Seeing how great the Blizzard cinematics tend to be, they shouldn't have bothered with a feature film. If they just made a 90 minute cinematic game trailer, all the fans would loose their minds.
@@carllazarraga2858Still probably less time than it took to finally get this movie out 😂 and certainly quicker than itll be for a sequel live action movie, as that may never happen. At least in the cinematic format it could actually stand a real chance of getting made.
That's exaclty it. They should have stuck to WC 1 and tgen went with WC 2 movie, or series, before going to WC3. There is super importand world building in both.
The amount of money just rendering 1 frame out of the 24 frames needed for every second is insane. Every frame in modern AAA movies takes about 8 hours to finalize. I highly doubt WOWs CGI is anything less. It takes years to produce something like that, so the cost in massive server parks to do this would be unfeasible by today's standards.
It doesnt matter. You simply can not deviate from the lore here. The lore matters to the audience. .. a lot... like a lot a lot. This is a world a lot of people literally live in. You cant just make up your own story.
I think for warcrafts art style a cartoon would be a much better choice. Or something like what Arcane did. Live action humans with giant plastic shoulderpads looked kinda silly
@@nemanjanika2984 I liked the style, I have a hard time accepting the cartoon style that so many like nowadays 😅 Like Puss in Boots 2 or like that weird trailer for the new Dragon Age game, and Arcane as well, it's getting really popular to try creative art styles but personally I feel immersed and entertained when it's like a fantasy/medieval magical style, colorful and a bit over the top but still realistic, if that even makes sense 😹 But just like this, and sorcerer's apprentice as well if you've ever seen that movie!
There are some pretty great scenes taken out about the orcs bonding like orgrim throwing rocks at durotan or other orcs making fun of hellscream for becoming green. Beats me why they took these out....
@@luukthijssen4917 The distribution company wanted a 2h movie, so they can sell more tickets in a day. The original movie was supposed to be 2h 40min long, but greed got in the way of art. too bad we didn't get a director's cut.
IMO, the orcs were easier to tell apart. All the non-khadgar/medivh humans looked very similar as "Big dude in armor". The orcs and their CGI faces worked really well. The whole thing looked very "Warcraft". If they ever do another movie/TV series though, Blizzard just needs to do it in-house fully CGI. They have the skilled people there to do it, go look at the modern out-of-engine cut scenes they produce.
@@luukthijssen4917the green scene and the scene where they’re sitting around and durotan realizes the land is dying everywhere the fel touches, same as their world, 100% should have been added at the very least
They should've pulled a star wars and started with warcraft 3. It's the game and story that really set off warcraft for most people. Most people my age don't know even know what happened in wc1 and wc2.
Yeah I started with warcraft 3 too and the great thing is, you dont really needed to know the previous lore to follow the story. This was when warcraft lore was at its best.
Those first two games would at least act as good world building material. I felt like this movie just felt like everything happened super quickly in a world I knew nothing about.
If you start with warcraft 3 you will have more questions to answer and it be even harder to get a good bonebreaking movie.... That is what we expect and demand from Blizzard
That, 100%. Get people interested by giving them the most interesting part right away, then you can give them some background in later movies, once they are hooked. 1st Movie around Arthas, 2nd movie around Illidan. Instant guaranteed success. It's no wonder the fans loved this movie while the rest didn't like it. It's because the fans know about Arthas, Illidan, Sylvanas, they know how rich, interesting and deep this story is. They are interested in Thrall's back story, how he came to be, because they are hooked to this character, they know he will play a very big role fighting the burning legion. Those who don't know just saw a baby abandonned in the river, the emotion is not on the same level, it's just an openning for the next movie, they don't know how huge this little baby's story will be. It's no wonder this setup didn't get people excited. It's all just a setup for interesting part. And unfortunately they did all of this for nothing since they cancelled the intesting part. Just make a movie about Arthas right now, the rest can be done later.
As someone who has never played any of the games, I remember really enjoying this film. My parents, who aren't into these kinds of movies even liked it. Very underrated movie that I wish could've gotten a sequel.
The only problem with that is it's a huge time jump. I'm not sure Arthas has even been born yet at the end of the Warcraft movie, which didn't even conclude the events of Warcraft ONE. There's still one and a half wars and 20 years or more until Warcraft 3.
@@sagaswp true. But I think it could act as a kinda soft reboot. So it would take into account the events of this movie. But would also be a (you don't have to watch the original.) type of thing
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 I'd be cool with three parts. But I feel like a two part could cover the rise of the lich King Pretty well. First part ends with Arthas killing Uthur. Second part ends with Arthas defeating Illidan and becoming Lich King. I guess a third part could be made for his defeat. But a smarter way to go about it is to leave Arthas alone to develop other stories in a cinematic universe type of thing. Like we know he's out there. But will give time to set up Thrall, Sylvanus, Varian and Tyrande. Maybe even grow more with Tirion and Bolvar as well. Then we could see them all team up to take on the Lich King in a future movie.
I was annoyed that Dalaran was floating in the sky and not on the ground like it was in Warcraft III. Lots of other little details annoyed me. The orcs were too big compared to the humans and seemed to be at least 10-15 times stronger as shown when one of them picks up a horse and throws it several meters. A fully grown horse weighs 500 kg. It just made all the fight scenes ridiculous when the humans didn't stand a chance. The humans were only capable of killing orcs with those dwarven pistols. It just made no sense.
you forgot that orcs win and burn northshire abbey and stormwind to the ground. Pressing forward, not to mention they skipped a whole movie of events to make some made up ending.
In lore, Orcs are meant to vary in size (like humans) and the ones that travelled through the dark portal were only part of the warband (handpicked by Blackhand). It's possible that there are others orcs who look closer to human size that we simply never got to see.
As someone who have played WoW for 15 years and the RTS games since the late 90s, I absolutely loved the movie. The entire production of the movie was on point. You could easily recognize characters important to the lore, even those who were just background characters in this movie ( 10:50 that orc is very well known among the fans). Even the weapons of some characters were easily to spot. The battle scenes had amazing choreography exceeding expectation. It's unfair to say this movie failed, because it didn't fail its targeted audience, fans at all. It just couldn't bring in the money because its targeted audience were such a small group of people and the lore is so deep its hard for non-wow players to get into the world in just a two hour long movie.
I'm a gamer but never set myself to get into WOW because younger I didn't have a pc, I was quite a lot restricted on console (N64) and I knew WOW was a huge investment I didn't have time for. So I knew the franchise was BIG, I was always intersted but, too lazy to get into it. So I know absolutely nothing of the lore, compared to lore heavy games and stories like AC, TES, DOOM, SW, Splinter Cell, FF, Warhammer 40k and LoL (both later in life) etc. But I LOVED this movie soooo much and thought finally I can get to know more about this universe with the movie(s). I was really bummed they didn't greenlit a sequel. Such a waste.
The problem is: They changed the plot. It was once again, an original Idea on a video game. Witcher did the exact same thing. Why not just implement the source material 1 to 1? You cannot go wrong with that. Also the Story of Warcraft 3, not Warcraft 1 is what everyone is waiting for. That story would blow out the park if they did it together with the cinematic artists of blizzard.
@@jarskii11 Because the original game barely had any emphasis on the story. The in-universe lore is a hodgepodge of jumbled up footnotes calling back to the first game. Whether they come from a book, comic, some in game quest in WoW, or get expanded on in WC2 or WC3. Actually having a proper movie that adapts it and puts it into one neat easy to digest package would be a good thing. We'd get to see the story of the first war properly, in all the cinematic glory it deserved. First movie should have been WC1, with maybe an extra hour added to the runtime to give scenes time to breathe and actually make newer audiences not get lost in the constantly shifting locations and characters. Basically do what the first LotR movie did. Second movie should have been the first half of WC2, with the third movie being the 2nd half of WC2. There's just no way you're fitting the story of that game into just one movie without it feeling like a rushed piece of shit. To all the Arthas fans crying and saying waah why isn't he in any of the movies... to that I say he should either get his own trilogy afterwards. Or better yet, this is when you could actually start a TV series instead. WC3 being a TV series like game of thrones would have been very appropriate. There's easily 4-5 seasons worth of content they take advantage of in that one game alone. Then they could do stuff with like Netflix or whatever and get in some animated shorts or miniseries for other less connected side stories. Things that were like stuck in the comics or part of a book. Like a story focusing on Varian growing up, losing his wife, and being "lost" till he ultimately slays Onyxia. Or the well of eternity being created and destroying the world. Blizzard sitting on this franchise and doing absolutely fucking nothing with it is a travesty. They make more than enough money to be able to do whatever the hell they want without the need for waiting for Hollywood to greenlight anything. The fact they won't even go in and remake the original two games is an even bigger joke, especially with how poorly they handled the third games remaster. All the fans they gained over the past three decades are just withering away, content starved and moving onto other things.
@@Stiksta I think it would be hard because the orcs are main characters. And it's hard to fully cgi main characters. Sure wherever they are enemies or secondaries... It's not that hard to manage, they don't appear a lot onscreen. Also the elves would have been as hard. They have more shiny eyes and auras and other things. goblins, undead etc... Even with all the improvements in cgi, it's hard when you don't have focus on 80% nornal humanoids. Imagine they had to cgi 5 hulks at the same time on multiple scenes. Whe. We have seen that only one hulk is still looking cartoonish and not so good.
Honestly you're better off showing them the Warcraft Wiki and telling them to read, that is what my friend did to me with 40k. Your only alternative is taking the Chronicles books if you want the "true" canon.
@@EJ_Red The Chronicle books are horrible! So many inconsistencies in the current ones, and retcons and dips and jumps and removing of key points in the others. I mean The Last Guardian is my favorite book and that was retconned. I'm glad the movie kept some of the plot from the book at least even if it wasn't rended in the last few scenes properly. Plus so much green.
@@Knight-of-Sarcasm That's why I put it as "true" canon and not true canon. I also have my own criticisms with Chronicle but it is the only series we have for complete lore, unfortunately.
Conclusion of this video can not be more incorrect. After I watched Warcraft movie (not in a theater, of course) I bought the newest expansion of WoW and subscribed for 6 months. That is what the movie was for - to invite players to the game.
I might be the minority, but I loved it. I played since 98 and besides the “friendly female orc”, as a pseudo romance trope, I didn’t see any major missteps. I’d 100% watch a sequel
I watched it again maybe 2 weeks ago. It aged very well. Gul’Dan looks and sounds incredible I don’t think the Medivh actor is very good, but everyone else was fine-great
If they started with the Arthas storyline, I think we'd be seeing a sequel already out by now... you have to be a hardcore Warcraft nerd like me to know about Lothar and the first Great War.... but everyone and their uncle knows the Arthas storyline
@@alexrompen805 But youre absolutely wrong and the fact is, its the complete opposite. Even the narrator in this video is referring 'Warcraft' to the 'world of warcraft' franchise, just like 95% of other people, this movie is about WoW to them, not Warcraft but the movie is 'Warcraft' not 'world of warcraft'. What im saying is, most people who watched this film are WoW nerds, not Warcraft nerds, yet the story of this movie is about warcraft, not world of warcraft lol therefore 95% of the people watching couldnt be as attached or whatever to the characters as these characters are before the time of like 90% of wow players, I played warcraft II and III as a teenager, i didnt give a shit about lore or characters I had a life, I just played a bit of dota here and there when it was raining or something. But WoW I played like a years worth of time if not more, I had 2.6k rbg rating, its not the best but obviously i was a big WoW palyer. I didnt know fuck all about the characters in the movies except young khadgar and obviously i've raided Kara so i know medievh but not the movies version, medeivh always bad guy to me and 90% of the people watching the movie, just like thrall isnt an infant and who the fuck is thralls dad? but i know Garrosh Hellscream, I know Jaina Proudmore, I know abunch of characters who just plain and simple arent in this movie because they dont belong here and its still an excellent movie. All im saying is PEOPLE ARE TO FUCKING DIFFICULT.. Theyre sad, depressed, bored and looking for drama, you cant keep them happy. there is to many chemicals in our water, food, to many radio frequency and radiations going directly through our brains, there is too much lead in our bones... People need a reset and so does the earth, thats why Warcraft movie flunked... Its a fucking excellent movie, but people are just LOOKING TO BE UNHAPPY ABOUT EVERYTHING
This movie failed for lacking an action scene with "Leeroy Jenkins" storming the battlefield with his iconic scream. Where's Brett Ratner when you need him???
