Warcraft (2016)
Well this is Awkward
26 May 2016
As someone who only tried the game once or twice or thrice, I surprisingly enjoyed this rather clunky yet strangely enjoyable film.

It's a pretty straightforward narrative that it doesn't wastes its time introducing much of its world. You gotta accept whatever you see; whether it's warlocks or orcs or whatever, the movie just embraces its world and trusts the audience to follow through. It kind of makes sense why those who were familiar with the game appreciated this more than standard film critics, but again, I'm not a big fan of Warcraft, but I can get immediately invested to this fantasy world (and I like fantasy stuff.)

Yeah, some moments feel a little too rushed, I don't want to use the term contrived since the movie does earn some of those moments, allowing itself to establish the arcs of these characters, but it's paced a little too quick that it doesn't spend much time to breathe for a little more gravity on its story choices. This is a big story sustained in a two hour runtime, so it's a tough choice.

The aesthetics however, while often being criticized for being too video game looking (yeah, isn't it obvious?) actually looks pretty neat. At times, it looks sort of uncinematic, but the scale it provides just brings an exciting sense of adventure to it. The acting is fine, there are worse ways you can expect from a video game adaptation, but here, you can actually care for these characters.

Warcraft is flawed for sure, but to what it is, it remains to be kind of fun. I can see why many aren't impressed for this film, so far, it will perplex to those who cannot dive into this mythology and again, the storytelling feels a little too quick, but the movie is careless to be concerned to those things that it has become both a benefit and a problem for its own good. As a first part of a series (hopefully) it's actually a solid try. There are problems you just can't avoid, but there are still a lot of admirable choices to appreciate, in the end.
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