f13.net

So the big news is that Sam Raimi has signed on as Director of the WoW movie. 

It's both  :drill: and  :uhrr: for me though.  As I love Sam Raimi but, omg a WoW movie? 

The only way I'd be interested is if he promises to attempt to translate to film the amount of hubris that Blizzard displays.  That would probably require foam costumes on a level not seen since Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

Dude...sam raimi.....that is all.

Sam Raimi is awesome, and I still say The Gift never got the love it deserves.  But dude...come on, a World of Warcraft movie?  The game is bad enough as it is.

You know what, if they let Raimi go balls out and let him use his campy style that made the Evil Dead and Army of Darkness movies great, then this could be great.

No matter what though, there's no way this movie won't make a truckload of money.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If every single active WoW player in the United States goes to see it, and brings a non-WoW friend to boot, it'll do like $30m domestic on a $100m budget and be remembered as a horrible flop. It needs to reach out in a big way to people with no idea what the hell Warcraft is, or it's fucked. Being able to do so is far from a given.

How do you hold hubris toward customers?

Anyway, this surprises me, because I never thought a WoW movie could be anything but ass, and so I figured they'd get some kind of Uwe-Bollish scrub to do it. Raimi either needs the money or there's an actual screenplay that isn't completely awful.

Legendary Pictures is producing this. They don't do half-assed movies.

Edit: the original movie thread is here

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10629.0

I hear Mila Kunis is going to play the part of the Warrior Worgen.

I'd rather have a WOW tv-series produced by Sam Raimi (in the same campy spirit as Cleopatra 2525, Jack of All Trades, Hercules and Xena).

Don't get me wrong. They appear to be taking this project very seriously, and I know they're aware of the "WoW subs x ticket prices = not enough" math. This COULD work out. But by the time this comes out WoW will be a 6 year old game, and the penciled-in 2011 blockbuster season already includes Captain America, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, James Cameron's Battle Angel, and the final Harry Potter among other things. It'll need to both be a good movie and receive a serious hype push.

EDIT: Since no one has said it, I will. I hope Bruce Campbell falls out of a magic portal and takes on the entire Scourge with a shotgun and chainsaw hand. That would make this the greatest movie ever made.

I look forward to the obviously too strong heroes getting nerfed halfway through the film.

Sam Raimi doing a movie that involves an army of undead.  What's not to like?  As long as the end result isn't cringe-worthy like that Mt. Dew commercial, then it should be fine. 

Well, fine unless the story is about the secret, forbidden love affair between Varian Wrynn (Brad Pitt) and Sylvanas Windrunner (Angelina Jolie), with special guest star Arthas the Lich King (Vin Diesel).  That would just be  :awesome_for_real:.

Man, if they get Vin Diesel to play Saurfang...

I was being glib, mostly.  I changed the wording, though.

The press release (http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/090721.html) doesn't mention WoW anywhere, just Warcraft. Maybe it's only about orcs and humans.

You know, something that was a kind of metatextual goof-off film about fantasy heroes who are constantly being interfered with by invisible developers and constantly being forced to do weird things by invisible players could almost work if it was done with the right degree of whimsy. I just can't see any more-or-less serious treatment of Warcraft lore being anything but shitastic.

It'll be worth it just to see what sort of cameo Bruce Campbell gets.

Yeah, I think they're just marketing this as a fantasy war film.  BIG BATTLES BETWEEN ARMIES OF ORCS AND HUMANS.

They will take everything Everquest Lord of the Rings did and make it better and more casual.

There Will Be Elves.

There must be Bruce Campbell.   :heart:

zing

I think Raimi's given him enough cameos of late. He should get a full-size role this time.

How long they gonna hang out in Molten Core? And how many sequels will there be?

A-friggin-gree.  He's a reliable and fun actor who can maintain a leading role (e.g. Burn Notice).

I doubt there are a 100million transformers 'fans' out there but plenty of people know about them, even if they don't own the toys or know wtf the matrix of leadership is.  You can't base the success of a movie on it's core audience because that is never an accurate representation of who will go to see it.

Besides, with the money that's gonna be thrown at this? I just hope they don't go full CGI for everything and give it a shitty star wars look.

Suddenly, Chuck Norris' phone rings...

I was just thinking. A Chuck Norris cameo would be so fucking  :drill:.

There absolutely must be a character based on Leroy Jenkins who gets killed by dragon whelps.

What about Watchmen?  Can't be more than a couple of million people who'd read it in the 20 years prior to the film finally getting greenlit. WoW has already pervaded the public consciousness far more than Watchmen ever did and a hell of a lot of people have heard of it even if they haven't played it. Especially gamers.  All it needs is a good marketing campaign and people will (probably) flock to it.

I'm not sure about Raimi being a good choice for this. He can do humour and can handle action fairly well but I'd see this as having an epic feel (no pun intended).

From what I read it will be a Warcraft movie and probably center on the RTS verisions. Normally I don't pay attention to reddit stuff, but the comments on this page (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/93ed7/sam_raimi_to_direct_world_of_warcraft_movie/) are WoW comedy gold.

I laughed at this one.
"The movie is going to end half way through when the resto druids parents pull his internet for the night and everyone dies."

If you mean LotR kind of epic, I heartily disagree. I've always seen the entire Warcraft franchise being very tounge-in-cheek, campy (but not cheesy) and occasionally cute and smarmy. This movie better be loaded with tons of Arnold-style one-liners or I will be very sad.

Its kind of disappointing in a way that it won't be done by the Blizzard CGI movie people (whoever does that, not sure if it is in house or what.) I'd like to have seen what they could do with it.

I hope Horde are the good guys. I want a movie about the Horde.  :heart:

Yeah, not everything has to be WoW.

It's in house, and yea, I would love to see what they could do with a full movie.


Of course, there 3 min trailers take like 6 months to make, so by the time they finish a full movie, we'll all be playing Warcraft 12.

That would only take them a decade or two, so really, that's more like just Warcraft 5.

I'm going to be money that this will take place in world of warcrafts current or near-future timeline just like the manga.  The characters will be new and they won't be re-treading already done storylines but the characters in the movie will then be incorporated into wow in the future.

Also, I'm dying to see what raimi does with the forsaken.

Bruce Campbell will say at some point "Bitch got real ugly."

I'm pretty sure that Blizzard were quite adamant when this was first announced that Horde fans shouldn't hold their breath and that it would be told from Alliance characters points of view.  Probably along the lines of the Day of the Dragon novel or some of the other Richard Knaak's hack jobs. (I don't mean the story - just the "Yay for humans, dwarves and elves! Boo for orcs and, um, their mates.")  It makes sense from a movie marketing point of view - trying to sell a film to a non-WoW playing audience where the ugly Horde could conceivably be portrayed as not actually bad guys is going to be as difficult as persuading WoW players to play pre-Blood elf Horde. 

That's not to say I wouldn't want to see the Forsaken in the film but I have a feeling we won't be that lucky. :(

They should be portrayed as they are. The villains. The hypocritical emo bullshit villains.

I'm calling bullshit on having the main focus of the story being standard fantasy tropes.  If they planned on just doing that I would believe the movie to do worse, not better in the theatres.  Huzzah for humans/elves/dwarves is just re-treading LOTR and won't make the movie stand out at all.  That said, there will be humans and elves in the main cast.  I'm actually going to say that it'll be a mixed main cast with maybe a human, a belf and an orc/tauren as the muscle.  

I expect this movie to focus on a handful of people overcoming odds to save the world blah blah blah but I doubt it's going to be either a horde or alliance movie.  Just a bunch of people of various races brought together for common goals.

You're wrong. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10629.msg333592#msg333592)

so I heard that at ComicCon right now Bruce was on stage and for every person in the audience who asked about either him in this movie, or him with more screen time on Burn Notice he invited them up on stage and paid them.   :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

Right because they already had a script and everything 'two years ago'....oh wait.  We all know how movies are planned and then actually executed vary wildly.  First of all can you see raimi making a huge epic war movie as described? Raimi is a lot of things but epic he is not and would be a bad director to choose for such a movie.

Also, does anyone even care about horde v. alliance bullshit anymore? I can't think of anyone who plays who doesn't have at least one alt on the other side.  Oh sure people have their preferences but no one really has that animosity like they did in the first year of wow.

He plays in RP server.

My guess.