As a long time Warcraft nerd, the lore being inaccurate to the source material was my main issue, but I still enjoyed it and really would love to see a sequel. I flew across the country to have a big meetup with wow friends to see the movie and good or bad, it was a great memory I cherish
AKA make something that's horsesh*t. There's a reason why a trope is a trope. When you start wanting to go against the grain everywhere you force yourself out plots and stories that make sense just in order to try and be different.
I mean, the Warcraft universe started doing that long ago, even without this movie. Not saying it’s a good or a bad thing, but I don’t think you can blame the movie creators for something that was already established in Warcraft.
This series is great. I’ve always wanted to document the flops of the 2010’s that led us to where mainstream movies are now, but this is way more succinct than I ever could’ve done it. Warcraft is a flick I bought on a sale not expecting much and it’s alright. Potential is there just not fully realised.
ESSAY INCOMING There's a lot of stuff that would complicate the sequels that they chose to do with the movie. There's a pretty simple plot to follow from Warcraft 1 and 2 before you get to the more complex stories of Warcraft 3 and WoW but they screwed a lot of the foundational elements of those stories. Biggest one, Orgrim Doomhammer is supposed to kill Blackhand the Destroyer in Mak'gora and if he doesn't do that then how the hell does he become Warchief of the Horde during the Second War? As a hardcore Warcraft fan and a...former fan of World of Warcraft (VERY different things by the way) I have to say the movie tried to stuff in too many of our "token" characters that didn't necessarily need to be there. A lot of character bloat with characters that were beloved to us but didn't really have much screen time in game canon kind of smothered the opportunity for more abd better battle sequences. This made for too much information for people new to Warcraft and a slower movie for some people. Some of you movie folks who never played the games should understand a certain point. Those of us who grew up with the games were really excited to see the "first contact" story and the movie kind of flubbed that. That's a part of Warcraft that hasn't been told in EXTREMELY vivid detail before. The first Warcraft game picks up after the orcs and humans have already been at war for a while. Outside of that we have a dungeon in WoW where we travel back in time and see Medivh open the Dark Portal to let the first orcs of the Horde into Azeroth and the novel the Last Guardian which sort of shows at least ONE early if not first contact encounter between an orc warlock and Medivh. But really we needed more battles, more action, most movie audiences aren't going to be able to keep up with all these names getting thrown at them. One of the biggest examples of bloat is the ENTIRE Frostwolf clan, they're near and dear because that's where Thrall (Go'el) comes from but despite canonically existing during the First War in game canon they were exiled by Gul'dan the minute they arrived on Azeroth as he didn't trust them for not drinking the Blood of Mannoroth (the way they handled orcs being corrupted by the Fel in the movie was dogshit). In original game canon they drank the blood of a greater demon lord which cursed them to have more of a bloodlust and rage in them. In this Gul'dan just shoots green juice into them which really dilutes the impact of their choices. Thrall (Go'el) was a big deal in Warcraft 3 as he's the 3rd Warchief of the Horde and he tries to bring them back to their more nomadic shaman like roots and tries to avoid entanglements with the humans as he does have a bit of respect for them and doesn't hate them all. He's raised as a gladiator and slave by a corrupt human but learns that there are good people in the human kingdoms. This was all written for Warcraft 3 as far as I know Durotan and Draka weren't written until the third game. His father Durotan refused to let his clan drink this Blood of Mannoroth and that's again why they were exiled by Gul'dan right after arriving on Azeroth and didn't see much of the conflict with Stormwind. Now...does all that shit, awesome as it is, need to be stuffed into a retelling of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans? Hell nah. So one thing with the Horde is they're always favored by Blizzard and by the community. The Alliance are really the underdogs in Warcraft because the Horde are the fantastical creatures that START all the action. The whole thing is this badass race of viking like green barbarian creatures invade a puny weak ass human kingdom and smash it. So there's the next point, the humans lost in Warcraft...that's WHY Warcraft 2 happens. They flee to the north and form the Alliance of Lordaeron but for some reason in this movie the Alliance already exists despite it's formation being a response to losing the First War. Yep, Stormwind gets SMASHED in game canon and way down the line rebuilt. So a sequel hinges on that a bit, if they did something else with the movie sequel it would be even harder to get to Warcraft 3's story cleanly. Now for a little bit some folks don't know about the production. There was a script for a WoW themed movie but Blizzard didn't want Hollywood and Legendary shitting on potential plotlines that would screw up WoW's progressing story even further. For those uninitiated MMORPGS aren't like conventional games and are even in my opinion their own TIER of hobby. USUALLY they're on servers with thousands of players in a shared world at the same time. Social interaction is KEY to finding groups to get shit done game wise, usually completing harder max level content (dungeons, raids, player versus player battles, what have you) and the big kicker, as long as they're profitable they have an endless stream of content. The subscription model back in the late 90s and early 2000s when WoW came out was a tradeoff. It's not a one time purchase only...but you get a steady feed of new content in patches. New areas, new bosses in dungeons and raids, new content, quests and gear theoretically forever. Hell MMOs are the REASON DLC and live service in CONSOLE games exists. Every story arc in WoW and usually other MMOs ends and a patch picks up or pursues a new one. Every expansion ends and a new one comes out every 2 years or so that you buy. The cool part of this is the story is more like a series...in game form. So you can see how a movie set in one static part of the game's story could hinder that progression. The original movie script was set in WoW as I said before, but Duncan Jones and Blizzard were insisting that the origins of Warcraft should be the start. Trouble is Legendary didn't want to do a new script so they made Duncan adapt one that I BELIEVE Charles Leavitt drafted for a more WoW focused movie and turned it into a Warcraft movie. So as you can see that probably hurt it a bit too. I suspect Chris Metzen, one of the lead creative directors at Blizzard on the games is probably the one who pushed to have his pet characters Durotan and Draka stuffed into the movie as well because again they're beloved characters and a big part of setting up Thrall (Go'el) down the line but it could have waited for the second movie and also not broke canon as they shouldn't have been in the First War like I said already. The dwarves and elves didn't need to be there either. In game canon they don't show up until the Second War because that's when the Horde starts to directly affect their lands and also allies with other races that are their natural enemies. "Night elves" are not the same as the "High elves" and are from the other continent which at this time hadn't been discovered by the people on this continent yet. They weren't added until Warcraft 3 which is a good 20-30 years after Warcraft. Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness was the name of the 1995 game and it really kicked off with that formation of the Alliance I mentioned before. The human refugees flee from Stormwind going north by ships and go to Lordaeron where they meet with kings of the other five kingdoms to form the Alliance, they recruit the dwarves, gnomes and elves and the Horde recruits goblin mercenaries, forest trolls and ogres they brought to reinforce them from Draenor and it's on. The Horde raises the dead Knights of Stormwind to form Death Knights to counter Alliance mages and the Alliance trains new warriors by combining priests' Holy powers of the Light and basic martial prowess of soldiers to make Paladins to counter these Death Knights. Warcraft 2 is when Warcraft actually pops the fuck off and THAT is what they should have made sure they got to in that first movie. They tried to leave it open but they didn't win movie goers and not everyone of us in the game audience loved it either, most of us didn't. I think it's an okay movie. We have the "Timeways" in WoW nowadays, it could totally be an alternate Timeway and I'd accept it in game canon that way but not as a proper retelling of Warcraft. I've said this for years...in order to do this property justice, you have to make a series. And you can't screw around either. It has to have the passion and love put into it that Castlevania and Fallout have had. Then multiply that by like 10 and at every turn they need a test audience who doesn't know shit about Warcraft to review episodes and even scripts and planning to see if it would be entertaining for people unfamiliar with the source material. They can do ALL of this and still adhere very closely to the chain of events from game canon and if done properly it would be a money printer because if the series told each game in 2-4 seasons a piece THEN caught up to WoW, not to mention a shitload of stories from the books, it could go for a while. However, they need to remember to put the most important thing in Warcraft in there....WAR! Don't let it get stagnate with too much character development and too thick plotlines, those would build up naturally if they'd focus on keeping the action fresh. Sadly I don't think the 2016 movie should get a sequel. It feels far too mutated at this point and that would be a huge challenge to get it back on track. Plus orcs are as big as tauren from Warcraft 3 and WoW. In the games they're bigger than humans sure but they were giants in that move. I would watch Warcraft 2 out of intrigue but I have no idea what the hell it would even be. GG I'm gonna go pass out now folks...
Big reason why it failed miserably in the market where it matters is because they deviated from the source material. This movie was set in WarCraft Orcs & Humans. Orcs were evil monsters and the Humans were, in the vast majority, the good guys. Attempting to cram WarCraft III into WarCraft 1 was a huge mistake. They could have made a heartfelt piece on the horrors and tragedies brought about by the Orc invasion of Azeroth, a film on the desperate war to defend Stormwind. But they didn't. If they had just stuck to what occurred in the first game they could have had a moderately good movie that kicks off a trilogy. Instead, they wanted to cram crap into it that didn't happen or happened much later, and 'subvert expectations/tropes'. It deserved its failure.
@@JamailvanWestering You might wanna recap on the story of the first game. The movie didn't really have anything in common with it and they shoehorned so much stuff from later Warcraft games that they should have just go straight to the Warcraft 3 story instead. And that is arguably a lot better story anyway. The story of Warcraft 3 and its expansion would make a perfect trilogy, but the first two games really have a mediocre story that is enhanced only by the retcons made by novels and such.
@@rahko_i not really. The third one has been made with retcons… And no the only thing that includes later stuff from the games , is the inclusion of the birth of Thrall (that should happen in between 1 and 2) and the death of Durotan and Draka. Heck if you want to do 1 and 2 proper you need like 5/6 movies because a lot happens more in those than in 3.
@@JamailvanWestering 5 or 6 movies worth of story in Warcraft 1 and 2? Hah! You truly live in your own worlds. Sure, maybe, if we include very single piece of extra content like novels and stuff, we might get somewhere around the amount of Warcraft 3 RoC campaign, but that there happened more than in Warcraft 3? No way. And there are novels and stuff from Warcraft 3, as well, on top of the actual events of the games. It's not even a contest. Let alone the quality of the story in WC3 compared to 1&2.
@@JamailvanWestering the Lord of the Rings has a lot of lore behind it's books and movies but they didn't start with the Rings of Power plot line now did they? You can start a story and franchise with a strong narrative in a already stablished world. You'll have to care to not bloat your audience in exposition/worldbuilding but it absolutely can be done and Arthas story is so iconic even people who don't know Wow recognize The Lich King. Do anybody really remember Anduin the old king? Nah. You dont need to start a movie/franchise from the absolute begining. Look at Star Wars, it worked wonders.
@@SacredBlazeXxX except remotely not the same. There’s no real ground laying being done in the earlier stories. Peter Jackson pretty much used the prologue to lay the entire groundwork for the story… And the story of Arthas doesn’t start with Arthas, but with Ner’Zhul on Draenor and the enslavement of the Orcs. Because ultimately it’s Ner’Zhul that choses him
@@JamailvanWestering Agree to Disagree. I think the first movie could be about Arthas growing up and becoming a full realized Paladin could serve to stablish the world, introduce the main characters and the third war as a whole. Second movie could be about the forming of the cracks of Arthas payche with the finale been about the purging of Strathome. Third movie can be the Northern campaign, the full conversion into the Lich King and ending with the King's regicide. Many fans (including me) have a clear vision of how it could be done and how awesome it could be. It's a shame you don't but oh well, we can dream.
My friends who didn't know jackbutt about Warcraft liked and understood it, so that's a personal satisfaction I guess? And If they indeed end up making a series or something, PLEASE ensure the direction is consistent
That's really the best take about the film really, the only holes you could poke in it from a non-fan perspective are seemingly trivial in a worldbuilding scale ie Dalaran being in the sky in the first place
1. The Orcs were infinately more interesting than the humans 2. The lore changes, while smallcon their own, added up in the end 3. They crammed too much into too short a run time. This movie DESPERATELY needed another 30-40 minutes to let the world and characters BREATHE!
Despite having not played Warcraft, this was the one recent-ish fantasy movie that came closest to capturing my nostalgic love for RPG games of yore like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights, before Dungeons & Dragon: Honour Among Thieves. Two fantasy game properties that missed the mark at the box office, and fantasy on film and TV has never been in a rougher state. What we got was visually impressive and entertaining in a rock em sock 'em sort of way, but could have been better.
