in his face. In my honest opinion this does not represent the medivh we know and love very well... By the light! They could atleast keep the hair colour the same!
This is pretty much spot on but I will admit I did enjoy the kid who played Khadgar, had the script been better, he was definitely a solid casting.
Lothar was the worst of the bunch, terrible actor along with most of the humans, everything looked so fake, I'm not sure how to describe it. There is a grittiness to the LotR movies that this movie should've pulled from, they made the humans fit in the world. They just couldn't pull that off in this one, not sure why, costumes, or sets, everything was off.
That being said, I also really enjoyed the movie. I was able to look passed all of that and enjoy it for what it was. The orcs were awesome enough, the magic effects looked great and Medivh was actually quite good. Overall, not a bad movie but could've been a lot better with that budget.
You haven't watched Vikings? Travis Fimmel is very good actor. Maybe the role of Lothar didn't fit for him or because of director and script he had to act that way. In Vikings his acting is very pleasure to watch. He has his own way in acting but I like it. However I can understand if someone doesn't like it.
I've seen it, he's better in Vikings but overall, not the best acting I've ever seen. It always feels like he tries too hard and comes off as disingenuous to me. But that's just my opinion, the only real issue is that the costume/set/writing were all off and they definitely didn't make him look any better.
By the way if you haven't seen the Last Kingdom, it's also quite good (since you're into Vikings).
I understand what you mean. For me I like what he does. I can say that he has gotten better in Vikings as the seasons have gone by. Obviously he is not the best actor in the world but imo very good and acts Ragnar perfectly. Humans overall were disappointing in Warcraft but I think it's not because of actors, at least all of it.
Thanks for advice. I will check it some day.
I remember reading he was kind of intimidated by the role in a way.
I don't have problems with a different characterization when compared to a source. Problem was, humans didn't work on their own, almost everyone was an awkward cast
I loved baby Khadgar, but I agree with you about everything else.
Sounds like you wanted a full CGI movie because you can't accept the real world limitations of fitness, time and makeup/prosthetics.
Each of those three characters have books of backstory. Duncan Jones put all three of them in a 2 hour film together.
This wasn't "Warcraft: The Definitive Edition" it was "Warcraft: The Beginning". Where Chris Metzen said "We got the chance to rewrite some of the history how we want it".
However if you can write a compelling enough script for "Guardians of the Garona", "Khadgar and the Goblet of Fire" or "No Country for Old Lothars" then I'd love to see Blizzard and Legendary give it a shot.
And there's the problem - it was ignored. It feels a bit like the Hobbit vs. LotR movies issue: The Hobbit lost content that was good (Mirkwood, burgling the elves) and gained content that was shit (the love story, absurd CGI events).
Warcraft lost content that was good (Garona MC, Lothar's intellect, Medivh's weirdness, sacking of SW) and gained content that was shit (the love story, Lothar's son).
The lore already has been retconned, multiple times. It's far more cohesive now than when WoW launched. The retcons of the movie just made it more generic-Hollywood, which is always a disaster for the fantasy genre.
I'm still sad i'll probably never get a scene of Gul'dan groggily waking up as attempts to recollect his memories of what happened. As he does so, images of SW's razing are shown, the fall of the guardian, and his subsequent severing from him. This is then followed with Doomhammer entering into Gul'dan's cell to inform him that the shadow council has been dismantled and that Gul'dan will now be properly executed. Que Gul'dan's promises of a powerful army, and that he'll be loyal to the horde yada yada BOOM Teron'gor.
Oddly specific, but god damn I wanted to see a death knight get made.
It could still be worked out somehow within the movie canon I would think.
I can accept real world limitations. Not having an actor who is tall, muscular etc. is one thing. But Warcraft did not even try.
If the X-Men movies could mostly depict Wolverine as a not-tall character, despite Hugh Jackman being 1.9m, or the Lord of the Rings movies could handle orcs/goblins on-screen without them being full CG then I can hardly come up with a reason why they could not make things like "Lothar's hair is graying-white, cut short".
Or, if they wanted to keep the cast young, they could have made at least some effort to establish that "Lothar is not a twat."