A paladin of the Silver Hand murdering tons of undead dudes. Silver hand dude gets swarmed, dude is done for! Ka-pow! Arrow from nowhere! Look, it's an Elf Dudette rescuing the defenseless dude! The dudette is barely wearing clothes, the movie is now officially getting somewhere. News reaches the Lich King AKA The Bad Dude (never mentioned by actual name) that paladin dude survived. Bad Dude is outraged! Bad Dude schemes inefficiently. Meanwhile, the other dude and the dudette are seeking council with Old Elvish Druid dude. Suicidal plan! Requires a huge amount of dudes battling other dudes in a grotesque masturbation of CGI. Inside Bad Dude's joint, dude and dudette have been joined by Bearded Dude (or is it dudette?) and a Tiny Bald Dude. Tiny dude sacrifices himself at a critical moment, saving the dude, dudette and dude(tte). Dudes succeed with the now not so suicidal plan! Everyone remembers the tiny dude.

Roll list of dudes appearing in the movie.

I need a video of that.  :ye_gods:

Bullshit.  Our noble lord Thrall escaped from a CONCENTRATION CAMP and led his people away to Kalimdor.  What did the Alliance do?  They fucking chased after them!  Tauren are close to nature and peaceful.  The trolls prefer to lounge around their tropical islands and the Forsaken, who bravely broke free from the Scourge, only want to be left alone in the ruins of their ancestral lands.  But no, once AGAIN the fucking Alliance have to attack them.  

You can make all the excuses you want but the Alliance have shown time and again that they are murdering invaders.  That's the dirty little secret of WoW, the 'good guys' are actually the bad guys.  The Alliance may be good looking on the outside but inside they are ugly.

IGN interviews the Bruce at ComicCon (http://movies.ign.com/articles/100/1006965p1.html)

Err, they were there first. Everyone else either showed up later or because of those who showed up later.

Otherwise, yay, movie. As long as there's no love crap here, nor any ham fisted touching scenes or dialog, it'll be fine. Not like Raimi is going to be set free to do whatever he wants. But neither is Blizzard going to install some intern as the licensing account manager to monitor the movie project. They can spot and manage talent well enough to ensure their IP doesn't get all screwed up.

WoW or Warcraft, doesn't matter really, but I'd bet WoW. Unless they announce another Warcraft RTS this year and spend the next two years diverting media budget from SC2. Since that ain't happening, and since half the demographic for this movie has only maybe heard of the RTS, yea, WoW.

Dang, he's cool. He even does game shows (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=101284771&m=101284755).

I just hope Campbell doesn't end up as some guy brandishing epic fishing poles in this movie.

Sorry, it'll be Alliance focused, that's a guarantee.   It will sell better and can morph into a franchise if people can relate to the protagonists.  Other than Shrek, how many successful fanchises (and make no mistake, the  intent will be to turn this into a franchise) are there with monsters as the hero?  Godzilla?   Fuck, I barely count Shrek as he's more a large disgusting human than anything really Ogreish.

It's not impossible for the story to change and end up as the exact opposite of everything they've had to say on the topic thus far. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's ever happened during the production of a movie. But it's still pretty fucking silly to seemingly just ASSUME as much and start lining up the cast of characters for a movie that exists only in your own mind.

Or not. I think the Warcraft movie will be a passionate love story about the forbidden romance of a dwarf rogue and her undead priest boyfriend, and how they come together with the help a wacky gnome warlock played by Marlon Wayans. Fuck you if that's nothing like anything that anyone has described up to this point.


Lolwut? I knew if I tossed that bit of bait out there, some crazy fucker in a Horde t-shirt would flip shit. I just didn't expect one to start roleplaying in a movie forum thread. I love this sort of supergeek shit, but don't actually want to fag up the thread by SirBrucing a bunch of RP gobbledygook that's guaranteed to go Godwin right off the bat, so I'll tell you what: I'm going to copy and respond to this post here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16085.msg680042#msg680042), where we had this conversation last time.

Eh, I was trolling a bit too.  Touche!  But that's a cool thing about WoW; you can argue who is the good/bad guy and it's both for each faction.  IMO

As far as the movie it will be Alliance and I'm wondering if it will be the story of Arthas.  Just the vibe I'm getting.

PARKER NOOO I WANT TO PLAYYYY BLERGHFKBJCSJCL

(http://www.murphsplace.com/crowe/films/images/vir4.jpg)

Warcraft: The Rise of the Lich King (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/10/06/warcraft-becomes-warcraft-the-rise-of-the-lich-king-gets-a-story/)

No no no no no NO NO NO NO NO NO FUCKING HELL NO.  :uhrr:

 :why_so_serious:

Hey it's cool.  We just played the same damn story for the past year and will be for the next, but I'd love to watch it again.   :angryfist:

There's not a  :facepalm: big enough for this.

щ(ﾟДﾟщ)

glad I stopped playing.  All new to me.

As much as you people are bitching, this is probably one of the least retarded possibilities.

Every other idea for a WoW movie I've heard has sounded like fucking fanfic that only WoW players would ever want to see on the screen. Especially the Horde fags who think John and Mary Moviegoer want to sit through 2 hours of hearing how misunderstood the Horde is. The Arthas story is probably the best potential movie-fodder the IP contains.

Fixed.

Has anybody read the book? This sounds like a movie adaptation of WarCraft III, not World of Warcraft.

Arthas sitting on top of the spire as the Lich King like "You shoulda figured out this wasn't gonna have a happy ending a long time ago!" would make a pretty downbeat ending for a movie, but what the hell. Throw in a little hopeful moment ala the last scene of Empire Strikes Back and it works.

Or they could just make the Elric movie, base it on the material Blizz swiped.

No thanks, I'm pretty appreciative that elric remains untainted by the Hollywood machine.  They can have the lollore of WoW, it was already fucking stupid.

Putting aside my sylvanus/alexstraza romance movie script for a moment I have to say that while it makes sense, it's still disappointing.  First and foremost because it's not a new story, just a movie version of what nearly all warcraft players already know and have played for the most part through WC3.  Also how will this make a good movie?

Let's just say that joe six-pack wouldn't want a story with orcs/trolls as characters...so what we are going to have is a story about an emo asshole who was slightly good, then becomes evil...then evil-er? There's no happy ending, i doubt arthas can be portrayed in any sort of sympathetic light(he's tragic but not sympathetic) so all we're left with is maybe some good action scenes, lots of blood elves and a love triangle.

Of all the things they would have done with the wow universe, this is perhaps the safest for mass market but also the most unimaginative.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was the first thing I thought of after seeing the title. You know, maybe this is all an elaborate hoax...

See, I was thinking there was an awesome script possibility in WARCRAFT: THE SLEEPING ORC PEON.

Though the real bullet they dodged (which, to be fair, Raimi would have bailed on, and Uwe Boll leapt into) would have been something like "A real-world guild group is dropped into the Matrix ENCOM Mainframe WORLD OF WARCRAFT and must survive". It's just retarded enough for studio executives to start gibbering and throwing money.

That sounds like something the Nostalgia critic would have fun with in a few years. I approve based on the secondary market possibilities!  :awesome_for_real:

This would be a valid point if Arthas wasn't the villain.

EDIT: And no shit the ending is going a downer.  I'm sure your random fucker who's experience with fantasy is the LoTR movies will go "Hey, Lich King, that's like a bad dude, right?"

The high brow and nuanced nature of Warcraft lore will surely confound the peasants.

You know, it's not Arthas' resemblance to Sauron that worries me, it's his resemblance to Anakin Skywalker. A young, brooding, emotastic prince turns to the dark side and takes up a cursed weapon, giving up any pretence of morality in the pursuit of power and mastery. Oh, yay, Macbeth without any of the gravitas or tragedy, makes for a great story. Not.

It's better than watching Jaina and Thrall make goo-goo eyes at each other, I suppose.

Does not compute.

It also works as the first movie of a franchise.

 :why_so_serious:

Maybe the "rise of the Lich King" won't focus on Arthas per se but on Ner'zhul-era Lich King. I'm so tired of undead this, Lich King that with WoW.

Recent interview with Raimi where he stated that the story in the film won't be a story that's been told before. IMDB no longer have a subtitle attached to the film.

Well thank fucking god.

I hope its about nerfing paladins.  Or buffing mages.

I hope it's a story about Gnomes!  :pedobear:

Gnomes made an introduction into the WoW Comic and it sort of ruined the vibe that was going, like a child showing up during passionate sex.

IT CAME FROM.... BEHIND!!1!

I hope it's like "The Guild"  :awesome_for_real:

ARISE.

