Concerned with the welfare of his people (and his newborn baby), orc chieftain Durotan (Toby Kebell) is suspicious of the warlock's motives.
As the invasion begins, Azeroth military commander Anduin (Travis Fimmel) is tasked with figuring out who their new foe is and how to defeat them.
Throw in a corrupt wizard (Ben Foster), a Golem and a half-orc (Paula Patton) ostracized by her tribe, and you have Warcraft.
Warcraft is one of those movies where you can see what the filmmakers are striving for, but the execution just cannot live up to the intention. That being said, I really enjoyed this movie (with some qualifications).
Now, I do not know much about World of Warcraft, but the sense I get from the movie is it is trying to reflect the multiplay-ability of the game by covering multiple perspectives, and avoiding clear black and white moral divides between the inhabitants of Azeroth and the Orcs. This aspect of the movie is both its greatest strength, and its biggest weakness - because one of these narrative perspectives feels fleshed out and the other does not.
Let's start with the good stuff, which is basically everything involving the Orcs.
The protagonist of this part of the story is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), who emerges as the most well-rounded character in the film. The key difference betwen Durotan and the Azeroth characters is that the script grounds Durotan with strong motivations - he is concerned with looking out for his family's future, and the lives of his tribe.
And as the movie progresses, he finds himself doubting the motives of his leader (who, in a nice complication, saves Durotan's son when he is stillborn). Durotan's conflict is the most interesting aspect of the film, and highlights the emphasis on nuance with the Orcs and their perspective that deepens half of the movie.
From the outset, the movie is intent on presenting Durotan and his people as complex empathetic creatures - he is introduced in bed with his pregnant wife, musing on the future. If you take away the CG, this could be a scene of any couple having an intimate conversation.
There are other scenes scattered throughout where the Orcs are shown going about everyday tasks. There's even a scene of them waiting. They get bored and start throwing stones at each other. This seems silly but because the movie spends time with the Orcs, they feel more real.
It is just a pity that the movie's success is dependant only multiple perspectives when only Durotan's is dramatically functional. And that is the key issue - there is half of acompelling movie here, but it is anchored to another story that cannot hold a candle to Durotan's conflict.
Every time the movie focused on Durotan and the orcs, the movie has focus and heart.
But then we have to cut away to the humans and the movie loses its centre.
Enough has already been said about Paula Patton's fangs, but the big issue is scripting. The problem is the orcs get the more interesting storyline - do we trust the intentions of those who lead us?
On the human side, there is an attempt to replicate that idea with the wizard Medivh (Ben Foster), but there is a lack of focus and intensity to the conflict here. There is nothing as personal or relatable as Durotan's love for his family and comrades - the closest we get is a tired revenge subplot that exists solely to give human Anduin (Fimmel) a motivation for the finale.
This would have weight if the movie had devoted some time to Anduin's relationship with his son, but nothing about their relationship resonates as much as Durotan's with his wife and friends.
In his week-long podcast about Mission:Impossible - Fallout, Chris McQuarrie talked about the importance of emotion over information. With Warcraft, Durotan's conflict is couched entirely in emotion; the Azeroth storyline is all exposition, with no real emotional stakes.
There is a lack of verisimiltude to the human characters that is incredibly distracting - even when they are on sets, it feels like people are composited into environments. The production choices in this movie work well for the Orcs, but the look of human actors in these environments and costumes pushed me out of the movie.
There are parts of Warcraft that I found rather involving but any time a human character appeared, it felt like a completely different movie - it was like an adult animation meeting a LARP campaign.
The movie really flags whenever we have to sit with the inhabitants of Azeroth - it does not help that there is no Han Solo or Aragorn among the cast to ground it, and provide some sense of drama. Everybody is so po-faced, it feels like a blocking rehearsal.
There are no bad performances - Fimmel is okay, and Patton probably would be fine without those teeth - it is more a case of miscasting and a script that does not know how to make these characters feel like people with interior lives. Having to cross-cut between Azeroth and the Orc casts highlights just how much of a gulf there is between the different halves of the movie.
Other than this, as a viewing experience, while the exposition was a little disconcerting early on, the story is fairly easy to follow - it just feels so inert when the focus is not on Durotan and his tribesmen.
Warcraft is a movie about conflict that is deeply conflicted and compromised at almost every level. It is not a disaster on the scale of a movie I reviewed recently, but it is a mixed bag. That being said, it does hit at least 50% of its aims, and as such it is definitely worth checking out.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
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