If a movie adaptation has to have three of the main characters' personalities changed from what is expected, I would expect to see new backstories and establish how they are in the world. But there was none. All we got was that Lothar lost a wife and that Khadgar is a runaway student that did not like the Kirin Tor for some reason, and neither amounted to anything.
Also, please do not be mistaken. None of the three characters had elaborate backstories longer than a single page, most of it was left vague even in the books. But when a character has titles like:
The Lion of Azeroth
Supreme Commander of Stormwind (and later of the Alliance)
Regent Lord of Azeroth
Knight of the Realm
you would probably not expect them to be a yelling drunkard.
How movie-Lothar would attain such titles and positions is beyond me, but it was funny to see the supporting cast react to him and eventually throw him in jail.
You must be fun at parties.
Just kidding. I dont really know much about the lore, cuz I just started playing. Its interesting to hear everything they changed
You don't need to know anything about the lore to see how bad some of the non cgi acting was, it was like a afternoon soap opera level of bad.
I liked the king, the queen was smilling the whole time and the guy that fought Medieve in the end was just so random
I still can't rally myself to give a shit about any of the humans in the film, and I liked the movie. It really shows which parts Duncan Jones had a larger hand in in terms of script writing.
I just rented the movie last night. I consider myself a big fan of the lore in WoW, and while the movie wasn't too accurate, I still had a great time watching. I think it's a good action-fantasy movie. The visuals look great and the sound is fantastic (sounded really awesome with a decent pair of headphones on). I understand the plot can be a bit hard to follow for a newbie or for someone who has never seen WoW though. Nevertheless I'll be watching it again - maybe not for the plot, but for the visuals, the fight scenes, and the little details you discover in the background and what not.
Can't believe this is still a thing :O I haven't heard of a movie rental place in years. Many years.
It's common practice to rent movies online and digitally, then watch it on your computer
Or on your tv via cable.
Well, I haven't heard of anything of the sort for many years, I thought this died out. I mean in a lot of countries downloading movies off of torrent sites is perfectly legal and safe as long as you don't sell them/make any profit out of it.
I don't know of any country where it's legal.
I think you mean the country just doesn't enforce the law.
There's a difference. Before you ask, yes I absolutely would download a car.
Ah no, not in germany dude
Have you not seen or heard of redbox? Renting movies is still very common. We even still have local mom and pop rental stores in my area.
Nope. We haven't had anything of the sort for like 10 years~ish.
Madness. What country?
Lol Google Play Store my friend... I wasn't about to take the risk in buying it so I paid 5 or 6 bucks and rented it digitally there.
you can still get physical discs from Netflix, or Redbox.
We just got Netflix this year and it's bullshit. We don't have most shows on it so barely anyone has a subscription.
We get free VUDU rentals with our cell coverage on occasion.
In Germany it is still a thing (well less rental stores more online). For instance my father rents movies via lovefilm (owned by amazon). He just makes a list of movies he wants to rent online, then the movies (either DVD or BlueRay) get mailed to our address (2 - 3 at a time) with a paid return envelope. When we are done with them, we just send them back and they send us the next 2 or 3 on the list.
Blizzard said it was non canon, thats why it is innacurate in some things.
Not true. Eventhough it is not considered part of the established continuity (i.e. the Warcraft Universe AKA 'game canon'), the movie sets the stage for an alternate universe in which lore is shaped into an acceptable format for the plebs. It is canon in its own right, just like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
Legit source:
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Warcraft_film_universe
I heard about that. Personally I wasn't displeased with the creative liberties that Duncan Jones took with the story. But I absolutely sympathize with those who went in expecting a completely canon, true-to-form story of Warcraft.
I'm a big wow fan but the movie was just atrocious as a film
If i didn't know any of the warcraft lore and only viewed it as a stand alone the movie was good. Being really into lore and having played warcraft games for almost 16 years i couldn't really like it. I get that it was changed to be better fitted to a big screen story and to be friendly to those that have no prior knowledge of warcraft but it makes it confusing for people who don't know lore and take the movie as in game cannon. My girlfriend is six types of fucked up on the lore now. Looking at you Khadgar.