Should do one for the YA craze and the clones that tried to be the next Harry Potter and Twilight. A few that come to mind are The Host, I am Number 4, Beautiful Creatures and Red Riding Hood
If you're curious, and haven't played the games, you should definitely look up the story of Arthas Menethil (The Lich King) as this is probably the Warcraft story that is the most interesting from a traditional film standpoint. You'll see why if you check it out. But a *spoiler* TL;DR if you cba: Arthas is a young Paladin and Crown Prince who slowly succumbs to corruption by an artifact containing the soul of Ner'zhul (the tutor of the main villain orc in the Warcraft film, Gul'dan). Essentially humanity is being attacked by the Scourge (frost zombies, think White Walkers from GoT) and Arthas slowly loses himself to insanity in an attempt to defeat them. Considering the Scourge are zombies, he ends up genociding an entire city of people to prevent them becoming Scourge. Honestly just think Anakin/Darth Vader's arc in Star Wars and that's essentially it but fantasy.
Wife and I are Gen-X'ers, and have been playing one version or another of a "Warcraft" game for over 30 years. The last 20 have been "World of Warcraft" and we're still playing today. We LOVED the movie and still watch it every now and again. We thought a sequel was in the works (way back when), and are still holding out hope. /crossesFingers
From a fan of warcraft - the movie felt like it was running to catch the train.. lot of their plot points werent given enough time i think. Was good for your typical brain-dead summer block buster (and i wish it didnt feel like one). Fortunately ppl who didnt know anything about warcraft seemed to enjoy it a ton and were even interested to know more (personal experience). For me though I wasnt a fan of how the story was (re)told. But then again to me it was clear that they knew they'd probably never get another chance to make another warcraft movie so they shoved in EVERYTHING they could and left enough plot spots that'd allow for a continuation in case the impossible happens and a sequel is greenlit.
The lore of warcraft always have something going on. There has never been a period of inactivity or peace whether its the orcs, demons, dragons, demi gods, pantheon, elves, undead or nagas. Someone is always up to something that progresses the lore story which makes it a work of art.
1: It was fine movie for people who knows Warcraft Universe 2: It was total mess for people who don't know anything about Warcraft universe I think movie just tried to show too much stuff at same time and failed miserably because of that.
I'm a gamer but never set myself to get into WOW because younger I didn't have a pc, I was quite a lot restricted on console (N64) and I knew WOW was a huge investment I didn't have time for. So I knew the franchise was BIG, I was always intersted but, too lazy to get into it. So I know absolutely nothing of the lore, compared to lore heavy games and stories like AC, TES, DOOM, SW, Splinter Cell, FF, Warhammer 40k and LoL (both later in life) etc. But I LOVED this movie soooo much and thought finally I can get to know more about this universe with the movie(s). I was really bummed they didn't greenlit a sequel. Such a waste.
i'd say the movie is a strong 5/10 or a 6/10 and could deffinietly do numbers with a sequel. people were so harsh on it mostly because its a game adaptation, and at that time all of those were mid at best
I was super deep into warcraft lore until a few years ago, so when this movie came out I was intimately familiar with the pre-established story it was trying to tell. And man, this movie baffles me to this day. Putting aside my nerdistic tendencies, its a very fun film with some weird pacing and editing problems. But once I consider the established lore, I just don't know what the plan was moving forward. For example, the city of Dalaran is already flying in the film. But Dalaran isn't suppose to fly until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in the MMO. Actually, in the 3rd warcraft game (which portrays the 3rd war, of which the movie portrays the first), Dalaran is specifically grounded for a major plot point. So, it's kind of critical it doesn't fly for the story to work down the line. The movie is full of these kinds of choices that are subtle and barely noticeable in this movie, but would have caused major issues later if they tried to turn it into a franchise. bonus weirdness, the character of Alodi (the big black box woman) was first an invention of the MMO...but only as a retrospective lore point in a book (and as a ghost) accessible only to the mage class, and only in an expansion to the game that had been released briefly before the movie came out. Additionally, the character of Alodi as portrayed in the film vs the MMO were two completely different characters. For one, the Alodi in the game never had a big black box where he/they/she gave cryptic information to curious apprentices. That whole plot beat in the movie could have easily been changed to something a little more in-line with established lore. Aegwynn, for example's sake, was Khadgar's mom and a previous guardian, and she was canonically alive at the time of the movie. If they really wanted an old woman to give an exposition dump, why did they choose Alodi, of all people? Especially in this form? It doesn't *really* matter, but it's a confusing choice.
The thing that broke me out of just enjoying the movie the most was the addition of triangular ears on the gryphons. Every time I saw those it destroyed any immersion I built up while I was forced to wonder why they put those there. Second was The Fel as a proper noun instead of an adjective. I remember seeing some promotional material where Gul'dan's actor was making an appearance and hammed up a "Fuel for the Fel!" line from the movie, assuming it was an existing Warcraft thing. I thought I saw confusion on the audience members' faces like "the Fel? the Fel what?"
'weird pacing and editing problems" - yeah, they were so obvious. It's because they distribution company ordered 40min to be scrapped from the original cut.
My biggest issue with the stablished lore is the change to Doomhammer's character. Two things we know of Orgrim Doomhammer are that he is loyal to his best friend Durotan and he doesn't trust Gul'Dan at all. However, in the movie he betrays Durotan for Gul'Dan.
@@ventu7907the most they could do is Arthas' Reign of Chaos story. A decent trilogy would be The Fall of Lordaeron, Defense of the World Tree, and The Frozen Throne.
I personally think they should drop the idea of doing a live action, and focus on making a film, or tv series with the quality of their cinematics. Honestly, they have gotten so good at that, that it removes some of the need for live action to begin with.
Played since end of wrath and went through WC 12 and 3. It LOOKED phenomenal and grabbed the vibrant Wait of the world itself. The liberties with the story and character killed it. Thinking a “similar” feel to lotr is a bad thing is crazy.
The main problem with the movie is the movie itself. WHY did they decide to make a movie about Warcraft 1, when most people are familiar with Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft? Movie about Arthas? Or Warcraft 3 in general? The events of Vanilla WoW? All of these are far better ideas than Orcs and Humans.
The problem was not that. They changed the canon story of "Orcs & Humans" into some nonsense, especially Guldan, Garona, and King Llane story, and Khadgar not fast-ageing after battle with Medivh.
The MCU didn't kick off by starting the Avengers movie first. it started with the origin stories of the main cast. It was all building up to that big moment when Avengers DID hit.
Because in order to tell the story of Warcraft 3 you need to tell the story of Warcraft 2 so the audience understands the stakes and risks already present in the universe. And for Warcraft 2, you need Warcraft 1 for the same reasons.
The thing that this movie did differently to any other fantasy adaptation out there (that I've seen) is the implementation of hard magic. Most movies out there either have soft magic a là Gandalf/ASOIAF or arbitrary and often confusing as in Harry Potter. The way they portrayed it in the Warcraft movie had some pretty solid rules on what it costs to do magic and had some pretty awesome visuals that felt the magic feel both powerful and tangible. Don't get me wrong, I love the Lord of the Rings style magic and in fact prefer it most of the time, but having a change every now and then is also nice. I would definitely have liked to see what they can do with it in a sequel.
For the next one do I Am Number Four. Watched it recently and I didn’t even know that it was based on a book series. I recommend checking it out since the first one failed to launch a franchise like the other films you made videos about.
Warcraft fan and hated that they changed the story. The casting was poor, and the film looked a bit too comical. One of the biggest issues with the film itself for me was how they dealt with locations, they seemed to be so disjointed with no attempt to give a good overview of the world. Something like the opening credits to GoT would have really helped connect the story better I think.
Man the thing is with Warcraft, the only movie they put out was more of an intro to the characters, the story didn't even get good yet. It would have been an ez payoff if they had gotten anywhere near the litch king storyline. The problem is to do this entire storyline justice, you need a minimum of 4 or 5 movies, them not anticipating this from the get go is a failure from the start. This would have killed, people would have bought collectors editions streamed it while playing the game, gone to meet their guild members and had watch parties etc...
Here's my gripe with the movie... Most of us started playing Warcraft during WORLD of warcraft, primarily Burning Crusade to Wraith of the Lich King. But the movie lacked so much about what made those games great and why people loved them. Amazing and grand locations, PLENTY of races and all kinds of different classes. Imagine all of the people who played during that era seeing their first experience with the game being shown in movie form. Night Elf Druids shapeshifting in Teldrassil, dwarves in the snowy mountains of Dun Morogh (gotta have that bear too lol), Undead as they are brought back to life in Trisfal Glades, etc. So many amazing things to choose from. I was actually in China when I saw the movie, and I remember there being a lot of Horde vs. Alliance marketing. But... The movie really didn't feel like a Horde versus Alliance story...? I think people were disappointed with this, I know I was. Can you imagine the pride and passion people would have for the movie if it stuck more closely to that narrative? Regarding a true Sequel, it will never happen, simply for the fact that China no longer has that relationship with Warcraft. Blizzard decided to cut ties with NetEase (I'm sure their reasons were just... Why give up all that money? My guess is NetEase were asking for too much control) and I really don't think Chinese people would want to support a second movie, as Chinese fans have been badly hurt by this betrayal. Hopefully the Animated Netflix series will fill the need for a Warcraft story.
2:06 Stale fantasy trope that DOESN'T exist in Blizzard's World of Warcraft in the first place. In the lore of that universe, orcs (such as Thrall) are fully capable of being magnanimous, noble, honorable, "good" and such.
Remember being hyped up for this. While it strayed from the original story just to please the casual viewers it still was good enough for the fans. The CGI was very high quality (still is to this day) and those who knew the characters had a good time looking at them in the screen. There were a few things that dramatically changed the story, such as Anduin being way young instead of old, Garona's story being changed and Khadgar's character being too child-like with a sideplot with Alodi that strayed a lot from the original source.
This movie is by far my favorite game movie of all time. Not everything needs to be highly complicated with gigantic caracter development. To me this is a 9/10 easily
I remember there was some kind of promotion with the movie; Erik my son took his grandfather for a birthday gift and came home with a coupon. I just can't recall what it was. Erik was only 11 but he enjoyed the movie for being the movie. He was too young to know all the lore in WoW yet though our entire family played the game (for currently 15 years now). Hell, I STILL don't know all the lore. Doesn't help it keeps being retconned (coughs, SLs), but I'm working my way through the books slowly to at least get a base idea of where they had originally been before those retcons. The Last Guardian remains my favorite; Khadgar is a GILF for me (I know, I know), but in the Warcraft movie, he wasn't as strong a character as he was in the book. The expac I think would make a good movie? Mists. It could stand alone and wouldn't be trying to squeeze in as much as Arthas's story would.
All orcs, except Garona, were done great. Not that Garona was done badly, she was just several tiers down from how well the others were done. All humans, except King Lllane, were so badly done it was a case of unintentional comedy. Khadgar was supposed to be a prodigy and entirely too wise for his years. They made him a bumbling kid. FFS Medivh's betrayal in the lore hurt Khadgar so deeply it still haunts him to the present day wow. And don't get me started about how dirty they did Medivh. Utterly inexcusable. At least the worst they did Lothar, a genuine alliance goat in the lore, is allowing Fimmel to phone it in.
Felt like a movie for the fans of the franchise, didn't do enough in the first movie to "introduce" the franchise to newcomers. So the rotten tomato review is actually very accurate, for fans it's a 8/10 ...for those unfamiliar with the world it's a 3/10.
i genuinely don't understand how can someone call warcraft a failure, it was massive outside of the US. In asia we loved the movie, i literally know people who have no clue of the game genuinely curious on how the story will progress.
Any hollywood movie that fails its domestic market is considered a failure, any hollywood movie that succeeds domestically but fails internationally is considered a success, partly due to "ethnocentricism", partly due to how distribution and revenue work in this industry. I remember reading at the time why this movie performed so well in China compared to the US, one of the reasons is that this movie was focusing and doing a better job at telling the orc story, and chinese movie goers were perceived as less reticent to watch a movie about "fantastical" creatures. In the west however, the orc representation was a departure from what the general audience is familiar with, the one in the PJ's trilogy, and the human side of the story feels too secondary to the whole plot (doesn't help the acting and directing was poor). Add to that an already negative perception that this franchise had in the general culture, that it's really something "strange" if you're not a nerd gamer (and this movie did nothing to prove the detractors wrong), you have no positive feedbacks in your domestic market.
Because this movie barely made even (there is also a possibility that it didn't even earn enough to recoup the costs). So it's called a failure because it was a failure
@@rokerpfi If America only wants to make movies for itself, it will find itself less relevant on the international media stage and someone else will take that money on the table.