'Warcraft' Movie Lands 'Source Code' Director (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/warcraft-movie-lands-source-code-416956)

I have absolutely no strong feelings either way for this project.

Video game movies. I think best case scenario you get the original Mortal Kombat, and that was almost 20 years ago.

Best case is MC?  I thought Tomb Raider was the new metric for best VG movie.

Whichever is this case, this one's going to blow huuuuuge chunks.

Wait, what? Tomb Raider? Really?

Wasn't the Disney Prince of Persia movie decent enough as a popcorn flick?

It was okay.  The eye-candy of the main actors helped a lot.  I can't actually remember any of the plot now that I'm trying to.

Oh there's new rankings on RT since last I looked at any of this.  Tomb Raider was #1 at one point, but I'm old and remember inane shit.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/best_video_game_adaptations/6/

Looks like Prince is the best live-action, followed by RE, Silent Hill and then Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.

Prince of Persia was so stupid I didn't make it through the first 20 minutes. Silent Hill and the 1st Resident Evil movie are probably the best on that list if we're leaving off the first Mortal Kombat.

I still don't know who would pick any tomb raiders movie over those other ones... the tomb raider movies are TERRIBLE.

I mean, for the most part all of these movies ARE, but.. jesus those tomb raider movies are bad.

I liked Silent Hill.  Only 30%?  :sad:

Eh. Always keep in mind that 30% of people liked it. it's not really a 3/10. So what if you're in the minority, really. That number fluctuates wildly, too. Mallrats used to be something like 3% on RT, and now sits at 54%.

Rotten Tomatoes is really a bad way to tell if you'll like or dislike a movie.

I thought it was awesome.

I enjoyed Silent Hill.

I figured the WoW movie had died. It seems like the time has already passed to maximize cash in, I can't imagine what it will feel like in 2015.

Silent Hill was fucking terrible. I really don't see what you guys liked in it.  Visually, not bad, but everything else? Unintentional laughter.

2015 will be 11 years after WoW launched.  The 10-21 year old crowd that was with the game the first few years will be 21-32 and just hitting their first wave of childhood nostalgia purchasing.

I'm not really sure if they are missing out on anything releasing it now as opposed to then.

If people were going to be swayed then by the idea of a movie about a game they played, they're still likely going to be. Beyond that, it's almost irrelevant what the core material is. If it comes out being a good movie, and it's marketed well, it will bring in plenty of cash. And if that happens, it could help bring some new people in, or old people back.

I thought the visuals and suspense build up was good. It kind of lost me about 15 minutes before the end, but wasn't something I hated or thought idiotic.

They should cast Jack Black as the wise cracking Pandaren.


 :why_so_serious:

Sean Bean and Cybil.

Joe Pesci as a goblin merchant.

Duncan Jones is David Bowie's son Zowie (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1254102/How-DID-Zowie-Bowie-turn-normal.html).

Apart from Source Code, he also made Moon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/), which I liked.

Edit: He's @manmademoon (https://twitter.com/manmademoon) on Twitter. Unfortunately his wife is going through chemo at the moment. Hope to hear good news from them on that front.

I'd really like to see Duncan Jones' take on Arthas' fall or something similar. Play it totally straight as a tragic drama.

What, you mean its not going to be about the heroic tale of someone getting 10 bear tongues for a guy? Or killing the same boss over and over for a random piece of kit?

But purists would probably whine that Arthas' fall was in Warcraft 3, not world of warcrarft, so it does not count.

The movie is just called Warcraft, not World of Warcraft, so they can easily cover Arthas's story.

If this isn't cg, it's going to be terrible.

So will it have people poking peons to have them say funny stuff then?

Fixed.  :drillf:

I often wonder, when I hear this view expressed, if not playing the original game somehow helped me like the movie.  I'm not sure.

But I know I liked the movie.  I think, possibly, in a sorta neo-expansionist way, that the short skirt worn by the main character helped my enjoyment enormously.

If I was to pick a character for the movie to follow around, it would be Medihv. Birth, rise of the horde, building of Karazhan, etc. You can pretty much do all the storytelling you want with him as a focus.

There is literally no way to do anything that is not insane gibberish shit if the movie centers on the lol-lore of WoW. The only thing that could really work would be something like following an 'average' protagonist of one side or another, giving him a 'group', etc.--a highly stylized version of the 'hero's journey' of WoW gameplay. And even that wouldn't be much more than a weak mimickry of Star Wars or LOTR or any other fantasy narrative that takes a zero to hero, a newb to leet. The only thing that will make this watchable is the staging of the visuals, the combat, etc.

It seems to me that the timing of this movie coming out would make it appear as a stylistic derivative product of epic fantasy / Lord of the Rings (ironic?), similar to how Hansel and Gretel is derivative of the dark fantasy movement started by films like Twilight.

That said, this movie is going to make good money on the strength of the brand alone and what will surely be a marketing and merchandising onslaught afterwards.

Oh -- and Warcraft: The Movie: The Game, anyone?

Counterpoint: Square.

:rofl:

This was just waiting on the reception of pandas. Now it can commence.

Square is terrible at storytelling regardless of the medium.

The only way this works is as some backstory that involves a character people recognize but which has no pinnacle role in WoW. This movie is being done by an entity completely separate from the games, so the level of lore-integration between both would likely be window-dressing at best.

At the same time, the Warcraft universe isn't really that boring. It's just that most of the current story telling seems to target however few tween boys read novels anymore. The subject matter though isn't without potential. They could go Malazon: Book of the Fallen style (there's some thematic overlaps), lame out and do a heroes' journey centered on Khadgar, or do the Thrall thing where he saves a corrupted peoples but still is seen as the enemy by many.

It really depends on what they want from the IP. If they want to sell more games, they need to tie a WoW 2 or Warcraft 4 to this, or it's a quickly-forgotten one-off no matter how good it is. If instead they want Warcraft to evolve into an actual IP worth building out into more movies and potential TV shows, then the movie needs only to stand up to movie competition on quality scales (either blockbuster seat-filler or, heh, awards movie).

Curious if this ever comes out though. 2015 is a long ways away, and unless Blizzard shocks the world with something, WoW may have already ended its slide into whatever-f2p. Maybe Titan is just Warcraft 4 in disguise so it keeps the brand alive :awesome_for_real:

Maybe it'll be about a band of rag-tag adventurers trying to gear up for raiding, and encountering many challenges on the way - such as gankers, having to grind daily quests, dps meter epeen, and everybody blaming the healer when the group wipes.

If they made it a comedy, it would be brilliant. I would watch it. Since they will probably go full Metzen lolore with it, there's no hope for the project.

A comedy with lots of in-references and an absurdist, black tone could be beautiful.

Noble Elf Paladin: "Alisera! NOOOOOO! You cannot be dead!"
Indifferent Human Rogue: "Eh, don't worry, she'll just rez and come back in, just take a few minutes."

Several jokes could be made about standing in fire.

Feel free to list nerd in-joke comedies that are actually funny.

Scott Pilgrim v. the World

Try again.

Galaxy Quest.

That's more like it.

Shaun of the Dead, Spaceballs, The Gamers, Mystery Science Theater 3K, Misfits...

Your definition of 'in joke' is not the same as mine.

I think you are confusing a movie about in jokes with a movie that has in jokes. I'm guessing no one is seriously asking for an entire movie based on wow jokes but a warcraft movie that does include some.

There are great genre parodies that are enhanced by knowing the sources (e.g. "Galaxy Quest", "Spaceballs") but arguably they are funny films in their own right. You don't need to know a lot about zombie films to watch "Shaun of the Dead", either.

I haven't seen "Your Highness" (but according to their box office, few have) but that strikes me as a film that makes fun of fantasy tropes.

"MST3K" is for the ultra-nerdy.

Your Highness is a stoner comedy set in a fantasy world. It's not really a parody about fantasy films or D&D or anything - it's more about dick jokes than dice jokes.

All I'm saying is Scott Pilgrim Sucked Hard and I'm still a little confused how people here who are normally decent human beings could like it.

It did have that pretty wee lassie from The Thing in it, so maybe they could do a crossover.

Scott Pilgrim gets eaten by the fucking Thing for Being a Travesty of a Movie which is Time I want Back.

To the Future.

Or something.

This.

Girl with crazy dyed hair.  It makes everything better.  Yes, I'm a simple creature at times.

I thought Scott Pilgrim was funny as fuck.

