I’ll give Warcraft this much: It has the courage of its convictions.
The film throws audiences into the deep end of the pool right away. We are in the midst of an Orc exodus. Their home world dying, Orcs led by the evil-looking mage Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) travel through a portal made possible by wicked magic called the Fel, which is powered by extinguishing life. Durotan (Toby Kebbell) and his pregnant wife Draka (Anna Galvin) are among those who travel through the gate as part of the war party establishing a beachhead.
The Orcs must gather humans on the other side of the portal in order to power a gate that will bring the rest of their tribe through. The slaughter and pillaging that follows rouse the humans of Azeroth, who live in peace with dwarves and elves. Anduin (Travis Fimmel) gets word that a group of humans has been killed, and is shown by a young mage named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) that the evil Fel magic is what, um, felled them. So Anduin hops on a griffin (obviously) and flies to the castle of The Guardian, Medivh (Ben Foster), whose white magic will help against the Orc horde.
I’ll be honest: I had to rely heavily on Wikipedia and IMDB to reconstruct that first half of the first act. Not so much because of the plot—though it does get more and more convoluted as the movie progresses, in ways that make less and less sense—but because of the names. If you thought Frodo and Bilbo and Aragorn were hard to keep straight in your head, wait until you get a load of Garona and Moroes and Wrynn.
Lord of the Rings is the most famous antecedent to Warcraft, and it’s instructive to compare how Peter Jackson eased viewers into Middle Earth versus Duncan Jones’ swim-or-sink approach. By starting in the Shire—after a brief flashback explaining the mythology of the One Ring—with the (essentially humanlike) hobbits, and gradually introducing more and more exotic creatures, Jackson helped us make sense of their strange world. Viewing Warcraft, on the other hand, is like parachuting into the midst of a Chinese village armed with nothing more than a rudimentary knowledge of local wildlife.
Keeping track of Orc versus man wasn’t really an issue, but following one CGI-enhanced green monster doing battle with another CGI-enhanced green monster that has slightly different piercings and modestly distinctive tusks was harder. Especially when they’re in motion and the camera is quickly cutting. Especially when you’re watching the film in IMAX 3D, the most awful of all formats, one that goes blurry if you turn your head five degrees and makes bodies in motion impossible to see clearly.
Warcraft is occasionally kind of funny in the way that big, brash action flicks tend to be, with one-liners here and there lightening the mood. And Ben Foster is always fun to watch. There’s something slightly off-kilter about the actor; he’s often a bit too intense for the subject matter. Regardless, he makes every genre flick he’s in—from the very underrated 30 Days of Night to the slightly underrated Punisher (2004)—a little bit better, and Warcraft is no exception.
But the film as a whole is a real mess. Not that it matters. The Chinese market is going to ensure that we are treated to Warcraft stories for years to come.