They should have just done an adaptation of Warcraft 3, it had a BRILLIANT story with BRILLIANT characters! Please play it! The characters of Arthas and Thrall are the best!
As a big fan of Warcraft, I can tell you it's not lore accurate which can rub fans a little wrong but, it is a great movie overall imo. The biggest thing to me was something you brought up and that's the movies pacing. The end feels super rushed because they're trying to push Khadgar and Garonas endings together with Lothar bouncing between when they happened separately in lore. If they made Tides of Darkness, it would be a cluster fuck since that game and Warcraft 3 are much more story dense.
it's also super rushed because of executive meddling. Lionsgate cut 40 minutes out of the movie, during filming, which meant that a lot of things that would've helped with both the pacing and explaining of certain parts of the movie, never got filmed.
I loved the movie. Just felt like i could have used a little more run time b/c it felt like they were moving from scene to scene at a breakneck speed sometimes.
My biggest complaint about the movie is the forced comedy. The only joke that made me chuckle was when Gamora said Khadgar wanted to mate with her, all the rest of the comedy felt way too forced, especially with Lothar. Like him looking down the barrel of the gun, or getting winded walking to the top of Mediev's tower (despite the fact he's the Stormwind's most badass warrior). Ironically, the Orcs were the funny ones in the games, the Humans were almost all played totally straight. Other than that, I really liked the movie, real shame we'll probably never get a sequel.
One of my favorite memories is going to see this as a guild during a guild holiday. It was 'okay', we all enjoyed it, but in my opinion they didn't lean heavily enough into the warcraft lore itself. They chose a very 'safe' story which is understandable, but seemed to not want to make a film 'for the fans' but more for the general public, which in hindsight was a mistake. I'm hoping they can do a relaunch with a streaming show as fallout has shown just how popular that can be when done fairly true to the lore.
I have somewhat mixed feelings on the movie. I do like some thongs especially scenes with the orcs including cut one where they have nice fun moment making fun of Grom for being green, at others i dislike World of Warcraft specific references(silly murloc sounds, they werent comci relief/joke creatures in Warcraft 3, WoW made them so.). Giving the world some proper scsle that WoW sorely lacked was great too. I was afraid of Metzen's thoughtless post Wacraft 3 story to be realized and solidified if the sequels happened. Which they would get to if sequels materialized. They also made setup for Thrall's story wrong and misplaced, not making sense by skipping The Second war and desteuxtion fo Stormwind(seeming as silly oandering to braindead WoW fans who never played Warcraft 1, 2 and especially 3 or read the early Warcraft books, especially ones by Christie Golden, so it tried to ape the status quo of the mmo game instead of actual far more brutal situation with Kingdom of Azeroth/Stormwind and following continuatioj war ie Second War after Guldan fled and Orgrim took over the leadership. In matter of fact first 2 wars are just one spanning a bit over 2 years, ending of first veing specificly sacking of Stormwind). Also some choices didnt work for me especially asian high elves also didnt seem right to me. I do like how it tried to make it more serious since Warcraft 1 was quite annoingly silly in its presentation compared to Warcraft 3 or the books. Some retcons kind of work and dont for me though, like Garona being Medivhs father, i like the idea, but it aggresively clashes with how they were in the story originally which was lovers. Mediv was slecificly responaibke for opening the portal for Horde, bith him and orcs used as a tools for Burning Legion to destroy the worlds defenses/conquer it. Medivh got underlying motivations planning ahead though which concluded in Warcraft 3 later. Also Lothar was far too young. He was meant to be an aged veteran. Not a young late 20 something 'hollywood hero'. PS. Duncan's teases make little sense, especially with misplacing Thrall and his parent's death. It's meant to happen in tail end of 2nd War when.
Every time Uwe Boll is mentioned I am obligated to mention how he challenged all his critics to a boxing match but kept ducking Seanbaby thanks to Seanbaby actually knowing how to fight.
As a fan of Warcraft I fully understand your rating and the feeling of it being rushed. Did a review of it and can link it if you are interested. I felt it was rushed as well as they headed to get to the finish line but did enjoy the movie. Great Vid!!
With the recent booming success of the fallout series and how it attracted hundreds of thousands of new/old players across all their games combined really make me hope blizzard noticed. Would be so sick to have a show to watch and keep us excited for the game we play while it reels in new players for the community.
Like a bunch of people have said, I'm a Warcraft fan I personally really enjoyed it and would love a sequel. I think my biggest criticism isn't with the changes to the plot, but with the plot they chose in the first place. It's true that it's the 'original' core plot, but there are so many more interesting stories that have developed over the years that I would have preferred one of those to this very vanilla one.
Feels bad that ir didn't end with the burning of old Stormwind as it ended in the original lore. To all uninitiated all of WoW Stormwind City except for Old Town is a reconstruction after DoomHammer burned down the city and forced Anduin Lothar, Kid Varian and the other ones to escape north towards Southshore.
As a hard core Warcraft fan I feel the smartest thing they should have done is focused on one side of the war and had 2 movies. The orcs have an amazing story and they scratched the surface with Durotan and that perspective but a lot more of that comes into play in the 2nd war. If the humans had more of a focus, time to show the land and people so happy and at peace just to be blindsided by these unknown monsters, watching lothar, medivh and Liane working together more in a sort of brotherhood kind way with maybe fun moments with medivh and khadgar with some of the soldiers would have been nice. Then more accurately reveal medivh to be why the orcs invaded, killing him and seeing the betrayal in lothars face and be teleported to a stormwind being destroyed just in time to escape on the boats and watch liane make his final stand with some of the soldiers before being killed by garona would have been amazing. Have small crumbs on the horde side for sure but then go hard in the 2nd movie with the orcs. Reveal how they were betrayed by guldan, Durotan and drakas murder, orgrim killing lothar at bkack rock. Just do what they did in the original movie but more. Feels like such a waste with so much care out into one story and still half baking it as a whole package.
What do I think of this movie? It's just OK. Similar to you Isenhart, I haven't played the games, so I might not understand some of the plot details and world building, but it's a pretty good introduction to the series. I'm interested to see where Duncan Jones' career goes next. His next film is an adaption of the 2000AD comic, Rogue Trooper, which I'm very excited for, it releases in 2025. Let's see if he can make an even better animated film. 🤞
I think the movie really missed an opportunity in not ending like the game, with the burning of Stormwind by the orcs and humans fleeing through the ocean
Warcraft does not work in movies format, only in TV series, this was the mistake right from the start. Lore is too big to fit in just in a few movies, it needs world and character building.
I played Warcraft back in the day. I think some people didn’t understand some of it if they haven’t played the game. A friend was annoyed that Garona was a hot human-looking woman instead of orc… and he didn’t realize that she looked that way because her last name is Halforcen -- she was half orc 🤷♀️ I’d like to see them make a movie about Arthas or Illidan/Azshara. I’m sure it will never happen, but those probably would have been bangers, especially Arthas’ story, and would have likely taken a lot less CGI.
The movies pacing is completely wrong in my opinion. We spend very little time at each location before we’re whisked away to the next scene, and there’s multiple scene transitions that felt like they were cut too early.
Cool video, i hope that next, you cover Warner Bros and Guy Ritchie's attempt at making a King Arthur franchise. They planned for a six film franchise in which it was cancelled after the first film's box office flop. I'd love to hear you break down the behind the scene of that movie
I think the hest way to adapt the Warcraft universe would be an animated series like Arcane. Maybe using an animation style similar to the Warbringers cinematics, it's cool, distinctive and gives you more freedom for fantasy than live-action.
@@Eric-k4x I don't know how anybody could think that. An animated Warcraft series isn't guaranteed to be great, true. But a live-action series is doomed to suck. This world is too fantastical and cartoony to be translated well into live-action.
The thing with Warcraft is just that it is too big for the silver screen. Warcraft is heavy on the narrative, and such games have narratives that are meant for many hours of gameplay. To just condense that to 2 hours or less alone is a mammoth of a task already, and going further with sequels would turn the mammoth into whale. Mario and Sonic are both very light on Narrative, and the stories are in actuality short. That alone made it a lot easier to make a movie that has the spirit of a Mario and Sonic game.
Rewatched it recently as someone who grew up with Warcraft. A sequel would be fantastic as they laid it out. A series with Arthas' story arc would be amazing too. Not sure if there is going to be a better time. Most movies coming out right now make the Warcraft movie look S tier.
It's at least better than the game, in which the devs don't care about the lore anymore. But I also find nothing wrong with the plot and cgi in the movie. I barely even noticed any cgi on the humans. Also, about the whole "everything getting thrown at you", it's basically why it's called WarCraft. There's no WarCraft without the war. By the way, spoilers from the game, Gul'dan's backstory was that he was bullied for being crippled, exiled, tried to become a shaman then failed, then became a warlock, and destroyed his home for revenge.
Seeing how great the Blizzard cinematics tend to be, they shouldn't have bothered with a feature film.
If they just made a 90 minute cinematic game trailer, all the fans would loose their minds.
If a 3 minute cinematic trailer takes 1-2 years to make, how long do you think a 90 minute cinematic is going to take?
@@carllazarraga2858Still probably less time than it took to finally get this movie out 😂 and certainly quicker than itll be for a sequel live action movie, as that may never happen. At least in the cinematic format it could actually stand a real chance of getting made.
That's exaclty it. They should have stuck to WC 1 and tgen went with WC 2 movie, or series, before going to WC3.
There is super importand world building in both.
The amount of money just rendering 1 frame out of the 24 frames needed for every second is insane. Every frame in modern AAA movies takes about 8 hours to finalize. I highly doubt WOWs CGI is anything less. It takes years to produce something like that, so the cost in massive server parks to do this would be unfeasible by today's standards.
@@carllazarraga2858 Thats because you don't have an entire film crew of 100s working on cinematics...
I thought it was a decent movie. I absolutely agree that the main orc character was by far the best character in the movie.
It doesnt matter. You simply can not deviate from the lore here. The lore matters to the audience. .. a lot... like a lot a lot. This is a world a lot of people literally live in. You cant just make up your own story.
@@CarlosSpicyweiner-iv8mq”you can’t just make up your own story” my brother in Christ wow is literally a made up story
@@CarlosSpicyweiner-iv8mqalso pretty sure no one lives in WoW. Let’s try and touch some grass today mkay
@@Gievyji I do. lots of people do. they get married and everything. youre missing out.
@@Gievyji meh, you seem toxic and angry. leave me alone. lore matters. not to but it matters to the fan base. nobody pressed you.
I really liked this movie and definitely wanted a sequel! It's so much FUN and we don't get enough of that nowadays with movies.
I think for warcrafts art style a cartoon would be a much better choice. Or something like what Arcane did. Live action humans with giant plastic shoulderpads looked kinda silly
@@nemanjanika2984 I liked the style, I have a hard time accepting the cartoon style that so many like nowadays 😅 Like Puss in Boots 2 or like that weird trailer for the new Dragon Age game, and Arcane as well, it's getting really popular to try creative art styles but personally I feel immersed and entertained when it's like a fantasy/medieval magical style, colorful and a bit over the top but still realistic, if that even makes sense 😹 But just like this, and sorcerer's apprentice as well if you've ever seen that movie!
@DagwoodDogwoggle B movies can sometimes have everything needed for pure entertainment 🙌🏻
@@carrained Imagine a style like old Conan or Hi-Man cartoon. I think that would've worked for Warcraft.
@@nemanjanika2984Nobody wants to watch cartoons. You have anime and other bullshit if you like that
I thought the orc part of the movie was great, they were more human than the humans.
There are some pretty great scenes taken out about the orcs bonding like orgrim throwing rocks at durotan or other orcs making fun of hellscream for becoming green. Beats me why they took these out....
@@luukthijssen4917 The distribution company wanted a 2h movie, so they can sell more tickets in a day. The original movie was supposed to be 2h 40min long, but greed got in the way of art. too bad we didn't get a director's cut.
IMO, the orcs were easier to tell apart. All the non-khadgar/medivh humans looked very similar as "Big dude in armor". The orcs and their CGI faces worked really well. The whole thing looked very "Warcraft".
If they ever do another movie/TV series though, Blizzard just needs to do it in-house fully CGI. They have the skilled people there to do it, go look at the modern out-of-engine cut scenes they produce.
does matter, you cant deviate from the lore.
@@luukthijssen4917the green scene and the scene where they’re sitting around and durotan realizes the land is dying everywhere the fel touches, same as their world, 100% should have been added at the very least
They should've pulled a star wars and started with warcraft 3. It's the game and story that really set off warcraft for most people. Most people my age don't know even know what happened in wc1 and wc2.