Galaxy Quest was awesome and a great parody.
Your Highness was not much of a parody, it was pretty much crap except for a few scenes.
Scott Pilgrim was...not great but not bad either.  I'm glad I saw it because it was at least original.
Shaun of the Dead was quite funny and another really strange, original movie I'm glad I saw.

I love "Your Highness." It's not really a stoner movie as much as it is just a silly movie, and it does poke a lot of fun at D&D / fantasy / video game tropes. The whole importance of quests and the formal rules around them for example. Also you can tell that the actors were having a lot of fun, which I always find very endearing. You can see Portman trying hard not to crack up at some of her lines. It appeared on a lot of critics "worst of" lists which is ridiculous to me. I guess you have to be into that sort of humor but I am!

Galaxy Quest was great. Spaceballs great. I just watched Spaceballs the other nights, it's so dense with comedy, and while a lot of it is genre-based there's also a ton of all sorts of other stuff. ("Are we being too literal?")

Scott Pilgrim was FUCKING TERRIBLE. It tried to let the premise carry all the weight. Here's a scene with a vegan guy / vegan police. Sounds funny! Unfortunately all the dialog is awful and none of the jokes work. To me it feels fanservicey in the worst possible way - hey geeks like our movie because we filled it with stuff for you! I also hated most of the visual flourishes.

The Princess Bride would be the archetype of the movie that manages to have its own story and characters, memorably and movingly set out, and yet also be constantly referencing its own genre conventions in funny or ironic ways. The framing device is a big part of that, but the characters within the story sometimes generate that irony as well. ("Have fun storming the castle!")

On the other hand, part of the reason it works is that most of the audience is at least modestly familiar with the conventions of fairy tales and fantasy of this kind. That will not be true about World of Warcraft except in the ways that the lore, in typical video game fashion, is a derivative pastiche of books and stories, many of which were derivative pastiches in their own right. This is why video game movies almost never work out: they so very rarely are telling stories that are genuinely original stories, stories that we'd read or watch if we weren't *playing* them. Most of the time, the whole point is that we're consuming a familiar story in a new way, through interaction.

If they can figure how to make this at least watchable, they'll be geniuses.

I enjoyed Galaxy Quest, but I did not think it was some seminal parody. It's source material was already a parody by that point, and everything from Ace Venture through Castle has mocked it to some degree. I agree though that Princess Bride is a great example of a successful blend of parody within a story rather than parody for the mere sake thereof.

For this movie, it all depends on whether Blizzard creative has a strong say or they let the licensee and licensor account reps handle it. I think Blizzard development has a good sense of its own humor. But there's subtle and then there's juvenile, and they seem inconsistent. But at least they're trying. A bunch of middle managers clawing at a movie deal career builder will tend to take themselves too seriously and try and outdo Peter Jackson in scale.

What about a Knight's Tale?

Does Zombieland count?  :awesome_for_real:

The gleam of sunshine in all this is that, to date, Duncan Jones has shown that he knows his own mind when it comes to directing. He was offered the chance to direct the Judge Dredd film but turned it down because he knew what he wanted to do with it (he grew up reading 2000AD and is a big fan of Dredd) but it was different to what the producers had in mind and Alex Garland's script suggested. Basically, he turned down a dream job because it wasn't right. So if he's on board with the Warcraft movie then it may well be because he is sold on what they're trying to do.

Either that or he's sold out.  :grin:

Yes, it was you and Samwise in particular I was thinking of when I wrote that.

Maybe I'm just grumpy.  Who knows.

I am fairly sure everyone knows  :grin:

She is rather lovely.

I can understand why someone would hate Scott Pilgrim, though I don't know why someone versed in video game lore would hate it. I just thought it all worked together in a campy sort of way that didn't take itself in any way seriously.

I can also understand how if you hate all the visual flourishes you'd hate the movie, since that was a big part of what I liked about it.  I suspect Edgar Wright's directorial style is either love-it or think-it's-ADHD-as-fuck.

To potentially derail the thread by crossing the streams, any WoW movie is going to be compared to LOTR / The Hobbit because that's the last major fantasy film the mainstream would have seen. So I'd expect something that was tonally and visually on-par with those movies.

I don't see how the WoW movie isn't going to be trapped by that. I mean the "lore" (lol) of WoW is just Hobbit / Elf / Troll shit with some popular culture stuff thrown in. The question is where it will fall on the spectrum of Shrek to LOTR and how many terrible video-gamey fan-service things are going to be in there.

I don't really get how you can make a WoW movie. I mean, you can make a Mortal Kombat movie because MK has some identity. A "good" WoW movie is just LOTR.

Really curious to see where they go with this.

How much say does Metzen have in this thing. They could make it Thrall's life story.  :why_so_serious:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803096/fullcredits

Keep in mind that "Story and characters" is a necessary creative credit and he would get that simply by virtue of the film being set in Azeroth, featuring the Horde vs Alliance and having Jaina Proudmore as a character.  See also "Dredd" where John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra get credits despite having nothing whatsoever to do with the film.

Also, co-producer is a relatively meaningless credit that largely acknowledges a contribution to a movie that's financial or otherwise. (Fun fact - I am listed on IMDB as an Associate Producer for a film I haven't even seen.)

That's not to say that Metzen - or Blizzard - doesn't have some kind of veto on script development but you can't necessarily infer anything from the credits.

Is there a Warhammer movie that's coming out first?

It would have to come out after the wow movie so it can follow suit and copy it.

 :oh_i_see: :why_so_serious:

I'd be surprised if this ever actually sees the light of day, but stranger things have happened.

People keep bumping this. But yet there is no movie yet. A whole lot of nothing!

Pifft. FFS the porn has been out for years now.

Says the guy who bumped it after 10 days.

Can't help it if Rule 34 outweighs everything.  That's, like, nature doing it's thing, man.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122528-Blizzard-Veto-Power-Kills-Raimis-Warcraft-Movie?utm_source=news&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all

It was my belief that the WOW factor of Legendary is what got Blizzard to pursue a film project with them in the first place -- without any foreknowledge of how films are made. I think that enthusiasm, and the realities of what it would take to make a Warcraft movie, have set in for them.

He could always pitch his script to Games Workshop as a Warhammer movie... ;D

Apparently, this is still a thing. Here, have an orc.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/warcraft-orgrim-reveal-exclusive/

(http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2015/may/OrgrimNew.jpg)

Why would it not be a thing? It was filming and they even moved it to summer showing some faith in it.

Eh..people know how Bliz projects go. Months turns into years...years into decades...etc.  :why_so_serious:

Would really like to see it in motion, but for a still-frame, not bad.

Another production still from the same article (http://www.wired.com/2015/05/warcraft-orgrim-reveal-exclusive/)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFTG16MVAAAki6D.jpg:large)

Is that CG or a dude in makeup?

If it's makeup I am super impressed.

CGI.

I assumed it was cancelled by now, too. Is it supposed to come out this year?

Next summer.

Figured people had kept up with it. They moved it to summer because they like what they've seen so far.

Fully animated movie I take it?

The orc looks cool.

No, it's live action. Well, aside from the CG bits.

It finished filming a year ago (almost to the day) and has been in post ever since with ILM doing a massive amount of CG work. It was originally due to be out in December this year but then Disney announced a sequel release to some obscure franchise not many people had heard of at around the same time so Universal, liking what they saw, moved it back 6 months to be a big summer release.

Edit: this is the movies thread, ignore me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY

Haven't seen these before but these pics from Blizzcon showing the Alliance armour from the films

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFYOxU-VIAEOLWQ.jpg:large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFgL4BZVEAEJRz9.jpg:large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFgL4ByVAAEfZEw.jpg:large)

Clearly inaccurate, the shoulder pads need to be at least 5x bigger.

Also, the Horde armour should be 5x more detailed with 3x as much back-story, amirite?  :why_so_serious:

Pretty much!

Something's been bothering me about all the new promo shots.

Oh wait, that's it.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ6QtVzVAAAQ-VF.jpg)

Ok that gave me a good chuckle.

I dunno, it doesn't look right with the smaller shoulders.

After years of conditioning the huge shoulders actually look good to me and I know they shouldn't.

Can we get Lakov renamed to Patty_Hearst?

You miss the 1980s that much, do you?

Once again, fuck everything about this movie.

The armor looks like something you'd see the "far, far too dedicated to the craft" cosplayers wear at cons.

It's not just you.

Leaked footage on Wednesday. Was late for a call just so i could watch it before it got pulled :grin: Showed a sequence of orcs approaching the dark portal thing to invade Norrath for water and such. Ended with them entering the gate. I'd look up the name of the main Orc guy in the sequence but don't give enough shit.