That's very interesting, I found I had the opposite problem. The film had a lot of problems that I couldn't get behind, but my love for Warcraft and WoW gave me extreme bias while evaluating how much I liked it.
I would think a non-warcraft follower would have a harder time enjoying the film. It breaks so many rules of what makes a good film.
Honestly, it would be worse for people who don't know the lore. The plot for someone who isn't vaguely aware of Warcrafts story is a bit of a hot mess.
I had to explain the background of the storyline for 30 minutes to my brother and his friends after we watched the movie, I mean why did they add in a fucking love story when they could have had 15 more minutes at the start of the movie to build some background on the orcs and the burning legion?
My first viewing was a big mixed group of players and non-players. It was fun answering questions over dinner afterward.
My mom went with me the third time I saw it. She followed it fine and enjoyed it.
Now I don't really understand how the story is a mess, I just watched it with my familly, and expected questions but they understood everything and even said it was pretty classical. (I mean in a way : "Green = Baddies" is enough to understand the movie if you don't give too much relevance to the places they go)
The pacing, the editing, the plot were all either under developed due to time constraints, or swiftly deal with in single brief lines of dialogue (which while efficient doesn't really help the audience understand motive/drivers of any individual character).
Add in that many characters being introduced at that pace and it becomes a convoluted and rushed mess.
Remember, the average audience can only juggle around 7 key characters in their minds at anyone time. hence the usual 7 dwarves, samurai, magnificent 7 etc. Whereas Warcraft introduced a lot more significant characters than that (even if only briefly).
Hell, we had medivh, khadgar, garona, Gul'Dan, durotan, orgrim, draka, lothar, black hand, as major characters, let alone the minor ones. (I just looked up the cast, I missed callan and wyrnn).
I agree, it was preaty straight forward. Small army invades a kindgom. They have an evil leader, internal power struggle. The humans are the good guys. A little bit of a love story. Some betrayal. Some fighting and the end is also very typical and open for more movies
I found it good, I don't mind them changing plot points when adapting to a different medium.
As a Horde player though I was really disappointed when Stormwind didn't burn in the end =(
I understand your point. I think I may have had an advantage then. I wasn't expecting certain things to happen from certain people. This probably allowed me to have an unbiased opinion went the story strayed from lore.
Interestingly enough, I actually enjoyed the coming of age story provided to khadgar.
Yea. Id say you did since a couple of key things that are supposed to happen in the movie didnt. So people watching that know are sitting there thinking "Why didnt khadgar get aged in the fight with Medivh?" for example.
I started getting serious about learning the lore during Mists (even though I've played since 05). I knew the movie would be different. Knowing this, I picked up the prequel novel to give me an idea of the jumping off point for changes.
the word is "canon".
cannon is the thing a pirate shoots after yelling "arrrr", while yelling "arrrr", and before yelling "arrrr".
I started WoW few months ago because of the movie! I never played the warcraft ever, so as a fantasy lore lovers, I enjoyed every single bits in the movie. I even got the bluray so I can watch it again with the better knowledge on wow lore :D
If you don't mind reading the book, I highly recommend you to check out 'the last guardian'. The book is about medivh and Khadgar, and the book is really well written. If you loved the warcraft, you will definitely love this book. In my case, I was lucky to borrow the copy of book, but sadly the book is sold out right now :(. However, the book will be out again around november so you can wait for that :D
I feel like the movie would have simply done better it if was fully CGI.
All the human actors, a couple which I know for a fact have put in good performances in other roles, seem to have phoned in their acting for this movie.
Generally when good actors look bad, it's due to shit writing.
Dunno, usually yes. But in the Warcraft movie the humans did just not "fit" in. They looked like the bad CGI characters we usually get that totally look out of place.
Ya know it's interesting. I mentioned Lothars son as the main character I couldn't connect with because I really think that I poisoned that if a medieval fantasy character doesn't have an English accent, immersion plummets. This may be why I couldn't connect with him (although I'm America so how does that even make sense).
The king, surprisingly, took a refreshing spin on things. I was 100% believing he would do all the things expected but his actions and decisions actually contradicted the trope I had him pinned on.
you are all of America?