Yeah I started with warcraft 3 too and the great thing is, you dont really needed to know the previous lore to follow the story. This was when warcraft lore was at its best.
Those first two games would at least act as good world building material. I felt like this movie just felt like everything happened super quickly in a world I knew nothing about.
I agree and would say WC3 has the best story AND the character of Arthas is one of the best of all time!
If you start with warcraft 3 you will have more questions to answer and it be even harder to get a good bonebreaking movie....
That is what we expect and demand from Blizzard
That, 100%. Get people interested by giving them the most interesting part right away, then you can give them some background in later movies, once they are hooked. 1st Movie around Arthas, 2nd movie around Illidan. Instant guaranteed success. It's no wonder the fans loved this movie while the rest didn't like it. It's because the fans know about Arthas, Illidan, Sylvanas, they know how rich, interesting and deep this story is. They are interested in Thrall's back story, how he came to be, because they are hooked to this character, they know he will play a very big role fighting the burning legion. Those who don't know just saw a baby abandonned in the river, the emotion is not on the same level, it's just an openning for the next movie, they don't know how huge this little baby's story will be. It's no wonder this setup didn't get people excited. It's all just a setup for interesting part. And unfortunately they did all of this for nothing since they cancelled the intesting part. Just make a movie about Arthas right now, the rest can be done later.
As someone who has never played any of the games, I remember really enjoying this film. My parents, who aren't into these kinds of movies even liked it. Very underrated movie that I wish could've gotten a sequel.
Myself, being a WoW veteran for many years, thought it was a good movie 🤷♂️ bummed that they didn't make a follow up.
I still hope for an Arthas two part sequels
Three part. The descent of Arthas the Silver Hand. The Rise of Arthas the Death Knight. The Fall of the Lich King.
The only problem with that is it's a huge time jump. I'm not sure Arthas has even been born yet at the end of the Warcraft movie, which didn't even conclude the events of Warcraft ONE. There's still one and a half wars and 20 years or more until Warcraft 3.
part 3, the 2 should be warcraft 2 war
@@sagaswp true. But I think it could act as a kinda soft reboot. So it would take into account the events of this movie. But would also be a (you don't have to watch the original.) type of thing
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 I'd be cool with three parts. But I feel like a two part could cover the rise of the lich King Pretty well. First part ends with Arthas killing Uthur. Second part ends with Arthas defeating Illidan and becoming Lich King. I guess a third part could be made for his defeat. But a smarter way to go about it is to leave Arthas alone to develop other stories in a cinematic universe type of thing. Like we know he's out there. But will give time to set up Thrall, Sylvanus, Varian and Tyrande. Maybe even grow more with Tirion and Bolvar as well. Then we could see them all team up to take on the Lich King in a future movie.
I was annoyed that Dalaran was floating in the sky and not on the ground like it was in Warcraft III.
Lots of other little details annoyed me. The orcs were too big compared to the humans and seemed to be at least 10-15 times stronger as shown when one of them picks up a horse and throws it several meters. A fully grown horse weighs 500 kg. It just made all the fight scenes ridiculous when the humans didn't stand a chance. The humans were only capable of killing orcs with those dwarven pistols. It just made no sense.
you forgot that orcs win and burn northshire abbey and stormwind to the ground. Pressing forward, not to mention they skipped a whole movie of events to make some made up ending.
In lore, Orcs are meant to vary in size (like humans) and the ones that travelled through the dark portal were only part of the warband (handpicked by Blackhand).
It's possible that there are others orcs who look closer to human size that we simply never got to see.
“I found the main villain interesting but we never got any conclusion to his story”
Gotta wait for the legion movie for that, sorry boss
Not really. Legion was a different version of Gul'dan.
As someone who have played WoW for 15 years and the RTS games since the late 90s, I absolutely loved the movie. The entire production of the movie was on point. You could easily recognize characters important to the lore, even those who were just background characters in this movie ( 10:50 that orc is very well known among the fans). Even the weapons of some characters were easily to spot. The battle scenes had amazing choreography exceeding expectation.
It's unfair to say this movie failed, because it didn't fail its targeted audience, fans at all.
It just couldn't bring in the money because its targeted audience were such a small group of people and the lore is so deep its hard for non-wow players to get into the world in just a two hour long movie.
I'm a gamer but never set myself to get into WOW because younger I didn't have a pc, I was quite a lot restricted on console (N64) and I knew WOW was a huge investment I didn't have time for. So I knew the franchise was BIG, I was always intersted but, too lazy to get into it. So I know absolutely nothing of the lore, compared to lore heavy games and stories like AC, TES, DOOM, SW, Splinter Cell, FF, Warhammer 40k and LoL (both later in life) etc. But I LOVED this movie soooo much and thought finally I can get to know more about this universe with the movie(s). I was really bummed they didn't greenlit a sequel. Such a waste.
I've seen plenty of fans shit on this movie too
The problem is: They changed the plot.
It was once again, an original Idea on a video game.
Witcher did the exact same thing.
Why not just implement the source material 1 to 1? You cannot go wrong with that.
Also the Story of Warcraft 3, not Warcraft 1 is what everyone is waiting for.
That story would blow out the park if they did it together with the cinematic artists of blizzard.
If you dont change anything why make a movie? Obviously you cannot just make it 1 to 1 since there is No reason to watch it
Because the source material barely has a plot to begin with. Making changes to the plot is not why this movie wasn't good.
@@jarskii11 Because the original game barely had any emphasis on the story. The in-universe lore is a hodgepodge of jumbled up footnotes calling back to the first game. Whether they come from a book, comic, some in game quest in WoW, or get expanded on in WC2 or WC3. Actually having a proper movie that adapts it and puts it into one neat easy to digest package would be a good thing. We'd get to see the story of the first war properly, in all the cinematic glory it deserved.
First movie should have been WC1, with maybe an extra hour added to the runtime to give scenes time to breathe and actually make newer audiences not get lost in the constantly shifting locations and characters. Basically do what the first LotR movie did.
Second movie should have been the first half of WC2, with the third movie being the 2nd half of WC2. There's just no way you're fitting the story of that game into just one movie without it feeling like a rushed piece of shit.
To all the Arthas fans crying and saying waah why isn't he in any of the movies... to that I say he should either get his own trilogy afterwards. Or better yet, this is when you could actually start a TV series instead. WC3 being a TV series like game of thrones would have been very appropriate. There's easily 4-5 seasons worth of content they take advantage of in that one game alone.
Then they could do stuff with like Netflix or whatever and get in some animated shorts or miniseries for other less connected side stories. Things that were like stuck in the comics or part of a book. Like a story focusing on Varian growing up, losing his wife, and being "lost" till he ultimately slays Onyxia. Or the well of eternity being created and destroying the world.
Blizzard sitting on this franchise and doing absolutely fucking nothing with it is a travesty. They make more than enough money to be able to do whatever the hell they want without the need for waiting for Hollywood to greenlight anything. The fact they won't even go in and remake the original two games is an even bigger joke, especially with how poorly they handled the third games remaster. All the fans they gained over the past three decades are just withering away, content starved and moving onto other things.
@@Stiksta I think it would be hard because the orcs are main characters. And it's hard to fully cgi main characters. Sure wherever they are enemies or secondaries... It's not that hard to manage, they don't appear a lot onscreen.
Also the elves would have been as hard. They have more shiny eyes and auras and other things. goblins, undead etc... Even with all the improvements in cgi, it's hard when you don't have focus on 80% nornal humanoids. Imagine they had to cgi 5 hulks at the same time on multiple scenes. Whe. We have seen that only one hulk is still looking cartoonish and not so good.
Warcraft 3 has a better story fr
All I want is a good Warcraft show/movie so I can finally show people how awesome the Warcraft lore and universe is 😔
Honestly you're better off showing them the Warcraft Wiki and telling them to read, that is what my friend did to me with 40k. Your only alternative is taking the Chronicles books if you want the "true" canon.
@@EJ_Red The Chronicle books are horrible! So many inconsistencies in the current ones, and retcons and dips and jumps and removing of key points in the others. I mean The Last Guardian is my favorite book and that was retconned. I'm glad the movie kept some of the plot from the book at least even if it wasn't rended in the last few scenes properly. Plus so much green.
@@Knight-of-Sarcasm That's why I put it as "true" canon and not true canon. I also have my own criticisms with Chronicle but it is the only series we have for complete lore, unfortunately.
Conclusion of this video can not be more incorrect.
After I watched Warcraft movie (not in a theater, of course) I bought the newest expansion of WoW and subscribed for 6 months. That is what the movie was for - to invite players to the game.
I might be the minority, but I loved it. I played since 98 and besides the “friendly female orc”, as a pseudo romance trope, I didn’t see any major missteps.
I’d 100% watch a sequel
Loved it too, felt like I was back in 1997 playing on dial-up with friends tying up phone lines LOL.
I watched it again maybe 2 weeks ago. It aged very well. Gul’Dan looks and sounds incredible
I don’t think the Medivh actor is very good, but everyone else was fine-great
If they started with the Arthas storyline, I think we'd be seeing a sequel already out by now... you have to be a hardcore Warcraft nerd like me to know about Lothar and the first Great War.... but everyone and their uncle knows the Arthas storyline
@@alexrompen805 I think this is the biggest mistake they made, most people started with Warcraft 3.
@@alexrompen805 But youre absolutely wrong and the fact is, its the complete opposite. Even the narrator in this video is referring 'Warcraft' to the 'world of warcraft' franchise, just like 95% of other people, this movie is about WoW to them, not Warcraft but the movie is 'Warcraft' not 'world of warcraft'. What im saying is, most people who watched this film are WoW nerds, not Warcraft nerds, yet the story of this movie is about warcraft, not world of warcraft lol therefore 95% of the people watching couldnt be as attached or whatever to the characters as these characters are before the time of like 90% of wow players, I played warcraft II and III as a teenager, i didnt give a shit about lore or characters I had a life, I just played a bit of dota here and there when it was raining or something. But WoW I played like a years worth of time if not more, I had 2.6k rbg rating, its not the best but obviously i was a big WoW palyer. I didnt know fuck all about the characters in the movies except young khadgar and obviously i've raided Kara so i know medievh but not the movies version, medeivh always bad guy to me and 90% of the people watching the movie, just like thrall isnt an infant and who the fuck is thralls dad? but i know Garrosh Hellscream, I know Jaina Proudmore, I know abunch of characters who just plain and simple arent in this movie because they dont belong here and its still an excellent movie. All im saying is PEOPLE ARE TO FUCKING DIFFICULT.. Theyre sad, depressed, bored and looking for drama, you cant keep them happy. there is to many chemicals in our water, food, to many radio frequency and radiations going directly through our brains, there is too much lead in our bones... People need a reset and so does the earth, thats why Warcraft movie flunked... Its a fucking excellent movie, but people are just LOOKING TO BE UNHAPPY ABOUT EVERYTHING
This movie failed for lacking an action scene with "Leeroy Jenkins" storming the battlefield with his iconic scream. Where's Brett Ratner when you need him???
As a long time Warcraft nerd, the lore being inaccurate to the source material was my main issue, but I still enjoyed it and really would love to see a sequel. I flew across the country to have a big meetup with wow friends to see the movie and good or bad, it was a great memory I cherish
Same
"We be smokin' that Gul'dan Ganja" -Grommash Hellscream, probably
"wanted to subvert the trope" wish they would stop doing this.
AKA make something that's horsesh*t. There's a reason why a trope is a trope. When you start wanting to go against the grain everywhere you force yourself out plots and stories that make sense just in order to try and be different.
I mean, the Warcraft universe started doing that long ago, even without this movie. Not saying it’s a good or a bad thing, but I don’t think you can blame the movie creators for something that was already established in Warcraft.
The horde being morally comparable to the humans has been a central point of the universe and lore since 2002
@@ariex0a "morally comparable" quite HS even with all the material in wow. Btw the movie should've been all cgi
Ironically it's gotten to the point where subverting the trope would be making a faithful adaptation. Cause everyone has a "special" idea now...
This series is great. I’ve always wanted to document the flops of the 2010’s that led us to where mainstream movies are now, but this is way more succinct than I ever could’ve done it.
Warcraft is a flick I bought on a sale not expecting much and it’s alright. Potential is there just not fully realised.
Thank you!
A shame it never got a sequel. I liked it at that time.