Looked like Avatar but in brown.

Burning crusade.

(http://i.imgur.com/K5zmQAp.png)

That's more like it.

Can you shop in a Ritalin-starved Night Elf doing backflips in the background?

You need a dancing gnome too.

Gah. I should post less about Warcraft when I'm drunk.

But I heard it was filmed in NYC...

That would make it worse. It needs to be filmed in Boston. :awesome_for_real:

Starting to think it couldn't stink worse than the new superhero movies

I'll be happy with it if they have a scene where the hero's in the Barrens and everyone is cursing all the time.

And Mankirk.  Gotta have Mankirk.

Some fanatic on Reddit was convinced that if it does great, this will kick-off a whole series of GOOD video game movies the same way Spider*Man did in 2001.

I'd hate for him to be right, but then realized that there's very few well-written stories or well-developed characters in wildly popular games, which has been part of the problem. Therefore there's little chance of that.

I still fail to see the idea of a video-game movie. Video games with heavy stories (Mass Effects and such) shouldn't need a movie because they are interactive experiences, like movies +. And I'm pretty sure Warcraft's cinematics are a better movie than anything Hollywood can produce out of the slivers of narrative in the backstory.

There's virtually no video game ever that has originated a story or setting--videogames simply change how you relate to a familiar story or setting. I do think some videogames have created memorable *characters* but that's about it. Stories, settings, worlds in videogames are all derivative of something we've seen, read or heard in other media. So when you make a video game movie, you're usually just doubling-down on the derivative feeling, like a boomerang returning to sender.

14 years ago we had Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.  I watched it a few months ago.  Say what you will about it, but the animation still looked pretty impressive.

It also was a story that only was related to the games in that it had the same "something is killing the planet's soul" theme. So it really isn't a "video game" movie except the title and the fact that it used video game technology to render the animation.

if I could pick one video game to go the movie route, it would be Wolfenstein- impossible to fuck up and done right it is the new Indiana Jones.

I would actually think Wolfenstein is almost inevitable to fuck up, if by that you mean, "produce an entertaining film that's actually a film rather than 90 minutes of Twitch video of someone playing".

If you based it on The New Order, you could do some interesting stuff for 90 minutes about crazy Nazis on the moon in 1960.  Enough material there to make an interesting action movie.

Been done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc

In fairness it's that how pretty much all the FF stories are related?

Also I think the stronger point is that for most games that are heavily story driven, they work in part because they use the mechanics and experience of being in the game as part of the storytelling experience. The Last of Us was pretty much all plot but I don't think the story would have worked as well as it did without getting us so identified with the main characters over the whole of the game, which was a lot longer than your average movie.

The ability to use that and player choices to create an identity with the protagonist and other characters sometimes gets used as a crutch, and in the case of player choice is a limiting element on the depth of the story, that means relatively shallow plots can work in video games. They're a different medium for telling stories and capturing the essence of why they work can't really be done in film. The really cinematic games without too much player choice which would most obviously transmit to the big screen... really don't need to be. As people have said it would be like watching a Let's Play of that game, unless you think there's a huge market for watching a super slimmed down version of the game itself with slightly more impressive graphics and probably a few more 'mainstream' Hollywood plot elements thrown in.

Hmm...yeah. Some might point to the Witcher but that was based on a fairly successful series of books.

I always thought somebody could actually make a really good Deus Ex movie.  I'm sure they'd totally fuck it up, so I don't really want to see them try, but it could certainly be done as a great dystopian Sci-fi movie.

It's a fairly cinematic series, but again, that's partly because it's already kind of derivative and familiar--the art direction cribs from a number of films and then the plotting and characterization is a mishmash of a lot of cyberpunk/cybernoir stuff. But at least it might have a chance to be a bit better for adaptation than many other games.

Deus Ex is way too smart to be made into a movie. It would basically just get turned into X Files - The Movie. And we're all aware how those turn out. Well, except for Schild.

Something like Wolfenstein is a lot safer. It's just 'Joe Action shoots a bunch of nazis'. Hollywood actually has a chance at pulling that off.

Yeah but again, at least from our perspective, why would you want that and not just watch an LP of Wolfenstein?

Making a video game story in to a decent movie would be like making a short story into a great novel.

Yeah, you borrow some pointers, but the work is mostly going to need to be done from the ground up.

Ain't no one making a good film based on what is actually in video games of themselves.

The trailer is out today. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rxoz13Bthc)

Oh God, that's real.

And it's TERRIBLE.

A lot of those graphics looked 10 years old. It wasn't disappointing, just... weird. Like they could have done better, but chose not to. Except for the closeups of the orcs. That was pretty damn impressive.

I like the direction they're going with the story, but it seems kind of early to start with the human-orc friendship thing. That seems like a sequel story to me. The human bits make me think of the D&D movies on SyFy. Ugh, seriously. WTF....

The baby orc; was that Thrall? I'm kinda assuming it was Thrall, because that pleases me.

Not enthusiastic.  It kind of reminds me thnat what Marvel has done isn't easy.

Did I just watch a movie trailer or a cut scene from a new Warcraft game? That wasn't very good.

This shows - as the SW Prequels and The Hobbit did - why CGI should be an addition and not the main trappings when you're using human actors.

The CGI all looked as good as any other full CGI in Hollywood today. However the uncanny valley is in full effect when you put that in the same frame as practical effects.

Ignoring that the story was always going to be shitty.


It was, because the main orc is Durotan, Thrall's father.

It's veeery average trailer. If trailers show the best of upcoming this will be fucking disaster.

Needs bigger shoulders.


Also, looked awful.

The CGI was terrible in a seriously pasted on sort of way. As someone not remotely familiar with the World of Warcraft lore, nothing in it was remotely memorable other than how bad the CGI looked when it was in the same scene with real things and people.

Warcraft cutscenes used to actually impress me. This did not. Meh. Wasn't planning on watching this anyway, and the trailer did not change my opinion.

They'd have been better off doing this 100% animated with cut scene level animation...

No hot elf chicks -- do not want.

Agreed.  I liked how baby Moses Thrall was sent down the river in a basket.  Looked pretty cheesy, maybe they'll have a miracle patch.  :oh_i_see:

It looked like sci-fi channel quality.

I am actually kinda interested in how they render and flesh out the maps. This is obviously pre-Barrens so no great open chat I assume.

 :why_so_serious:

Haven't been following this movie at all, so while watching the trailer I was expecting them to get to the part where they mention that it's "From the Director of ______" and starring x, y, and z, and then that never happened. I would have thought they'd have gotten a least a few big names for this as opposed to "the guy that plays Ragnar on Vikings" and "the guy you might know as Howard Stark", and "written and directed by David Bowie's son who made a couple good movies and now is here to collect a paycheck after not having done any movies in the last 5 years".

... and Sam Raimi's approach was vetoed by Blizzard because ti did not match the aesthetic they wanted....

I can believe that. Sam Raimi doesn't do plastic.

The cheese is strong in this one.

Or not. That actually would probably have been the way to go, with a thousand WoW Lore nerds crying out in sorrow--play the cheese up, go full cheese. This is in the cheese valley: cheesy looking and cheesy thematic, but wanting to be not-cheese. A famous valley for movies to die in.

Wow has 5.5 mil subscribers and millions more ex subs. This trailer has 1.2mil views....outlook not so good

That was awful. World of the Rings Craft. With shittier CGI and acting.

Edit: Also, there wasn't a single person there with a big yellow exclamation mark above their heads.

4.02 mil views as of of right now  :grin:

(https://i.imgur.com/ct6mQr3.png)

But yes, everything else that can be said about this film has been said already in this thread. Maybe worth watching drunk downloaded as torrent.

The baby in the basket has been done before in another show  (Exodus season 2 episode 4). Could be coincidence though.

Not sure if serious.

Or it could be a major plot point in the best selling book of all time.

Dyanetics?

Wow. Hot orc chicks and a an Orc Human romance. What could go wrong?

The joke would be funnier if he had gotten the reference right, it was actually episode 3:


--Dave

Oh crap. Suits me right for trying to be "clever".  :oh_i_see:

Lok'Tar Ogar Ragnar!

I like Travis Fimmel and Dominic Cooper but them being in this piece of shit saddens me. I kind of liked how orcs looked and for the most part wasn't as disappointed with how this looks compared to everyone around here it seems. Then there's Metzen aka baby jesus..... :uhrr:

At least the shoulderpads were the right size since this is the pre-t5 era :why_so_serious:

Lol, according to IMDB, she's half orc half draeni.

