So I finally saw the Warcraft Movie.
My wife who is not familiar with Warcraft quite liked it. I also liked it, but felt it had a few missteps.
The exposition dialogue really needed to be reworked. I understand they were trying to explain the world to the uninitiated viewer, and so exposition is necessary, I just felt like it was handled bad. My wife would sometimes ask why do they need to go there, or what's the importance of this guy.
For example:
Lothar: To know more about our enemy we need to go to Karazhan.
King: Take my bird.
Khadgar: On no not Karazahn!
Now to a Wow-nerd they know Karazahn had the world guardian Medivh whose job is to save the world.
What should have been said is:
King: Another village was destroyed by these unknown enemies. We should contact the great wizard Medivh. He's charged with protecting the world, he would know what to do. Lothar, take this wizard novice to Karazahn and see if Medivh can gleam any information on these brutes.
Lothar: Its a long journey, could you spare your gryphon? We would get there sooner.
Khadgar: Medivh?! I am not worthy to meet such a great man.
Lothar: Oh don't worry, he's an old friend of ours. You'll fit in nicely.
Cue awesome gryphon montage.
This way you don't alienate the audience and they can keep up to the story as well as the wow-nerd. The characters were fine, just the dialogue needed to be reworked.
Now about the characters:
They were fine but I would have changed the focus on certain characters to another just to make the story tighter (especially if they planned a sequel). For example, the main human character should not have been Lothar. Instead it should have been Khadgar. Lothar could have been a big brother character or a mentor. I felt like there were too busy trying to make both the main character (think Anakin and Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones). Making it about one of them would have tighten the human story more. I would do the same thing with the orcs. Make Ogrim the main character and Durotan the voice of reason and close friend. This way we see the turmoil of Ogrim picking a side.
I would have also changed the ending a bit.
The human ending was fine but the orcs didn't make much sense. With the revision above, have Blackhand kill Durotan and Draka (putting baby Thrall in the river) and the rest of the frost wolves flee. This is the last straw for Ogrim, he challenges and defeats Blackhand and bitch smacks Guldan. Taking over the horde he re-opens the portal (which is why he keeps Guldan alive) and brings his people safely through. Then end with the sack of Stormwind and the exodus of the humans.
My only other complaint is what redletter media coined as "a case of the not gays." This is when a movie will show the sexual orientation of a character so that they can't be confused with being gay. For a more in depth analysis of what trope I am talking about, click here:
https://youtu.be/bIYfr_9Zpwk?t=10m44sThey ended up doing this by making Lothar have a son and talk about how he blamed his son for his wife's death in childbirth. And in case its still ambiguous he bangs a girl.
Other than those changes and a few lore nitpicks, it wasn't that bad of a movie. It was a 7/10 or 3/5 stars or a C+/B-. Average but better than any other LotR cop out movie (on par or better than the hobbit movies). The orcs look great (some of the green ones looked cartoony at times). (My wife says the Orcs looked REALLY good. They were her favorite part of the movie!) The humans looked warcrafty. There were high stakes on both sides and it was just an all around fun romp in a fantasy world. It was definitely a fan made movie but you do not need to be a wow-nerd to necessarily enjoy the movie. If anything it made my wife curious about the lore and wanted to ask me or look up stuff (especially about Thrall).
Bonus
I had a few nerdgasms:
Grom Hellscream cameos
use of polymorph
Ironforge (with Dwarves)
Arrogant High Elves
Use of soul magic
Use of magic in general
Baby Thrall in general
Draenei cameo
Gamora being the only one to speak human and orc.
Battle Maps!
