Warcraft

I'd hardly have anything to fault about it, except for the weird king character, whom I found rather bland and unhelpful given that he was a king and his decisions (however they were at the end of the film) had a big impact. I liked the story, basically I found most of the characters likeable, or at least I didn't develop any aversion to them. I liked Orc Durotan the most, of course, as did many others. But it just didn't have that something that makes you fall in love with it, that makes you leave the theater excited. Yes, it was a fine spectacle and I wasn't bored, but for all the magic the characters had in the film, it didn't quite have real magic. A very strong 3 stars and I'm curious to see the sequel. (06/18/2016)

A hodgepodge, which is not even bad enough to be ridiculously amusing in its unwanted stupidity (albeit flashy visuals or magic neon run style with bloody menacing glances, fingers ominously tapping and you can hear whispering something like "blablagrgrplopplopouch" are dangerously close to it) and at the same time it is not good enough to stand without any objections as a quality genre and not just as a video game B-rate movie pretending to be A-rate. Basically, when panoramas are being shown, the characters shut up and fight in a way that "someone randomly dies", it works well. In other words, yes, it works especially if it's essentially a variation on animations, as we know them directly from Blizzard. Despite how seriously it is taken, it also works in orc scenes, in which this is exactly what the movie Warcraft as a whole was supposed to be. But from the Alliance's point of view, everything is pure hell. In addition, in every second scene, it's more than obvious that the footage has been shortened a lot (some allegedly by up to forty minutes), but paradoxically it is not to the detriment. What is obvious is that the footage was shortened mainly due to removal of piffle. I mean what is like a torture when watching film adaptation of Warcraft. Even so, there is still more piffle than would be appropriate. Overall, it has vast potential, interesting story lines, decent battle scenes, sympathetic uncompromisingness of the main characters, but it also has C-rate dialogs, awkward actors (the real ones look like without life compared CGI orcs), appalling (however based on the original) stylization and gala show of the most original and ridiculous clichés from the department of "fantasy for losers". (06/18/2016)

This is surprisingly good work. It pulls at the gate without hesitation with the vigor of the Horde to engage the imagination of the Alliance at times. In the first case, it offers monumental and clear battles, in the second good personal moments, catchphrases, and even emotional highlights of heroic self-sacrifice. Jones' flick would have deserved another half-hour to introduce that world in a little more detail so that the viewer could get a better look at the inner threads of each side of the feud. However, I understand that the studio wanted a decoy that would score better if the viewer was fooled by the special effects artists and Djawadi's thunderous vibrations so that it could serve us a distinctive trilogy thanks to the earnings. I already consider Mortal Kombat and Silent Hill to be good video game adaptations, but Warcraft will hopefully break the genre floodgates to quality cinema for others. (08/05/2016)

It's like an intro to a computer game that I thought for a long time I'd like to play. But when it's over, my motivation is gone. It's a bit like a movie for people who have forgotten what a movie should be like. The storyline is provisional and the attempt to send it through several "deep" dialogues is absolutely amateurish. The characters are sympathetic but 2D. The world ends behind the scenes. I would love to see a full-blooded fantasy that awakens the imagination, but Warcraft rather exhorts to passivity with its "from action to action and in the meantime, don’t ask anything" model. It’s too bad. Duncan Jones is partly responsible for a new wave of clever sci-fi films, but his first fantasy will only amaze China. There, too, the imagination is limited and the audience can get drunk on cucumber dressing. (06/29/2016)

I got what I expected. A slightly above average fantasy film that tries to be spectacular and succeeds quite well, but unfortunately falls flat on its face due to the sometimes downright repulsive stylization (I get it, it's very subjective), but mostly due to the unfortunate casting of a good half of the main characters and the attempt to fast forward and untell everything. Because of this, it doesn't make any sense at all at times, the relationships between the characters don't work the way they probably should, and trying to show as many monsters, places, cities, spells and things as possible ruins a potentially interesting story that ends up being much more banal than it could have been. Fans will probably be thrilled, but all I got was an ordinary if fairly epic fantasy movie that was alternately quite entertaining and downright grating at times. On the other hand, I accept that it's the first film and they managed to deal the cards in such a way that the sequel could be quite interesting and I'll happily go see it in a few years. I definitely don't need to see First Clash again though. (05/15/2017)