Yeah, that's Garona, uber Assassin.

This will be amazingly bad. I'm just having difficulty on what scale the terribleness will be. It's got a higher budget so it can't be D&D movie bad. It doesn't have the ego driven director behind it so it can't be Avatar bad.

John Carter bad?
The Last Airbender bad?

I  can't quite get the scale right.

New episodes of SW can be a good measure.

Somewhere between TPM and AOTC.

I don't know. Can you compare the blueball levels of anticipation of the most treasured sci-fi property of all time and it's utter disappointment to an not really anticipated movie of the most popular western MMORPG of all time?

Hey now, John Carter was not THAT bad of a movie.

Last Airbender however...

And this movie is not going to be that bad... it'll make it to DVD.  :why_so_serious:

Wait, yes it was.  John Carter was just that bad.

I thought this would be a hard movie to pull off.  Looks like it is.  And now I'm letting it slip off my radar...

John Carter was a really good adaptation of the book. It's only failure was the complete catastraphuck of its marketing.

Ok, now I'm through the looking glass.  Was there another John Carter I missed ?  I watched the one with McNulty ?

No, it's just a really bad book too  :awesome_for_real:

Carter was at best passable. It's worth a Netflix (is it on Netflix?) watch if you've got absolutely nothing else to do and you really need to sit on your couch.

No it was pretty bad.

Dejah Thoris was hot though  :drillf:

I thought John Carter was decent, actually. Just spent too much time with him being a Debby Downer in the beginning.

I liked Carter too and I'm a fan of the books. As escapism it did the job - once he got off Earth.

He was on Earth for like 5 minutes. The rest held pretty true to the books, looked good and was pulp fun. I mean, there are a fuckload worse movies out there that are far less enjoyable.

And Dejah Thoras was just criminally hot.

I really liked John Carter.  Oh my god Deja Thoris was super fine.

John Carter was good. It's only flaw was any clothing on Dejah Thoris. She wore ornamental jewelry strategically placed and nothing else.

NSFW http://cosplaypins.com/sites/default/files/field/image/dt.jpgoriginal

The Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire:

https://youtu.be/npvaRIoNBNQ

Looks pretty good, but I didn't notice any Night Elves in their underwear 'roleplaying'.

Armour looks too practical.

http://kotaku.com/the-warcraft-movie-is-not-good-1778550679

 :popcorn:

FIFY, noob

Warcraft movie is not good. In other breaking news, water is goddamn wet.

Clown... shoes.

Yep. I guess people were holding out hope that Moon-guy could pull a rabbit out of a hat, but that this movie is bad is the least shocking twist of all time.

It doesn't matter how good or bad it is, it's still 7 or 8 years too late.

This right here. The perfect release window would have been early in Cata, between it's launch at the first big patch. They also should have focused on Arthas, telling the story of WC3 through WotLK (it could even have been a trilogy: WC3, TFT, then WotLK). For bonus points, work in a deal with Fandango where if you go see the Warcraft movie you get an exclusive pet and/or mount. Then just sit back and enjoy your money hats.

Instead we get Warcraft 1 The Movie (tm), featuring the story no one cares about, starring a bunch of characters no one's heard of, coming out years after the franchise is relevant. :uhrr:

And telling a story of a game that came out in 1994.

I bet China eats this shit up and makes it profitable.

It's not even the story of game 1 though, is it?  It's the story that takes place right before game 1 starts.

Is it really? That's even worse; a fucking prequel to a 20 year old game? :uhrr:

There is literally no way to make anything narratively interesting out of a game that's a cliche-fest pastiche of things that were already cliches before the game existed. The only possible or imaginable film that could be worth watching is one that starts with the idea that this is a game and runs with it, basically as an absurdist comedy. We follow a young orc as he collects 30 boar livers and sees question marks above the heads of orcs who are just standing around, etc.

Following Arthas's journey from Paladin > Death Knight > Lich King could have been a decent CGI action flick; the movie you're describing sounds like Scott Pilgrim 2.0 and I don't think the Warcraft IP is quite silly enough to pull it off.

Don't care about any of the story or any of that noise. I just want to see the world in CGI. I'm sold on just watching the environment...fuck the characters. Still, waiting for Netflix to pick this up.

What you said here. I consider the Arthas storyline about the only decent storyline in the franchise and I think it would have been interesting enough to have a shot at being taken seriously by a non-fanboy audience. I could see Hollywood having a problem with the lack of love interests though.

Also, having it made that far back would have let it get some extra energy from the LOTR movies.

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/06/warcraft-review-duncan-jones-1201683601/

Getting into "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" territory with the reviews.

It's kind of like beating up on a mute cripple with Down's and cerebral palsy that just got its arms and legs chopped off. Should anyone be expecting anything out of this at all?

I love the butthurtery in the comment thread there, though.

So much salt.

I stopped in r/wow out of curiosity after reading the above review. The hype there is real and frightening.

Though the above review is perhaps a bit too harsh, it does highlight the exact problem I figured they'd have. The lore is a terrible pastiche of garbage that takes itself far too seriously. Good to see that comes shining-through as he was accurately confused by "noble orcs" who are "intelligent but too dumb to develop shirts" and also "too dumb to recognize evil."  

That's a great legacy of the garbage lore because orcs were originally eeeevil. It wasn't until WC2 we got the "noble orc" trope, and they started patching over the whole, "orcs are just butes out to wreck shit" motivation.

WC1 story from the game - 20min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsxI1IiKa7g
Yeah, no noble orcs here.

Hahahahahaha why would anybody who has seen Metzen's stuff not expect him to write about bullshit that takes itself seriously? Hell, I was in college the last time he wrote a half-way passable story arc.

Honestly, I have trouble fully believing this reviewer, as he got the order of Willow -> LOTR -> Masterpiece Theatre exactly backwards.

 :headscratch:

I don't remember the noble Orc thing in WC2 at all.  Pretty sure they were straight evil through that entire thing as well.  I thought it only started in WC3 with Thrall, using the painful excuse that the entire race had been demonically influenced for the last thousand years into being terrible bloodthirsty savages.  But they're totally better now that the humans destroyed their home world.

In essence, in order for the story of WC1 to make any sense at all, the orcs have to be stupid, or evil, or both. You can finesse that:

1) They are being misled by evil shamans that treat the evil wizard as a God. Evil, but only because they have been corrupted (and can potentially be redeemed).

2) The evil wizard has them under a spell that makes them stupid and obedient.

Trying to make them neither evil nor stupid while still being shock troops for a life-sucking, world-killing evil wizard is incoherent.

--Dave

This is why we need to oppose China's imperialist expansion into the South China Sea.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/-warcraft-has-largest-opening-day-at-china-s-box-office-in-2016

You never went to college?

Just saw the movie. I liked it in the way I might like Warcarft 2 cutscenes put together on a Youtube video (alot of it has to do with knowing the "lore"). As a movie it dipped into the Dungeons&Dragons level at some points (especially the golem fight) and I couldn't keep from comparing it to the Vikings tv-series due to the actor playing Lothar (and unfortunately it seemed to lack in most cases when compared to that).
All in all it was kind of entertaining mostly due to being familiar with much of the lore but I kind of wish it had been a tv-series instead of a movie so they'd had more time to develop the plot and characters (even if it meant significantly lower cg budget).

I kind of agree with satael.  It was pretty awesome as a "what would warcraft look like on the big screen" thing, and did an amazing job of capturing the feel and aesthetic look of the Warcraft Universe.  As a stand alone movie however, it falls a bit flat in that you still need to know a decent chunk of the lore to know what the hell is going on in a few key scenes, because the movie does a terrible job of explaning what is happening.   Probably the biggest gaping hole they had was the whole Medhiv/Sargeras/Guldan connection and the reason the horde ended up pointed at azeroth.  They drop crumbs here and there in the story, but never enough to connect together to get a clear piccture of what is going on. Instead you get a vague "The guardian is corrupted, he somehow led the orcs here", and that is it.  No context or anything.  No details on how he got corrupted, or why he lead the orcs there, he just did. They had the perfect opportunity to do that bit of exposition in one of the scenes (explain the previous guardian / conflict with sargeras / real reason for the invasion) and chose to go with Metaphysical Dark / Light shit instead.   Anyone who knows the lore will have the pieces already to make them fit.  Anyone who doesnt is just going to find that bit of the story confusing with no context to guide it.

