Review: WARCRAFT

It's not Pillowfight Craft, it's Warcraft!

2 stars

Mini Review:

Not too many video-games-turned-movies turn out to be any good. This movie, although based on the flimsiest of plotlines, makes a decent, rather watchable version of the game. It takes a bit of swallowing, there are too many legends, but they’re not too difficult to follow. The game is so popular, they have world championships, but the movie may not be.

Main Review:

I understand why so many people just dislike game-turned-movies. It takes a huge leap of faith to understand the magic and the legends that are easier to swallow as a game. In the game you learn about magic trinkets and spells, you learn more about the worlds in books (there are more than 30 books in the series), but the movie has to be complete. It takes a little patience to learn about magical worlds of elves and dwarfs and humans and orcs. For the sake of gamers, this movie stays true to plan.

The Orcs have arrived in Azeroth (the human world) through a magical portal and are taking them prisoners and killing them because they want to bring everyone over from their dying world. The humans fight back with their own magic. That’s everything what the movie is all about.

The magic lies in how beautifully the game has been translated to a movie. In the game multiple players fight an unseen enemy. Here, you sit back and awed by the buffed up orcs fight the puny humans. As the makers promised, ‘This is not Pillowfight Craft, it’s war!’

Critics will tell you how you’ve seen it all in Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars even: Dementor like evil powers; demons turn host eyes all black; demon magic is green, good magic is blue; there are good gigantic flying beasts; good guys can turn to the dark side; magical ink that appears and disappears; apprentices can be better than the master… so on and so forth. But if you can watch it for popcorn and soda, why not?

The CGI is really, really good. The buffed up Orcs have tusks that could make the careers of many an orthodontist. But there are lots of questions that the movie does not answer. Like what was the Guardian’s motive to do what he does? Why do the humans ride horses when they have those awesome birds? If they have guns, why were they still fighting with swords… The critics have a field day when presented with such fodder. But if you have enjoyed playing the game, or have no clue what made the game so humongously popular, you will enjoy this film.