Guttersnipe 385

Some hard choices being made here.

So the wife and I went to see the Warcraft movie today because she really liked the actor who plays the wizard Cadberry. Neither of us know much about Warcraft, except that I once tried to play it as an undead tailor but I got bored after I spent all day killing wild boars to level up enough to make shoes so I never played it again. If you’re a fan of the game and you like the novelty of seeing your favorite characters on the big screen, then you might like it. Someone told me that Blizzard was hoping this film would draw in new fans, but if you’re not already deeply versed in Warcraft minutia then you’re not going to make heads or tails of this flick.

It was, unfortunately, not a very good movie. It wasn’t bad enough to be good or even bad enough to be bad, it was just kind of boring, really. It’s ostensibly a simple, straight forward plot about knights and green monsters wailing on each other. But instead it’s a constant series of convoluted betrayals and double-crosses and shifting alliances, and it’s really hard to tell which cartoon monster is on which side when they all look like animated trashheaps with all that goofy armor they’re wearing. Because, really, maybe that armor looked cool when you’re looking at little cartoon characters on your computer, but on the big screen you really see how stupid it is. The orcs all end up looking like the goblin baglady in Labyrinth.

Adding to the confusion is that the movie bombards you with all sorts of weird goobeldygook concepts and names that I guess you’re supposed to be familiar with from the games, like the RANDOM BIG SECRET CUBE that the SKY WIZARDS keep hidden in their STAR CASTLE and whose big contribution to the plot is to manifest as an old lady in a robe and tell Cadberry to believe in himself. If you remove all the extraneous nonsense that I guess they had to throw in to make sure that hardcore fans didn’t register their displeasure on alt.nerd.obsessive, then it’s really just a standard but serviceable D and D-lite fantasy plot: Evil orcs are invading, Cadberry the goofy wizard apprentice has a bad feeling, goes to warn the good king and the good king’s hero, then everyone needs to go and summon the really big powerful wizard who can save the day. Oh, and some of the orcs are worried because the evil orc king uses BAD JUJU so they want to team up with the humans. Bam. It’s got all the elements of a good cheesy fantasy yarn, but the movie never commits to it.

Like Cadberry. It’s very clear that he’s supposed to be the bumbling comic relief goof-up wizard who, at the film’s end, needs to pull himself together to save the day. But they completely forgot to write in ANY comedic material. So in the scene where the king and the main knight are discussing things in the situation room, Cadberry is loitering in the background, fiddling with some big ol’ pikes that are just standing around. And you think OF COURSE, HE’S GOING TO KNOCK THEM DOWN AND WE’LL HAVE SOME INSPIRED PHYSICAL COMEDY AND THEN THE KING WILL TURN TO THE KNIGHT AND COCK AN EYEBROW AND SAY ‘THIS IS OUR GREAT WIZARD? OHHHH BOOYYYYYY WE’RE IN TROUBLE!’ OR SOMETHING. But instead nothing happens. You can feel the actor playing Cadberry really straining, like he wants to do something to establish Cadberry as the kinda funny character, but they just won’t let him. There’s literally one joke in the entire movie and that’s when the knight fights a big rock monster and then says ‘WELL THAT WAS FUN’ which is so phoned in that they might as well have had someone fall off a cliff so someone else could say ‘OOO THAT’S GOTTA HURT.’

In fact, now that I think of it, none of the characters really do anything to establish themselves, they’re just kinda there. King is a king. Knight is a knight. Half orc lady is green and has boobs.

Ultimately, like all big budget tentpole movies these days, it doesn’t exist to tell a story but rather to set up a franchise. Which means that absolutely nothing gets resolved in two hours of guys running at each other. Even by the standards of these STAY TUNED FOR AN INFINITE NUMBER OF SEQUELS movies, it’s surprising how little gets resolved. It’s also kind of weird because they have TWO separate scenes where the head evil orc does something dishonorable in front of his troops (which is a big deal to orcs cuz they’re basically just green klingons) and the orcs are all GASP, THE SCALES HAVE FALLEN FROM OUR EYES WE SEE OUR LEADER IS NOT WORTHY OF OUR LOYALTY but then they just forget and keep following him because the plot demands it.

Oh and all those glowing eyes. They look almost as stupid as pierced teeth. And pierced teeth look REEAAALLY stupid.

So yeah, it’s not really a movie so much as a series of boxes that need to be checked so that hardcore gamers can say I RECOGNIZE THAT. So if you’re a big fan of the game, you might be entertained. But you might still want to wait for video.