ESSAY INCOMING
There's a lot of stuff that would complicate the sequels that they chose to do with the movie. There's a pretty simple plot to follow from Warcraft 1 and 2 before you get to the more complex stories of Warcraft 3 and WoW but they screwed a lot of the foundational elements of those stories. Biggest one, Orgrim Doomhammer is supposed to kill Blackhand the Destroyer in Mak'gora and if he doesn't do that then how the hell does he become Warchief of the Horde during the Second War? As a hardcore Warcraft fan and a...former fan of World of Warcraft (VERY different things by the way) I have to say the movie tried to stuff in too many of our "token" characters that didn't necessarily need to be there. A lot of character bloat with characters that were beloved to us but didn't really have much screen time in game canon kind of smothered the opportunity for more abd better battle sequences. This made for too much information for people new to Warcraft and a slower movie for some people.
Some of you movie folks who never played the games should understand a certain point. Those of us who grew up with the games were really excited to see the "first contact" story and the movie kind of flubbed that. That's a part of Warcraft that hasn't been told in EXTREMELY vivid detail before. The first Warcraft game picks up after the orcs and humans have already been at war for a while. Outside of that we have a dungeon in WoW where we travel back in time and see Medivh open the Dark Portal to let the first orcs of the Horde into Azeroth and the novel the Last Guardian which sort of shows at least ONE early if not first contact encounter between an orc warlock and Medivh. But really we needed more battles, more action, most movie audiences aren't going to be able to keep up with all these names getting thrown at them.
One of the biggest examples of bloat is the ENTIRE Frostwolf clan, they're near and dear because that's where Thrall (Go'el) comes from but despite canonically existing during the First War in game canon they were exiled by Gul'dan the minute they arrived on Azeroth as he didn't trust them for not drinking the Blood of Mannoroth (the way they handled orcs being corrupted by the Fel in the movie was dogshit). In original game canon they drank the blood of a greater demon lord which cursed them to have more of a bloodlust and rage in them. In this Gul'dan just shoots green juice into them which really dilutes the impact of their choices. Thrall (Go'el) was a big deal in Warcraft 3 as he's the 3rd Warchief of the Horde and he tries to bring them back to their more nomadic shaman like roots and tries to avoid entanglements with the humans as he does have a bit of respect for them and doesn't hate them all. He's raised as a gladiator and slave by a corrupt human but learns that there are good people in the human kingdoms. This was all written for Warcraft 3 as far as I know Durotan and Draka weren't written until the third game. His father Durotan refused to let his clan drink this Blood of Mannoroth and that's again why they were exiled by Gul'dan right after arriving on Azeroth and didn't see much of the conflict with Stormwind.
Now...does all that shit, awesome as it is, need to be stuffed into a retelling of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans? Hell nah. So one thing with the Horde is they're always favored by Blizzard and by the community. The Alliance are really the underdogs in Warcraft because the Horde are the fantastical creatures that START all the action. The whole thing is this badass race of viking like green barbarian creatures invade a puny weak ass human kingdom and smash it. So there's the next point, the humans lost in Warcraft...that's WHY Warcraft 2 happens. They flee to the north and form the Alliance of Lordaeron but for some reason in this movie the Alliance already exists despite it's formation being a response to losing the First War. Yep, Stormwind gets SMASHED in game canon and way down the line rebuilt. So a sequel hinges on that a bit, if they did something else with the movie sequel it would be even harder to get to Warcraft 3's story cleanly.
Now for a little bit some folks don't know about the production. There was a script for a WoW themed movie but Blizzard didn't want Hollywood and Legendary shitting on potential plotlines that would screw up WoW's progressing story even further. For those uninitiated MMORPGS aren't like conventional games and are even in my opinion their own TIER of hobby. USUALLY they're on servers with thousands of players in a shared world at the same time. Social interaction is KEY to finding groups to get shit done game wise, usually completing harder max level content (dungeons, raids, player versus player battles, what have you) and the big kicker, as long as they're profitable they have an endless stream of content. The subscription model back in the late 90s and early 2000s when WoW came out was a tradeoff. It's not a one time purchase only...but you get a steady feed of new content in patches. New areas, new bosses in dungeons and raids, new content, quests and gear theoretically forever. Hell MMOs are the REASON DLC and live service in CONSOLE games exists. Every story arc in WoW and usually other MMOs ends and a patch picks up or pursues a new one. Every expansion ends and a new one comes out every 2 years or so that you buy. The cool part of this is the story is more like a series...in game form. So you can see how a movie set in one static part of the game's story could hinder that progression.
The original movie script was set in WoW as I said before, but Duncan Jones and Blizzard were insisting that the origins of Warcraft should be the start. Trouble is Legendary didn't want to do a new script so they made Duncan adapt one that I BELIEVE Charles Leavitt drafted for a more WoW focused movie and turned it into a Warcraft movie. So as you can see that probably hurt it a bit too. I suspect Chris Metzen, one of the lead creative directors at Blizzard on the games is probably the one who pushed to have his pet characters Durotan and Draka stuffed into the movie as well because again they're beloved characters and a big part of setting up Thrall (Go'el) down the line but it could have waited for the second movie and also not broke canon as they shouldn't have been in the First War like I said already. The dwarves and elves didn't need to be there either. In game canon they don't show up until the Second War because that's when the Horde starts to directly affect their lands and also allies with other races that are their natural enemies. "Night elves" are not the same as the "High elves" and are from the other continent which at this time hadn't been discovered by the people on this continent yet. They weren't added until Warcraft 3 which is a good 20-30 years after Warcraft.
Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness was the name of the 1995 game and it really kicked off with that formation of the Alliance I mentioned before. The human refugees flee from Stormwind going north by ships and go to Lordaeron where they meet with kings of the other five kingdoms to form the Alliance, they recruit the dwarves, gnomes and elves and the Horde recruits goblin mercenaries, forest trolls and ogres they brought to reinforce them from Draenor and it's on. The Horde raises the dead Knights of Stormwind to form Death Knights to counter Alliance mages and the Alliance trains new warriors by combining priests' Holy powers of the Light and basic martial prowess of soldiers to make Paladins to counter these Death Knights. Warcraft 2 is when Warcraft actually pops the fuck off and THAT is what they should have made sure they got to in that first movie. They tried to leave it open but they didn't win movie goers and not everyone of us in the game audience loved it either, most of us didn't. I think it's an okay movie. We have the "Timeways" in WoW nowadays, it could totally be an alternate Timeway and I'd accept it in game canon that way but not as a proper retelling of Warcraft.
I've said this for years...in order to do this property justice, you have to make a series. And you can't screw around either. It has to have the passion and love put into it that Castlevania and Fallout have had. Then multiply that by like 10 and at every turn they need a test audience who doesn't know shit about Warcraft to review episodes and even scripts and planning to see if it would be entertaining for people unfamiliar with the source material. They can do ALL of this and still adhere very closely to the chain of events from game canon and if done properly it would be a money printer because if the series told each game in 2-4 seasons a piece THEN caught up to WoW, not to mention a shitload of stories from the books, it could go for a while. However, they need to remember to put the most important thing in Warcraft in there....WAR! Don't let it get stagnate with too much character development and too thick plotlines, those would build up naturally if they'd focus on keeping the action fresh. Sadly I don't think the 2016 movie should get a sequel. It feels far too mutated at this point and that would be a huge challenge to get it back on track. Plus orcs are as big as tauren from Warcraft 3 and WoW. In the games they're bigger than humans sure but they were giants in that move. I would watch Warcraft 2 out of intrigue but I have no idea what the hell it would even be. GG I'm gonna go pass out now folks...
Your essay comment was more epic and enjoyable than the movie .
Great comment, Ive read more WOW books than played the actual games and was bummed that this didnt follow them as well.
Big reason why it failed miserably in the market where it matters is because they deviated from the source material. This movie was set in WarCraft Orcs & Humans. Orcs were evil monsters and the Humans were, in the vast majority, the good guys. Attempting to cram WarCraft III into WarCraft 1 was a huge mistake. They could have made a heartfelt piece on the horrors and tragedies brought about by the Orc invasion of Azeroth, a film on the desperate war to defend Stormwind. But they didn't.
If they had just stuck to what occurred in the first game they could have had a moderately good movie that kicks off a trilogy. Instead, they wanted to cram crap into it that didn't happen or happened much later, and 'subvert expectations/tropes'. It deserved its failure.
The only thing I remember them cramping in from Warcraft 3 was baby Thrall.
agreed, should've been all cgi too, orcs were to large, humans were to small. The dwarfs were awesome, might as well make everything right
@@JamailvanWestering You might wanna recap on the story of the first game. The movie didn't really have anything in common with it and they shoehorned so much stuff from later Warcraft games that they should have just go straight to the Warcraft 3 story instead. And that is arguably a lot better story anyway. The story of Warcraft 3 and its expansion would make a perfect trilogy, but the first two games really have a mediocre story that is enhanced only by the retcons made by novels and such.
@@rahko_i not really. The third one has been made with retcons…
And no the only thing that includes later stuff from the games , is the inclusion of the birth of Thrall (that should happen in between 1 and 2) and the death of Durotan and Draka.
Heck if you want to do 1 and 2 proper you need like 5/6 movies because a lot happens more in those than in 3.
@@JamailvanWestering 5 or 6 movies worth of story in Warcraft 1 and 2? Hah! You truly live in your own worlds. Sure, maybe, if we include very single piece of extra content like novels and stuff, we might get somewhere around the amount of Warcraft 3 RoC campaign, but that there happened more than in Warcraft 3? No way. And there are novels and stuff from Warcraft 3, as well, on top of the actual events of the games. It's not even a contest. Let alone the quality of the story in WC3 compared to 1&2.
The fact that this movie wasnt about Arthas with a setup for a trilogy of him becoming the Lich King should be classified as a Warcrime.
Because that only happened in the Third War and the central conflict of Warcraft has always been Horde vs. Alliance.
Agree they should had made a Prince Arthas movies with Jamie Lannister as Arthas
That will be a hit
@@JamailvanWestering the Lord of the Rings has a lot of lore behind it's books and movies but they didn't start with the Rings of Power plot line now did they?
You can start a story and franchise with a strong narrative in a already stablished world. You'll have to care to not bloat your audience in exposition/worldbuilding but it absolutely can be done and Arthas story is so iconic even people who don't know Wow recognize The Lich King. Do anybody really remember Anduin the old king? Nah.
You dont need to start a movie/franchise from the absolute begining. Look at Star Wars, it worked wonders.
@@SacredBlazeXxX except remotely not the same.
There’s no real ground laying being done in the earlier stories.
Peter Jackson pretty much used the prologue to lay the entire groundwork for the story…
And the story of Arthas doesn’t start with Arthas, but with Ner’Zhul on Draenor and the enslavement of the Orcs.
Because ultimately it’s Ner’Zhul that choses him
@@JamailvanWestering Agree to Disagree.
I think the first movie could be about Arthas growing up and becoming a full realized Paladin could serve to stablish the world, introduce the main characters and the third war as a whole.
Second movie could be about the forming of the cracks of Arthas payche with the finale been about the purging of Strathome.
Third movie can be the Northern campaign, the full conversion into the Lich King and ending with the King's regicide.
Many fans (including me) have a clear vision of how it could be done and how awesome it could be. It's a shame you don't but oh well, we can dream.
My friends who didn't know jackbutt about Warcraft liked and understood it, so that's a personal satisfaction I guess?
And If they indeed end up making a series or something, PLEASE ensure the direction is consistent
That's really the best take about the film really, the only holes you could poke in it from a non-fan perspective are seemingly trivial in a worldbuilding scale ie Dalaran being in the sky in the first place
1. The Orcs were infinately more interesting than the humans
2. The lore changes, while smallcon their own, added up in the end
3. They crammed too much into too short a run time. This movie DESPERATELY needed another 30-40 minutes to let the world and characters BREATHE!
I really liked how it made the orcs relatable.
"My film started and ended with cancer..." Jesus. For what it's worth I think this movie is underrated
Despite having not played Warcraft, this was the one recent-ish fantasy movie that came closest to capturing my nostalgic love for RPG games of yore like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights, before Dungeons & Dragon: Honour Among Thieves. Two fantasy game properties that missed the mark at the box office, and fantasy on film and TV has never been in a rougher state. What we got was visually impressive and entertaining in a rock em sock 'em sort of way, but could have been better.
This movie is what got me to play the games and become obsessed with learning all the lore. I had to know what happened after the movie story ended.
