War Craft: The Beginning (2016), Rated “PG-13”
Starring Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Daniel Wu
Directed by Duncan Jones
Reviewed by Xavier Emaka
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Blizzard entertainment fulfilled a nerd’s dream with this one. It’s not the first series to be made from video game and it won’t be the last, but it does mark a milestone for them. It’s too bad the film didn’t have as much success locally as it did in the international scene where sales pushed to become the best–selling video game adaptation of all time.
However, that could be attributed to the low level of marketing done for it. For Travis Fimmel, this marked his debut film as lead after having made a name for himself as one of the actors for the series Vikings on the History channel.
The story starts with orc world dying due to an unknown force. In order to save themselves, the orcs create a portal and their leader Gul’dan leads them to a new world, Azeroth. The new world is already occupied by other races and their movement is caught by a mage who detects Gul’dan using Fel magic. This makes them call out for their guardian to begin investigating.
Humans are the first to investigate and are attacked by the orcs. They however manage to push the attack back. As some of the attackers flee, the humans capture a half-orc slave, Garona. She provides the humans with information about the orcs and the humans plan for an attack.
One of the orc chieftains, Durotan, learns how fel magic led to the destruction of Draenor their original home. His loyalty shifts and he tries to get them to kill Gul’dan.
The captain of the humans has a meeting with Durotan to discuss this when they are attacked. They request the help of a guardian who disappears mid–battle and as he investigates he realizes that for the orcs portal to have been successful someone would be needed on the other end to open the portal. The orcs have an internal conflict of their own to deal with as they also contend with an external conflict of being in a new unexplored world.
Some movie fans might not appreciate the film for its pacing and dialogue, but it has delivered to all fans of the games. Humans are the center of this arc and there will definitely be a sequel.
One pet peeve of mine is that the humans were not animated like the rest. In fact, other races like the elves have limited appearance because they decided to focus on the two races. However, the film definitely has its redeeming qualities such as the language switch similar to the style used in Vikings. Neither side speaks English and yet they find a clever way to have them speak their native tongues while not speaking in the language.
Being a Blizzard creation, the graphics are some of the best and are part of the reason this has become the highest grossing video game adaptation of all time.
Its worth checking out for fans of the game. Non-fans will probably find it hard to swallow.
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