World Of Warcraft is not cool. Millions of people still play it monthly, and real-life marriages have taken root in the inns and temples of its land of Azeroth. But initiates do not generally discuss it with non-players, because that invites ridicule. Sure, you may have run Blackrock Depths with a PUG last night when the tank mispulled, the healer aggro’d and you wiped on Thaurissan or whatever, but you only moan about it to the friends who you know are also players of the MMORPG. That’s the problem that Duncan Jones’ film adaptation faces, and it’s one that it cannot overcome despite a valiant attempt.
The story is a clash of worlds, with a war party of the orc Horde invading the kingdom of Azeroth as their own world lies dying. Their leader, the patently evil sorcerer Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), plans to bring through the rest of the population once their foothold is established. But the noble leader of the “Frost Wolf clan” – try to keep up with all the names – is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), who comes to doubt Gul’dan’s methods.
Meanwhile, the humans of Azeroth scramble to respond. Noble King Llane (Dominic Cooper), equally noble Sir Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel) and powerful guardian magician Medivh (Ben Foster) have to team up to face the threat, flying around by griffin as they try to coordinate a response. Caught in the middle is the half-orc Garona (Paula Patton), translating for the humans after a lifetime in slavery to her bigger orc kin.
The film does deliver battle scenes, both small skirmishes and bigger war raids, but you can really see Jones’ hand in the willingness to ignore the usual rules of the big-budget summer movie. Since this takes place in the history of the game and in any case deviates from it in some respects, he’s free to kill named characters in large numbers and jettison more than one potentially happy ending. He also manages to make his hulking orc characters sufficiently human that you will care about their fates as much as the humans, while ILM has given them the weight they need to seem a genuinely crushing threat to their smaller opponents.
The problem is that it just can’t escape those cod-fantasy roots. There are too many mysterious proper nouns being thrown into conversation and at least 12 major characters competing for space. It might have worked better over the longer running time of TV, but we’re zipping from one to another here so quickly that they only have time for the most portentous, and sometimes clichéd, dialogue. It’s another film, so soon after X-Men: Apocalypse, in desperate need of another pass at the script. The lingering sense, though, is that Jones has produced a strong adaptation of the game’s world. It’s just not one that translates well to the screen, so you’re best off staying home and launching another assault on the Scarlet Monastery, or whatever the Warcraft kids are attacking these days.