I am also a bit annoyed that the Leeroy Jenkins scene appearently didnt make the theatrical cut.

No comedy allowed, this shit must be taken seriously at all times.

I saw it with my 9 year old. It was much better than I expected, but still cheesy. My two biggest complaints with it were that the draenei woman was not super-hot with a fake Russian accent and that the dwarves failed to have the Scottish accents that all dwarves are required to have in everything. Gul'dan was super-awesome though.

Other than those two things I thought it was at least as good, if not better than The Force Awakens. Leaps and bounds better than X-Men: Apocalypse.

This was a Warcraft movie.  I didn't expect it to be anything spectacular, for what it was though, it wasn't bad.  It wasn't as boring as I felt the new X-Men movie was at least.

I didn't hate this - in fact, I was entertained. Much more so than Civil war... and I have no idea why.

Saw it. It is not the worst movie ever made--the comparison to Battlefield Earth is not at all right. It's watchable. But there is something systematically not right about it. And oddly it feels as if it could have been better.

I think what's off is this:

a) There's no real viewpoint character (or even viewpoint characters)--the action moves around in a way that almost feels like a drunk clinging to street lights as he tries to find his way home. You never stick with anybody long enough to really get a good feeling for them or get a sense of their arc. All the characters feel out of focus, fuzzy, and yet not familiar enough to be comforting cliches.
b) The scale and pacing of the story, despite the occasional invocations of the games by cuts to landscapes and maps, is equally fuzzy. There's a lot of set ups that don't get used, really. Khadgar gets advice from his shadowy friend inside the magical companion cube that seems to be saying, "Get everybody to ally together!" but all he does is fly back, pick up Lothar, and go fight Medivh, whereas the whole set-up of the scene with his spirit guide seems to be saying, "Make an Alliance!" That all happens off-scene at the end of the movie.
c) Nobody likes infodumps but there are a few things that ought to be done to set the stage just a teeny bit for anyone who hasn't played the games--the scene of the bickering council where the dwarves, night elves, Kirin Tor, etc. are all present but really seem incredibly angry at each other and are saying, "defend yourself, humans", etc.? for folks who don't know anything about Warcraft, that must be baffling as all fuck--who are all these guys, are they from other dimensions too, why is everybody all angry, and hey, why *does* everyone on this supposedly happy planet have armies and giant shoulderpads and all that?
d) The human actors (+Garona) have some scenes that are just this side of Dungeons & Dragons/MST3K-ready acting, that feel like everybody's slightly embarrassed, but then suddenly they'll have some scenes that are pretty well-acted and convincing.
e) There's really no overcoming the lol-loreness of some of it. And to some extent that might be part of what hamstrings the script--some of the story beats that might be a good thing for the film might be lost because they're trying to stick too much to the games' convoluted narrative.
f) It's very nearly humorless.

Looks like the conjuring2 made more money opening weekend than this.

It's already made over a 100 mil in China though.

For those who have seen it on the big screen: How do the effects look? Every time I see an ad for this it just looks cheap as hell.

It has moments where it looks pretty good and moments where it looks REALLY cheap and bad. The night-elves and dwarves, only seen briefly, look cheap and chintzy as fuck. The orcs sometimes look good, sometimes not. The magical effects that Khadgar and Medivh have around them look good, mostly. The gryphons look good. It's extremely inconsistent.

Stormwind, Dalaran and Karazan looked spot on. I wish there was more of the latter. The riding wolves were average compared to griffins. Gul'dan was beautifully animated and the rest was up and down.

Gul'dan looks good throughout. Generally so does Durotan.

But that's what Warcraft is. Just when you think it might have a good story, it gets cheap and bad as you're reminded that it sits on the kind of afterthought developers came up with as a plot in the early 1990s, to call something "Orcs and Humans" instead of "Reds and Blues". Gameplay is the only thing that really matters. Making a movie is an indulgence.

It wasn't as horrible as I expected based on the reviews but it really, really failed to sell why the Orcs would follow Gul'dan at all.

The CGI is going to look terrible in another 3 years, like all heavy-CGI movies that push for realism over style. (The Hobbit is already suffering from this, and these were about that level.) That's part of what the elves and dwarves both suffer from.  Well that and the Eye-glow effect that looks cool in video games doesn't translate well to live-action.

Nice touches for the Warcraft and WoW freaks. My wife noticed that the portals Khadgar and Mediv cast had them use the in-game Hearthstone pose.


For some reason I thought it started with the WC2 expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal. You see how Ner'zuhl was subjugating the Orcs and using them then abandoned them. I just rewatched the vid on YouTube, though and you're right, they don't give any of the redeeming stuff.  It's all been since WC3 and retconning of the lore after that via Comics, Novels etc. that Metzen's overseen since Roper left.

I think the Easter egg we liked the most was the murloc in the foreground in one scene. Could have used more of that kind of stuff.

My GF took me to this yesterday because she really wanted to see it.  It was SLOW and tough to follow for someone (me) that wasn't a complete WoW lore nerd.  It was entertaining, but too many characters with too little development.  I was yawning, at 4pm, an hour into this. 

That's what I expected but thought it was just my own bias against WowLOLore. Nice to have it somewhat independently confirmed.

Saw an internet review where there was one guy who was saying it was fantastic and admitting he was a complete WOW fanatic who had all the books and shit, and another guy who knew nothing and who said he had no idea what was going on in this movie and it was a boring, confusing mass of shit.

It seems if you already know everything about WOW you will like the movie fine, if you dont there is little to know in movie exposition to draw outsiders into the movie.

The guy who said it was a "confusing mess of shit" had to have been a retard. Not in the generic insult sense of the word, like they're actually severely developmentally delayed. This was not a complicated movie. If you could follow something like Mars Attacks, you could follow this movie just fine. I pride myself on knowing 0% of Warcraft lore despite having played all the RTS games and WoW since launch. Literally the only things I recognized were names of places and Khadgar. And I only know about Khadgar because he's in like 180% of the content in WoD. You don't nee to know anything about Warcraft to follow this movie. Anymore than you need to know the rich and deep Transformers to watch the Bey movies. Frankly, you're better off not knowing it because then you don't know that the Decepticons are closer to being the "good guys" than the Autobots are.

It's not as bad as it's being made out to be but it sure isn't on the level of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.  I liked the scenes involving the Orcs the best and I was surprised how much emotion was able to be displayed on their cgi faces.  The actors they got to play the humans were pretty forgettable and none of their scenes were noteworthy in any way.  The tacked on love interest bullshit was completely unnecessary and dragged those scenes down even further.  I enjoyed it but it was very inconsistent and uneven.  Something I didn't know was it was directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones.

Edit: So it looks like it has officially bombed in the US yet is very popular in China.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/06/12/box-office-warcraft-bombs-in-america-outgrosses-star-wars-in-china/#10b9599b3f45 

Fuck Forbes and their "you're using an adblocker" bullshit. Here's a real site:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

Budget: 160mil
Domestic US: 24.3 mil
Foreign: 261.7 mil. (144mil in China)

We'll be getting a sequel but it looks like it'll be translated from Chinese to English.  :why_so_serious:

(nice to see TMNT is a bomb as well. 116mil total in its 2nd week. 135mil budget.)

Warcraft must be to Duncan Jones what Dune was to David Lynch -- a big project handed to an up and coming writer/director that said director felt he just couldn't refuse for the sake of his future career, even though he knew it wasn't even close to his style of movie.

That said, I haven't read even one interview with Jones on the subject, and for all I know he's a WoW fanatic and jumped at the chance. But still, after Moon and Source Code, I was not expecting Warcraft to be his next movie...

It's not hard to follow. My wife doesn't play computer games, doesn't read fantasy, etc., but she understood it all perfectly well. That's really not the problem with the movie.

I follow him on Twitter and he's a WoW fanatic who jumped at the chance. But I started following him after Moon and Source Code, so I've watched with bemusement as he happily made his Warcraft fanboy movie.

I like Moon and Source Code, but I have to think that part of the problem with the movie is that he didn't know how to handle this type of film at the scale that it operates at. It is really badly structured at times.

Well good for him then. And thinking about it, maybe this might be a good way to divert from that super serious dystopian sci-fi road he was starting down.

I've often idly wondered how many celebrities we've played with in MMOs over the years without knowing it. It must be nice for them to be able to drop into another world and be "just another guy/gal" for a while.