This really hurt that we never got a sequel. I don’t play the games but I love how over the top this movie was. Really sad
Should do one for the YA craze and the clones that tried to be the next Harry Potter and Twilight. A few that come to mind are The Host, I am Number 4, Beautiful Creatures and Red Riding Hood
The 5th Wave, City of Ember
Red riding hood was actually way better than it had any right to be.
The movie felt like the second film of a trilogy but the other films were nowhere to be found.
If you're curious, and haven't played the games, you should definitely look up the story of Arthas Menethil (The Lich King) as this is probably the Warcraft story that is the most interesting from a traditional film standpoint. You'll see why if you check it out.
But a *spoiler* TL;DR if you cba: Arthas is a young Paladin and Crown Prince who slowly succumbs to corruption by an artifact containing the soul of Ner'zhul (the tutor of the main villain orc in the Warcraft film, Gul'dan). Essentially humanity is being attacked by the Scourge (frost zombies, think White Walkers from GoT) and Arthas slowly loses himself to insanity in an attempt to defeat them. Considering the Scourge are zombies, he ends up genociding an entire city of people to prevent them becoming Scourge. Honestly just think Anakin/Darth Vader's arc in Star Wars and that's essentially it but fantasy.
Wife and I are Gen-X'ers, and have been playing one version or another of a "Warcraft" game for over 30 years. The last 20 have been "World of Warcraft" and we're still playing today. We LOVED the movie and still watch it every now and again. We thought a sequel was in the works (way back when), and are still holding out hope. /crossesFingers
From a fan of warcraft - the movie felt like it was running to catch the train.. lot of their plot points werent given enough time i think. Was good for your typical brain-dead summer block buster (and i wish it didnt feel like one).
Fortunately ppl who didnt know anything about warcraft seemed to enjoy it a ton and were even interested to know more (personal experience). For me though I wasnt a fan of how the story was (re)told. But then again to me it was clear that they knew they'd probably never get another chance to make another warcraft movie so they shoved in EVERYTHING they could and left enough plot spots that'd allow for a continuation in case the impossible happens and a sequel is greenlit.
The lore of warcraft always have something going on. There has never been a period of inactivity or peace whether its the orcs, demons, dragons, demi gods, pantheon, elves, undead or nagas. Someone is always up to something that progresses the lore story which makes it a work of art.
1: It was fine movie for people who knows Warcraft Universe
2: It was total mess for people who don't know anything about Warcraft universe
I think movie just tried to show too much stuff at same time and failed miserably because of that.
Assassin's Creed had a similar problem, trying to cram too much exposition dumps on people who didn't play games or follow their plot.
I'm a gamer but never set myself to get into WOW because younger I didn't have a pc, I was quite a lot restricted on console (N64) and I knew WOW was a huge investment I didn't have time for. So I knew the franchise was BIG, I was always intersted but, too lazy to get into it. So I know absolutely nothing of the lore, compared to lore heavy games and stories like AC, TES, DOOM, SW, Splinter Cell, FF, Warhammer 40k and LoL (both later in life) etc. But I LOVED this movie soooo much and thought finally I can get to know more about this universe with the movie(s). I was really bummed they didn't greenlit a sequel. Such a waste.
i'd say the movie is a strong 5/10 or a 6/10 and could deffinietly do numbers with a sequel. people were so harsh on it mostly because its a game adaptation, and at that time all of those were mid at best
I'd say make the sequel but fix what people didn't like about the first one.
I'd be partial to see more.
Hard to beat what Activision (game company) did to the game series itself
I was super deep into warcraft lore until a few years ago, so when this movie came out I was intimately familiar with the pre-established story it was trying to tell. And man, this movie baffles me to this day. Putting aside my nerdistic tendencies, its a very fun film with some weird pacing and editing problems. But once I consider the established lore, I just don't know what the plan was moving forward. For example, the city of Dalaran is already flying in the film. But Dalaran isn't suppose to fly until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in the MMO. Actually, in the 3rd warcraft game (which portrays the 3rd war, of which the movie portrays the first), Dalaran is specifically grounded for a major plot point. So, it's kind of critical it doesn't fly for the story to work down the line. The movie is full of these kinds of choices that are subtle and barely noticeable in this movie, but would have caused major issues later if they tried to turn it into a franchise.
bonus weirdness, the character of Alodi (the big black box woman) was first an invention of the MMO...but only as a retrospective lore point in a book (and as a ghost) accessible only to the mage class, and only in an expansion to the game that had been released briefly before the movie came out. Additionally, the character of Alodi as portrayed in the film vs the MMO were two completely different characters. For one, the Alodi in the game never had a big black box where he/they/she gave cryptic information to curious apprentices. That whole plot beat in the movie could have easily been changed to something a little more in-line with established lore. Aegwynn, for example's sake, was Khadgar's mom and a previous guardian, and she was canonically alive at the time of the movie. If they really wanted an old woman to give an exposition dump, why did they choose Alodi, of all people? Especially in this form? It doesn't *really* matter, but it's a confusing choice.
Aegwynn was Medievh's mom. Also alodi was a man in the mmo, and I though he was established in one of the manga series.
The thing that broke me out of just enjoying the movie the most was the addition of triangular ears on the gryphons. Every time I saw those it destroyed any immersion I built up while I was forced to wonder why they put those there.
Second was The Fel as a proper noun instead of an adjective. I remember seeing some promotional material where Gul'dan's actor was making an appearance and hammed up a "Fuel for the Fel!" line from the movie, assuming it was an existing Warcraft thing. I thought I saw confusion on the audience members' faces like "the Fel? the Fel what?"
'weird pacing and editing problems" - yeah, they were so obvious. It's because they distribution company ordered 40min to be scrapped from the original cut.
My biggest issue with the stablished lore is the change to Doomhammer's character. Two things we know of Orgrim Doomhammer are that he is loyal to his best friend Durotan and he doesn't trust Gul'Dan at all. However, in the movie he betrays Durotan for Gul'Dan.
@@AgusSkywalker breaking a friendship since child hood for a warped evil warlock it agaist what doom hammer is
Despite all the flaws, this is a movie that will always be near and dear to my heart.
The only correct way to reboot is the fall of Arthas with the end of credits scene him turning into a Death Knight
He turns into a death knight right after he kills malghanas. I would hope for it go to at the least the ascension to the frozen throne
@@ventu7907the most they could do is Arthas' Reign of Chaos story.
A decent trilogy would be The Fall of Lordaeron, Defense of the World Tree, and The Frozen Throne.
I personally think they should drop the idea of doing a live action, and focus on making a film, or tv series with the quality of their cinematics. Honestly, they have gotten so good at that, that it removes some of the need for live action to begin with.
The Warcraft film was quite good! Shame they didn't make a sequel.
Played since end of wrath and went through WC 12 and 3. It LOOKED phenomenal and grabbed the vibrant Wait of the world itself. The liberties with the story and character killed it. Thinking a “similar” feel to lotr is a bad thing is crazy.
The main problem with the movie is the movie itself.
WHY did they decide to make a movie about Warcraft 1, when most people are familiar with Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft?
Movie about Arthas? Or Warcraft 3 in general?
The events of Vanilla WoW?
All of these are far better ideas than Orcs and Humans.
Because You usually start with the beginning
The problem was not that. They changed the canon story of "Orcs & Humans" into some nonsense, especially Guldan, Garona, and King Llane story, and Khadgar not fast-ageing after battle with Medivh.
The MCU didn't kick off by starting the Avengers movie first. it started with the origin stories of the main cast. It was all building up to that big moment when Avengers DID hit.
Because in order to tell the story of Warcraft 3 you need to tell the story of Warcraft 2 so the audience understands the stakes and risks already present in the universe. And for Warcraft 2, you need Warcraft 1 for the same reasons.
The answer: Bobby Kotick's awful management.
The thing that this movie did differently to any other fantasy adaptation out there (that I've seen) is the implementation of hard magic. Most movies out there either have soft magic a là Gandalf/ASOIAF or arbitrary and often confusing as in Harry Potter. The way they portrayed it in the Warcraft movie had some pretty solid rules on what it costs to do magic and had some pretty awesome visuals that felt the magic feel both powerful and tangible. Don't get me wrong, I love the Lord of the Rings style magic and in fact prefer it most of the time, but having a change every now and then is also nice. I would definitely have liked to see what they can do with it in a sequel.
Love this channel. And the new logo is cool. Keep up the good work
Thank you I appreciate it!
For the next one do I Am Number Four. Watched it recently and I didn’t even know that it was based on a book series. I recommend checking it out since the first one failed to launch a franchise like the other films you made videos about.
I remember that book! I really thought they were gonna take off more
@@SpecHawk35 they cast the most unrealisticaly handsome, tall, fit and blonde supermodel possible as the main character. Enough said.
@@anonymous-hz2ununrealistically handsome?
@@kapitan19969838 he looks like he's made on some computer program. Fake asf. Almost like a wax figure.
Warcraft fan and hated that they changed the story. The casting was poor, and the film looked a bit too comical. One of the biggest issues with the film itself for me was how they dealt with locations, they seemed to be so disjointed with no attempt to give a good overview of the world. Something like the opening credits to GoT would have really helped connect the story better I think.
I would have loved a series of this. Even if it was just a 10 part mini series.
Man the thing is with Warcraft, the only movie they put out was more of an intro to the characters, the story didn't even get good yet. It would have been an ez payoff if they had gotten anywhere near the litch king storyline. The problem is to do this entire storyline justice, you need a minimum of 4 or 5 movies, them not anticipating this from the get go is a failure from the start. This would have killed, people would have bought collectors editions streamed it while playing the game, gone to meet their guild members and had watch parties etc...
Here's my gripe with the movie... Most of us started playing Warcraft during WORLD of warcraft, primarily Burning Crusade to Wraith of the Lich King. But the movie lacked so much about what made those games great and why people loved them. Amazing and grand locations, PLENTY of races and all kinds of different classes. Imagine all of the people who played during that era seeing their first experience with the game being shown in movie form. Night Elf Druids shapeshifting in Teldrassil, dwarves in the snowy mountains of Dun Morogh (gotta have that bear too lol), Undead as they are brought back to life in Trisfal Glades, etc. So many amazing things to choose from.
I was actually in China when I saw the movie, and I remember there being a lot of Horde vs. Alliance marketing. But... The movie really didn't feel like a Horde versus Alliance story...? I think people were disappointed with this, I know I was. Can you imagine the pride and passion people would have for the movie if it stuck more closely to that narrative?
Regarding a true Sequel, it will never happen, simply for the fact that China no longer has that relationship with Warcraft. Blizzard decided to cut ties with NetEase (I'm sure their reasons were just... Why give up all that money? My guess is NetEase were asking for too much control) and I really don't think Chinese people would want to support a second movie, as Chinese fans have been badly hurt by this betrayal.
Hopefully the Animated Netflix series will fill the need for a Warcraft story.
2:06 Stale fantasy trope that DOESN'T exist in Blizzard's World of Warcraft in the first place. In the lore of that universe, orcs (such as Thrall) are fully capable of being magnanimous, noble, honorable, "good" and such.
You should make video on Borderlands movie was so bad
Jack Black stars in a lot of video game films.
Remember being hyped up for this. While it strayed from the original story just to please the casual viewers it still was good enough for the fans. The CGI was very high quality (still is to this day) and those who knew the characters had a good time looking at them in the screen.
There were a few things that dramatically changed the story, such as Anduin being way young instead of old, Garona's story being changed and Khadgar's character being too child-like with a sideplot with Alodi that strayed a lot from the original source.
As someone who absolutely hates Warcraft and Blizzard, it's an alright movie.
F me, I didn't know David Bowie had a son.
Same here, and ironically he doesn't play music or any intruments
If you told me that he's David Bowie' son at first before i did any research, i wouldn't have believed you at all lol
@Bjork4s Yeah, David Bowie is just a stage name. His real name is Davy Jones
@@isenhartproductions2677 "Davy Jones"
The Davy Jones i know is that monster villain in a Pirates movie lol
@@isenhartproductions2677 rather David Jones.
This movie is by far my favorite game movie of all time. Not everything needs to be highly complicated with gigantic caracter development. To me this is a 9/10 easily
You spoke too soon on "FINALLY".... Borderlands
Lol yeah, looks like I'll be making a video on that in the future
They just needed commitment. Felt like the studio was scared during marketing.