I'm America, they're America, you're America. Today we are all America
I watch Preacher and really can't stand what goes on in Warcraft. On the other hand - material is not "oscar performance friendly".
I went in with absolutely bottom of the barrel expectations. I'm a pessimist, what can I say. But, because of that, I really enjoyed the movie.
People have an issue with managing expectations with things. The fact is, not every movie has to be everything to everyone. Sometimes, a visually appealing fantasy adventure story can just be JUST that. It doesn't have to try and be a masterpiece. It can just be fun.
And I had fun watching.
I went in with very low expectations and was bored out of my skull. I'm glad that other people can (and evidently do) enjoy the movie, but just because somebody else doesn't like it doesn't mean they "have issues with managing expectations".
I thought it was going to be awful, and it was (for me). I didn't go in expecting it to be the most incredible retelling of WoW lore ever - as a matter of fact, I went in expecting it to take its own spin on the lore and hopefully be an entertaining movie.
What I got was a jumbled mess of a plot with too many characters, half of whom were acting poorly and the other half didn't get enough screen time.
I did not enjoy the movie at all, and it wasn't because of my expectations. "It can just be fun" is absolutely true, but for me the myriad issues were more than enough to stop it from being much fun at all.
So I'm not trying to argue that people enjoy it - of course they do, and that's great. But I definitely want to contest the idea that people disliked the movie because they had high expectations, as it has a whole host of problems.
Most underrated comment here. I understand the problems with the movie lore-wise, but enjoyed it all the same. Really looking forward to a sequel, and I hope they can address some of the issues a lot of people seemed to have with the first one.
I liked it too!
When I went to see it at the cinema with my lore-nerd boyfriend, I hadn't even touched a Warcraft game. Not even WoW. But I loved the movie all the same. Is it a great movie in and of itself? No, by most critical standards it's probably average at best. But Blizzard did what, in my opinion, they do best, and that's make you feel a sense of wonder from the world they've created.
It was part of what helped tip me over into playing WoW, too!
I finally got around to watching it. It's not a good movie, for a long list of reasons. I can see why it got the reviews it did.
In my opinion, it's biggest issue was that they tried to cram too much in a single movie and as a result it was altogether poorer, and everything seemed under baked or disjointed. The plot was at times incoherent and obviously missing scenes that would tie scenes together or better explain character motivation.
Similarly, there were things that were deliberately only hinted at, which I think would create more confusion for the viewer than intrigue (specifically around Gul'Dan and him being an agent of the burning legion).
They also introduced too many characters too quickly, without any explanation (or limited) as to their purpose. Even OP can't name the characters and he just spent two hours staring at them. (There is a great article from the director of street fighter explaining the myriad of reasons it was a cluster fuck that goes into the issue of too many characters, broadly 7-8 is where you max out).
This is all coming from someone who knows it inside and out. No wonder people new to the franchise found it difficult to follow.
Visually the movie was fine, the fight scenes were good, it was just painfully obvious that large chunks of the movie were left on the editing floor and for me, I think the contents split into 2 x 2 hour movies would have made better movies.
(This post will contain spoilers) I guess I have to agree with you at certain points. If the film was marketed from the start as a trilogy (something akin to any of the hungers games, Harry Potter, or twilight movies) I would've understood the ending better. I wouldn't consider it as something that was left ambiguous with a possibility for a follow up (a la PotC 1).
Things that leave the story way to open for someone new to it would be:
I really really thought Gul'dan would be dead at the end, definitely more than Durotan. His survival left me bewildered, even more, his apparent submission to Garona.
The fact that the kings death really does seem in vain since Lothar apparently doesn't believe there's even a shred of possibility that Garona had other intentions.
To me, the best cliffhanger would've been showing Go'el AFTER the credits as a cliffhanger.
PS. Here's something that 100% struck me out of left field which I feel like it wasn't explains until the end. That orcs are originally the color of the Frostwinds and not Green. It's the Fel that makes them turn green. Is this something that is explained early on and I missed it? Because I thought they were green by default. Or was this a surprise even in the gaming lore for players?