11/4/2023 0 Comments New world of warcraft movie![]() And that’s what feels so symptomatic of modern Hollywood. I’d elaborate on the plot, but since that is something this film barely bothers to do, I’ll just note that the movie is far less interested in telling a coherent story than it is in creating a very big world. Some orc is always rambling on about how folks (or orcs) should “respect the old ways,” yet most orcs have no problem kidnapping innocents and feeding their souls to a genocidal, demonic sorcerer who looks like a cross between a Sleestak, Skeletor, and Iron Maiden’s animatronic Eddie mascot. Plot-wise, there’s a war for the future of two worlds that’s fought between orcs and humans. ![]() It’s not just filled with generic RPG swords and sorcery ( Dungeons & Dragons) there’s the light and dark side of a life force ( Star Wars), giant orcs who turn green when they’re really angry ( Hulk), elves and dwarves who refuse to come to the aid of humans in the face of an apocalyptic orc threat (again, Lord of the Rings), an orphaned baby sent down a river in a basket ( The Old Testament), and dozens of other echoes, including way too much noble-savage, Avatar-meets- Tarzan mumbo-jumbo. In the place of the game’s open-world freedom, this thudding film settles for a heavy-handed, fan-fiction collage, mashing up so many fantasy clichés that it feels as if it was scripted by Keyser Soze in the Comic-Con gift-shop. It’s neither a bold reinvention or a faithful tribute it’s a bloated, grab-bag of spectacle. But, like a lot of merely mediocre adaptations - literary, comic book, or otherwise - the film Warcraft doesn’t take advantage of that freedom. The story, such as it was, was always secondary to the transformative gameplay that allowed twelve million gamers to build an unprecedentedly massive online community, forming international guilds, cross-cultural online alliances, and whole virtual economies. ![]() The grab-bag mythology of World of Warcraft (the game) was never the point. Rather, Warcraft fails because it embodies the worst of contemporary Hollywood. Having endured this movie, I can assure you Warcraft lives down to that slur, but its worst faults are not particularly videogame-like. In Hollywood, “videogame-like” has been an unfair insult - implying that all games are unrealistic, cartoonish, or preoccupied with button-mashing action, when they’re not.
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