So this movie. I see why critics didn't like it. But I think this is this years pacific rim. Which is a geek movie for those who remember a time when being a geek was not cool. The dialogue isn't modern or josh wheadon lite or cracking a joke every five minutes or filled with dark undertones. This is high fantasy played straight up. No allegories to current social problems or attempts to subvert the genre. This will not make your "women in fantasy blogs" and the type who troll movies like this for such "enlightening" social commentary will probably never see this movie. The movie is called confusing because it doesn't stop to explain itself (I don't inherently count that as a plus). Its not an origin story. There's no teenage "boy becomes a man" story to be told, because everyone's fully developed member of the universe presented. This is merely act one of a very unfortunate series of events.

What the movie does have going for it, despite refusing to give details on places and references that I don't get because I never played Warcraft 1-3 or WoW, is in the details. It works because its kinda refreshing. This is high fantasy in its unedited glory and it is glorious to behold. Whether you talking about a mage that takes 10 years to cast a devastating spell while the warriors die in droves or everything to do with the Orcs. The dialogue is truly hit or miss and to be honest the only thing that really hurts this movie is the lack of actors. They could have definitely pulled some talent from TV, like casting of viking star as our main character. Also.... I don't remember anyones names. Which should be the sign of a bad movie but.... I don't know. The plot itself is pretty easy to follow, its the details like (what is the purpose of that order of mages and whats so bad about them that you ran away from hogwarts) that the movie doesn't tell you.

So yeah I liked the movie. I don't know who anyone is, or remember their names, but I'd gladly watch Warcraft 2.

Do tell. Someplace, just someplace, there might be a mass of aggressive, violent migrants who having destroyed their own lands through shitty policy and religion are now swarming into lusher, peaceful lands full of white people and castles. Just saying.

Enter Bob.

Bob go home your drunk.

:facepalm:

Come on, we all know Merkel would have invited Gul'dan in faster than The Guardian did.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/Rendakor/Canyoufuckinnot.jpg)

A lot of you are saying the movie was at least ok, but you are saying it in a way that makes it sound terrible for anyone who isn't a WoW lore enthusiast.

That cannot possibly be a thing.  And if it was you wouldn't find one here.

Jesus you guys, I'm just fucking around. Calm yourselves.


Their mileage is going to vary depending on their enjoyment of the genre. You need literally zero warcraft lore knowledge to understand and enjoy the movie. However you absolutely do need to be able to watch something like Krull and enjoy it. The plots are a lot different, but just about everything else is the same, especially how seriously they take themselves and the sort of acting.

Prior knowledge of the lore is really not what makes the difference in watching the movie. It's just...not a great movie. But not a shitty one either. It doesn't have as much entertaining cheese as Krull or it would be more fun. But it doesn't have anything that puts it into Battlefield Earth terribad either. It's...almost good? It could have been a contendah. I can see the movie it almost was. Kind of makes me sad.  Not what I expected.

Like Krull?

Shit, now I have to see the movie.

No love for Sword and the Sorcerer or The Beastmaster?

That's where I'd rate it and that in itself is not a bad thing.

Yeah those are good comparisons, as is MediumHighs statement that this is a High Fantasy movie that doesn't apologize for being one. It shot for Conan but landed on Krull and that's not terrible.

I really hope that the movie does well enough for them to release the extended cut (http://www.gamespot.com/articles/warcraft-movie-extended-cut-is-40-minutes-longer-n/1100-6440340/) as I can see how that might make the movie significantly better or at least more entertaining.  :grin:

I think it's going to do well enough for a sequel because of the China and Europe box office. Not sure Jones will be back--I would expect the sequel to be a lot more cheaply made.

I don't know that first movie, but Beastmaster would also be acceptable, although it was no Krull.

I like WoW and mildly enjoy WoW lore.  

I'm glad I didn't pay for the movie.  It's pretty meh.  I agree with a reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes that called it "Bored of the Rings".  Wait for the dvd and rent it.

Saw this today, and as a WoW lore nerd, it was a lot better than I was expecting.  Not, like, Lord of the Rings movie level, but not Dungeons and Dragons movie level either.  When viewed in the spectrum of video game movies, this is probably among the best, in that it stays MOSTLY true to the game (I mean like, they changed a lot, but at least the characters and setting are still mostly recognizable, compared to, like, the Super Mario bros. movie or something) and isn't a complete disaster.  It's certainly way more engaging than any of the Warcraft stuff I've seen, including the games themselves recently.  Not that it's the greatest movie ever, but I don't know that it deserves to be bombing as hard as it is.  A 13 year old me would have loved the hell out of this movie.

Probably the first few minutes are probably a confusing mess for anyone who's not invested in the lore, as there's a TON of characters introduced really fast, and the ending is contrived and stupid, but the middle was pretty solid I thought.  Would have been better if the entire thing was CG, in my opinion, because the human characters (except Lothar and maybe Khadgar) had this weird fakey look to them (not helped by Llane's goofy looking lion helmet).  Dwarves and especially elves look absolutely terrible for the few seconds of screentime they get.  Overall, though, it's not bad if you've got a stomach for cheesy fantasy.

I chalk the Dwarves and Elves looking bad completely up to what was probably an executive deccision based on their screen presence.  I mean, for all that this is "Warcraft", the movie was 99.9% "Orcs VS Humans".  The Dwarves and Elves combined probably had about 2 minutes of actual screen time, so somebody likely made a call somewhere along the lines of: Just make them good enough to not look completely stupid, but dont sweat it, cause 5 seconds after they are off screen, an awesome Orc will make everyone forget about them anyway.   I mean, I think the two appearances of the Elves probably added up to less then 20 seconds totall, not much point in dumping an excessive amount of CGI budget into them.

Oooowwch.. 73% dropoff in the us market. Plummeting to $6.5 mil take this weekend.

At the same time it passed Prince of Persia and is now the highest-grossing video game movie of all time with a take of $377million.  So 90% of its revenue comes from the overseas market.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

The US may not see the sequel in theaters but I've got to wager it will be done.

Death to America I want my sequel.

The orks both looked and worked much better on the big screen than the trailers I was seeing. They actually were well done.

Just watched a 4:00 matinee with about 10 other people in the theatre. It was definitely a movie. With Orcs. And War.

It wasn't terrible, it was just really uneven. I think they said the names of every character about 20 times each and none of them stuck for me. Gamora was kinda weak. Something-Gar the hero was ok, but looked like he must have been 13 when he had his son. King Fancypants looked like he would have had a hard time lifting that sword. Elves looked like those mannequins they made of the elves for E3 about 10 years ago. And why the hell were the King, Queen, and half the royal guard hanging out in the newbie Inn in Goldshire (other than a bad excuse to put it in the movie?)

I liked the battle scenes.  I thought Evil Green Spiky Warlock Orc was really cool and well done. Kinda funny that the Orc half of the movie was the more logical and consistent half.

It was reasonably entertaining for a $9 matinee.

Oh, and finally a Suicide Squad trailer on the big screen. That looks fun.

I know why they were hanging out in the Inn in Goldshire....

Waiting for a Hobbit Panda with a wedding ring to wander in?

https://youtu.be/DgZdlGZ2_TQ

Deleted scene in which the orcs, including some that didn't even get another speaking part in the film (like Grom. Yeah, that Grom (http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Grommash_Hellscream)), talking more about Fel magic and shit.

I mean, if they're going to cut stuff that actually helps people understand WTF stuff is/going on, regardless of complexity, why even bother with the film?

Finally saw this. Very terrible. I saw it on the same day Uwe Boll announced he's not making movies anymore or whatever. Which is a nice coincidence. Except for the SFX, this felt like the same one-dimensional slapped-together stuff he did.

And it wasn't because it was confusing. This was a very simple story, grade level shit. Blizzard always gets a pass because they do awesome games and spend a lot of time on nice cutscenes. But this movie highlighs once again the same sensibility cannot be applied to feature length.

It was almost as bad as Avatar, except at least it wasn't totally ripping off three movies and existing entirely as a tech demo.

The thing I hated the most was how young everyone was. It's like they picked the cast of the OC, just to appeal to the millenials or some shit. This was followed closely by how clean everything was. And the usual dodge of making sure the humans gave deadpan delivery so the CGI characters looked animated.

Yeah, I just saw this too, but I found it okay. I rented it on demand, and I didn't regret it. I like Duncan Jones' other stuff and I could see his stamp on it, but Warcraft lore is poor material to work with, so there wasn't really a need for the movie. I'd watch a sequel on demand too, though.