Warcraft: The Beginning — Review

Based on that video-game you know all about from your nerdy friend but were totally too cool to have played yourself, ‘Warcraft: The Beginning’ is Universal Pictures’ latest attempt to get another big franchise going for itself to compete alongside its ‘Fast & Furious’ vehicles with those infernal superhero flicks. Honestly I had no idea “The Beginning” was a part of the title until I sat down minutes ago to write this review. They didn’t include that subtitle in any of the trailers, or even the movie itself. Did they just add this in after the movie performed well overseas? Well hell, call it what you want I guess, as long as we can skip the middle and the end.

Seeing as this movie seems to expect you to be familiar with the video-game mythology, I’m going to do my best to describe to you what I remember as being the plot. Here we go. So there’s this fantasy kingdom of humans, and there’s another world of orcs, who are able to travel through a magical portal to enter the humans’ world. The orcs’ world is dying so they want to invade and conquer the world of men. There’s some orcs who are good, and then there’s the evil leader, a hulky green wizard who uses magic to fight dirty and get his way.

Then there’s orc babe Garona, who the bad guy calls a half-breed, which would explain why she looks more like the actress Paula Patton than the rest of these cartoonish cave trolls. Garona is captured by the humans so she can share with them some much-needed exposition, as well as a bit of chaste flirting with the hunky knight Anduin (Australian thespian Travis Fimmel), the human protagonist. “She may look good, even with the tusks and green-skin, but let’s not forget that girls are still gross to a large part of the target demographic” is what someone at Universal probably told the director.

There are also wizards on the human side, including the talented Ben Foster, having some fun chewing a bit of scenery. Also there’s like some council of wizards who live in the sky. So maybe they’re supposed to be gods or something? Don’t know, don’t care.

This is directed by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, who made the excellent sci-fi flick ‘Moon’ seven years ago, as well as the pretty-good sci-fi flick ‘Source Code’ five years ago. Given his talent and self-declared love for the game, it’s a shame he couldn’t have made a more clever, thrilling adaptation that could appeal to those unfamiliar with the source material. Though the special effects are occasionally impressive, it’s mighty difficult to take these goofy-looking orcs — who look like they might have escaped from the story-boards of the next ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ sequel — seriously, especially when they’re in the frame with actual humans.

I was hoping ‘Warcraft’ would at least be an enjoyable dumb movie that would go down smooth with the pizza I ate before watching it. What I got instead was mainly boredom and confusion. Do the world of men a favor, skip this crap and discourage the sequels these cynical Hollywood douchers want to force down our throats.

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