Where does someone misstep so far off course that they end up directing Warcraft? Duncan Jones made his directorial mark with the low-key, intelligent sci-fi thriller Moon, a film that took Sundance by storm. With his follow-up, Source Code, Jones solidified himself as a filmmaker with a distinct sense of style and personality that extends into his films. After I walked out of Warcraft, I couldn’t help but wonder what blinds someone so badly to have made a film this preposterous and absurd, and I’m not even referring to the source material. This movie is a disappointment to those who even had the smallest of expectations. Like a few games that have come out in recent years, it’s been released in a broken state.
Warcraft follows the battle between the Orcs and the Humans. For plot reasons, they cannot get along. The Orcs and their horde, an army led by the Orc wizard, Gul’dan, use the Fel, a soul stealing magic, to create a portal from their world/dimension/galaxy into the human one. The humans just want to live peacefully, because who wouldn’t? The orcs have been raiding settlements and those settlements contain traces of the Fel. Through the search for the Fel, the Father/Son dynamics, and plotlines about honor, you will find the story of Warcraft and what it all means.
Trying to find where this film went wrong is quite the task. You could start with the acting. What happened here? There is going to be an inherent sense of silliness within the fantasy genre; It comes with the territory. But there is a surprising lack of humor within Warcraft. It all starts with Travis Fimmel as Sir Anduin Lothar. As our protagonist, he’s a fairly flat character, which doesn’t help with the flat acting. Every chance he gets to bounce off one actor, he’s there to ruin a scene with another actor. You think his scenes would get better when he comes into contact with the underappreciated Ben Foster as Medivh, the “guardian” of Azeroth, the human lands. Foster seems game to overact a little bit, but his portion of the film is played so seriously.
This only gets worse with the Orc characters. Durotan (Toby Kebbell) is the chieftain for his clan of Orcs. These Orcs believe in his leadership and that somehow shows. Under the motion capture, I could not tell it was Kebbell and that turns out to be the most immersive part of the whole movie. After Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Kebbell solidified himself as one of the best actors out there. While hiding under layers of CG makeup, Kebbell sells his character and then some. Other actors like Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu and Robert Kazinsky really sell these creations as real creatures. They may have little to no character depth beyond “some of us are good and some of us are evil”, but it’s not for lack of trying.
What’s truly astonishing is how mediocre some of the CG environments and creations are. Aside from the aforementioned Orcs, which look incredibly realistic, most of the imagery is fairly bland and generic. The one actual set that I can recall in the film is reminiscent of the big set in the Cannon Films classic, Masters of the Universe. I wish a dubbed-over Dolph Lundgren was in this. There is no imagination here that hasn’t been found in any other large fantasy film in the last 20 years. That may have to do with the love for the source material or contractual faithfulness, but there has to be room for some creativity.
I could probably name everything from the writing to the bland exercise in fantasy film scoring from beloved Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi. Warcraft is an exercise in blockbuster flops. Duncan Jones probably hasn’t tarnished his name yet (I’m personally looking forward to his sci-fi noir, Mute), but this has come close to doing so. If there’s anything to learn from this, it’s not to work with Blizzard on a movie, ever. Let’s hope we can just forget about this and look toward the beautiful future of a world without Warcraft sequels. Please don’t let there be sequels.