Didn’t feel like they wanted to make the movie too big
I remember there was some kind of promotion with the movie; Erik my son took his grandfather for a birthday gift and came home with a coupon. I just can't recall what it was. Erik was only 11 but he enjoyed the movie for being the movie. He was too young to know all the lore in WoW yet though our entire family played the game (for currently 15 years now). Hell, I STILL don't know all the lore. Doesn't help it keeps being retconned (coughs, SLs), but I'm working my way through the books slowly to at least get a base idea of where they had originally been before those retcons. The Last Guardian remains my favorite; Khadgar is a GILF for me (I know, I know), but in the Warcraft movie, he wasn't as strong a character as he was in the book.
The expac I think would make a good movie? Mists. It could stand alone and wouldn't be trying to squeeze in as much as Arthas's story would.
All orcs, except Garona, were done great. Not that Garona was done badly, she was just several tiers down from how well the others were done.
All humans, except King Lllane, were so badly done it was a case of unintentional comedy. Khadgar was supposed to be a prodigy and entirely too wise for his years. They made him a bumbling kid. FFS Medivh's betrayal in the lore hurt Khadgar so deeply it still haunts him to the present day wow. And don't get me started about how dirty they did Medivh. Utterly inexcusable. At least the worst they did Lothar, a genuine alliance goat in the lore, is allowing Fimmel to phone it in.
Felt like a movie for the fans of the franchise, didn't do enough in the first movie to "introduce" the franchise to newcomers. So the rotten tomato review is actually very accurate, for fans it's a 8/10 ...for those unfamiliar with the world it's a 3/10.
i genuinely don't understand how can someone call warcraft a failure, it was massive outside of the US. In asia we loved the movie, i literally know people who have no clue of the game genuinely curious on how the story will progress.
Any hollywood movie that fails its domestic market is considered a failure, any hollywood movie that succeeds domestically but fails internationally is considered a success, partly due to "ethnocentricism", partly due to how distribution and revenue work in this industry. I remember reading at the time why this movie performed so well in China compared to the US, one of the reasons is that this movie was focusing and doing a better job at telling the orc story, and chinese movie goers were perceived as less reticent to watch a movie about "fantastical" creatures. In the west however, the orc representation was a departure from what the general audience is familiar with, the one in the PJ's trilogy, and the human side of the story feels too secondary to the whole plot (doesn't help the acting and directing was poor). Add to that an already negative perception that this franchise had in the general culture, that it's really something "strange" if you're not a nerd gamer (and this movie did nothing to prove the detractors wrong), you have no positive feedbacks in your domestic market.
Because this movie barely made even (there is also a possibility that it didn't even earn enough to recoup the costs). So it's called a failure because it was a failure
@@rokerpfi If America only wants to make movies for itself, it will find itself less relevant on the international media stage and someone else will take that money on the table.
They should have just done an adaptation of Warcraft 3, it had a BRILLIANT story with BRILLIANT characters! Please play it! The characters of Arthas and Thrall are the best!
As a big fan of Warcraft, I can tell you it's not lore accurate which can rub fans a little wrong but, it is a great movie overall imo. The biggest thing to me was something you brought up and that's the movies pacing. The end feels super rushed because they're trying to push Khadgar and Garonas endings together with Lothar bouncing between when they happened separately in lore. If they made Tides of Darkness, it would be a cluster fuck since that game and Warcraft 3 are much more story dense.
it's also super rushed because of executive meddling. Lionsgate cut 40 minutes out of the movie, during filming, which meant that a lot of things that would've helped with both the pacing and explaining of certain parts of the movie, never got filmed.
10:23 i would change "Dumb" to "Creative" as IMO Dumb is more of an insult than a praise
I loved the movie. Just felt like i could have used a little more run time b/c it felt like they were moving from scene to scene at a breakneck speed sometimes.
agreed they were trying to establish too much too quick
I love the Warcraft movie. I watch it occasionally while playing wow.
My biggest complaint about the movie is the forced comedy. The only joke that made me chuckle was when Gamora said Khadgar wanted to mate with her, all the rest of the comedy felt way too forced, especially with Lothar. Like him looking down the barrel of the gun, or getting winded walking to the top of Mediev's tower (despite the fact he's the Stormwind's most badass warrior). Ironically, the Orcs were the funny ones in the games, the Humans were almost all played totally straight. Other than that, I really liked the movie, real shame we'll probably never get a sequel.
If it was a 12 episode Live-Action show, I wouldn't have complained because they missed out a lot of important details in the movie.
It did not do the source material justice, on top of being a bad movie.
One of my favorite memories is going to see this as a guild during a guild holiday. It was 'okay', we all enjoyed it, but in my opinion they didn't lean heavily enough into the warcraft lore itself. They chose a very 'safe' story which is understandable, but seemed to not want to make a film 'for the fans' but more for the general public, which in hindsight was a mistake.
I'm hoping they can do a relaunch with a streaming show as fallout has shown just how popular that can be when done fairly true to the lore.
My parents really enjoyed the Warcraft movie even though they never played any of the games, but they also got to see it for free.
All the orc scenes were awesome. The humans were like kids in a school play.
I have somewhat mixed feelings on the movie. I do like some thongs especially scenes with the orcs including cut one where they have nice fun moment making fun of Grom for being green, at others i dislike World of Warcraft specific references(silly murloc sounds, they werent comci relief/joke creatures in Warcraft 3, WoW made them so.). Giving the world some proper scsle that WoW sorely lacked was great too.
I was afraid of Metzen's thoughtless post Wacraft 3 story to be realized and solidified if the sequels happened. Which they would get to if sequels materialized.
They also made setup for Thrall's story wrong and misplaced, not making sense by skipping The Second war and desteuxtion fo Stormwind(seeming as silly oandering to braindead WoW fans who never played Warcraft 1, 2 and especially 3 or read the early Warcraft books, especially ones by Christie Golden, so it tried to ape the status quo of the mmo game instead of actual far more brutal situation with Kingdom of Azeroth/Stormwind and following continuatioj war ie Second War after Guldan fled and Orgrim took over the leadership. In matter of fact first 2 wars are just one spanning a bit over 2 years, ending of first veing specificly sacking of Stormwind).
Also some choices didnt work for me especially asian high elves also didnt seem right to me.
I do like how it tried to make it more serious since Warcraft 1 was quite annoingly silly in its presentation compared to Warcraft 3 or the books.
Some retcons kind of work and dont for me though, like Garona being Medivhs father, i like the idea, but it aggresively clashes with how they were in the story originally which was lovers. Mediv was slecificly responaibke for opening the portal for Horde, bith him and orcs used as a tools for Burning Legion to destroy the worlds defenses/conquer it. Medivh got underlying motivations planning ahead though which concluded in Warcraft 3 later.
Also Lothar was far too young. He was meant to be an aged veteran. Not a young late 20 something 'hollywood hero'.
PS. Duncan's teases make little sense, especially with misplacing Thrall and his parent's death. It's meant to happen in tail end of 2nd War when.
Loved this film. Orcs were fantastic
Every time Uwe Boll is mentioned I am obligated to mention how he challenged all his critics to a boxing match but kept ducking Seanbaby thanks to Seanbaby actually knowing how to fight.
Definitely deserved a sequel.
You know a movie is in trouble when the best character in it is a CGI gryphon.
As a fan of Warcraft I fully understand your rating and the feeling of it being rushed. Did a review of it and can link it if you are interested. I felt it was rushed as well as they headed to get to the finish line but did enjoy the movie. Great Vid!!
With the recent booming success of the fallout series and how it attracted hundreds of thousands of new/old players across all their games combined really make me hope blizzard noticed.
Would be so sick to have a show to watch and keep us excited for the game we play while it reels in new players for the community.
Like a bunch of people have said, I'm a Warcraft fan I personally really enjoyed it and would love a sequel. I think my biggest criticism isn't with the changes to the plot, but with the plot they chose in the first place. It's true that it's the 'original' core plot, but there are so many more interesting stories that have developed over the years that I would have preferred one of those to this very vanilla one.
I would posit that the first Silent Hill film was the first to break the video-game-to-movie curse.
Feels bad that ir didn't end with the burning of old Stormwind as it ended in the original lore. To all uninitiated all of WoW Stormwind City except for Old Town is a reconstruction after DoomHammer burned down the city and forced Anduin Lothar, Kid Varian and the other ones to escape north towards Southshore.
Just showed this to my girl last night and she got pissed when I told her it didn’t have a sequel
As a hard core Warcraft fan I feel the smartest thing they should have done is focused on one side of the war and had 2 movies.
The orcs have an amazing story and they scratched the surface with Durotan and that perspective but a lot more of that comes into play in the 2nd war.
If the humans had more of a focus, time to show the land and people so happy and at peace just to be blindsided by these unknown monsters, watching lothar, medivh and Liane working together more in a sort of brotherhood kind way with maybe fun moments with medivh and khadgar with some of the soldiers would have been nice. Then more accurately reveal medivh to be why the orcs invaded, killing him and seeing the betrayal in lothars face and be teleported to a stormwind being destroyed just in time to escape on the boats and watch liane make his final stand with some of the soldiers before being killed by garona would have been amazing.
Have small crumbs on the horde side for sure but then go hard in the 2nd movie with the orcs. Reveal how they were betrayed by guldan, Durotan and drakas murder, orgrim killing lothar at bkack rock. Just do what they did in the original movie but more.
Feels like such a waste with so much care out into one story and still half baking it as a whole package.
this movie was robbed a Oscar for visual effects & I will die on that hill
It was a great movie overall everyone I know watched and loved it and we all own a copy of the film.
What do I think of this movie? It's just OK. Similar to you Isenhart, I haven't played the games, so I might not understand some of the plot details and world building, but it's a pretty good introduction to the series. I'm interested to see where Duncan Jones' career goes next. His next film is an adaption of the 2000AD comic, Rogue Trooper, which I'm very excited for, it releases in 2025. Let's see if he can make an even better animated film. 🤞
I think the movie really missed an opportunity in not ending like the game, with the burning of Stormwind by the orcs and humans fleeing through the ocean
Warcraft does not work in movies format, only in TV series, this was the mistake right from the start. Lore is too big to fit in just in a few movies, it needs world and character building.
I played Warcraft back in the day. I think some people didn’t understand some of it if they haven’t played the game. A friend was annoyed that Garona was a hot human-looking woman instead of orc… and he didn’t realize that she looked that way because her last name is Halforcen -- she was half orc 🤷♀️
I’d like to see them make a movie about Arthas or Illidan/Azshara. I’m sure it will never happen, but those probably would have been bangers, especially Arthas’ story, and would have likely taken a lot less CGI.
The movies pacing is completely wrong in my opinion. We spend very little time at each location before we’re whisked away to the next scene, and there’s multiple scene transitions that felt like they were cut too early.
Cool video, i hope that next, you cover Warner Bros and Guy Ritchie's attempt at making a King Arthur franchise. They planned for a six film franchise in which it was cancelled after the first film's box office flop. I'd love to hear you break down the behind the scene of that movie
I think the hest way to adapt the Warcraft universe would be an animated series like Arcane. Maybe using an animation style similar to the Warbringers cinematics, it's cool, distinctive and gives you more freedom for fantasy than live-action.
horrible idea, we dont need more cartoons
@@Eric-k4x I don't know how anybody could think that. An animated Warcraft series isn't guaranteed to be great, true. But a live-action series is doomed to suck. This world is too fantastical and cartoony to be translated well into live-action.
The thing with Warcraft is just that it is too big for the silver screen.
Warcraft is heavy on the narrative, and such games have narratives that are meant for many hours of gameplay.
To just condense that to 2 hours or less alone is a mammoth of a task already, and going further with sequels would turn the mammoth into whale.
Mario and Sonic are both very light on Narrative, and the stories are in actuality short. That alone made it a lot easier to make a movie that has the spirit of a Mario and Sonic game.
Rewatched it recently as someone who grew up with Warcraft. A sequel would be fantastic as they laid it out. A series with Arthas' story arc would be amazing too. Not sure if there is going to be a better time. Most movies coming out right now make the Warcraft movie look S tier.
The problem with the Warcraft movie was 40 minutes of movie being cut out, and never getting finished in post production.
It's at least better than the game, in which the devs don't care about the lore anymore. But I also find nothing wrong with the plot and cgi in the movie. I barely even noticed any cgi on the humans. Also, about the whole "everything getting thrown at you", it's basically why it's called WarCraft. There's no WarCraft without the war.
By the way, spoilers from the game, Gul'dan's backstory was that he was bullied for being crippled, exiled, tried to become a shaman then failed, then became a warlock, and destroyed his home for revenge.
If they made Arthas, they would be threading the line of the story of Anakin Skywalker but man. We need it.