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I can honestly say I enjoyed it. It's the first movie I've seen in theaters in like six years.

I went in with kind of low expectations due to all the negative reviews from film critics. Their main point though was basically "it won't appeal to people who are unfamiliar with the franchise" aka film critics. I have actually spent a great deal of time playing Warcraft games ranging from the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans from 1994 to today's Warlord's of Draenor so I guess I can't really imagine what it's like to "not be familiar" especially given the countless hours I've spent reading lore on the wiki and doing every quest in WoW imaginable.

That being said, my only real complaint was the historical inaccuracy so to speak... Almost everything that happens in the movie is pretty solid in that sense, save for a few really glaring issues. SpoilerFor instance-- Garona is supposed to have assassinated King Lane in Stormwind... all malicious like. What happened in the movie was not that. Stormwind itself was supposed to be sacked and razed to the ground to be rebuilt later-- sending the survivors to seek refuge in Lordaeron. That also did not happen. Blackhand was supposed to be killed and decapitated by Doomhammer, but instead was killed in a duel by Loathar.

I was really happy with all the little details they added to appease fans of the games-- like the fishing rod bobber that is identical to the ones in WoW and the murloc in the beginning in Elwynn Forest.

My son saw Conjuring 2 yesterday and said he and his friend laughed through the first half of it because it was dumb. Of course, they're teenagers so they probably laugh at crippled hobos and stuff, too.

My only Warcraft experience is a few months in WoW around a decade ago so I'm probably not the target demo but the trailers looked like a by-the-book plot. Soldier-Man and Orc-Girl making moon eyes at each other got old even during the 2:30 trailer. I'll definitely wait until this is on FX six times a day.

According to wikipedia, $310.4 million grossed of the needed $450 million break even. Usually merchandising is a fairly significant portion of these types of films' revenue.

I felt the film is underrated by critics. It's standing around a 26% on RT now, and I feel it could justify a 40% or 50%. It's worse than say, lotr, but not that much worse, and still manages to be more original than the slew of copypaste super hero films scoring in the high 80s.

Context certainly helps with the enjoyment, as you become less focused on figuring out which one dimensional archetype a character is and instead distracted by exactly how that archetype will be executed.

Not sure I'm surprised at all by it under performing. Films based on games have historically been problematic, since those who are not fans of the game are usually not going to bother seeing it in the theater because they assume (usually correctly) that it's aimed at fans of the game, and they're not going to get a lot out of it (or they just don't enjoy the genre anyway). Those who are fans of the game are usually going to be harsh critics, and the slightest thing that isn't right in their minds will be viewed as a negative. And frankly, fans of games who've seen horribly awful films made of the games they love have become jaded. Even if I was an active Warcraft player, my reaction to hearing about a Warcraft film would be "Eh. It'll probably suck. I'll wait for it to come out on cable/netflix/whatever". The track record on this just isn't that great IMO.

I am looking forward to the Assassin's Creed movie coming out this year. I like the previews I have seen so far. And, from what I have read about it, it looks like they aren't trying to take a game story and cram it into 2 hours. Instead, they wrote a completely new story specifically for a movie that uses the idea and world that was set up. If it is done the way that it reads, it should be a good adaptation.

Whether that means it will make money is a different question. They will still need to get over the stigma of movies based on games is bad. I also hope that the studio doesn't get really stupid and make an "Assassin's Creed: The Movie: The Game" (like Street Fighter did).

Edited, Jun 21st 2016 1:09pm by AnimalOnSylph

Oh, absolutely. I'm sure maybe someday someone might figure out a way to do this and make bank. The problem is that films based on other sources (like books, TV shows, and yes, even comic) are already in a story format. The content may sometimes take some effort (and good timing) to attain broad appeal, but they're at least starting with something that is a story in the classical sense. I suspect that part of the reason films based on games are more difficult is that games are not really story driven. They're innately interactive. They are about environments in which the players interact. Fans of games are fans because they play the game. Fans of a book read the book. Fans of a TV series watched the series. Fans of a comic series read that series. It's hard to verbalize why that makes a difference, but it does seem to.

I'll also point out that films based on comic book characters actually have a pretty good success rate. But they had to be broadly known comic characters. Superman was a huge hit back in 1978. Batman has been pretty successful too (even the first set). It was Marvel that had difficulty for a long time making feature films, but that was largely a combination of their characters being less well known to the broad audience (except for Spider Man, which well, was a big hit the first time out as well). Marvel also had issues because it had sold the film rights for what few well known characters they did have (Spiderman mostly, but I suppose you could put X-men and Fantastic Four in there as well, each of which had pretty darn successful runs as feature films, well X-men anyway). Marvel puttered around with attempts to do the Punisher (with varying degrees of success at best). Ironically, it was Blade that was their first big hit (as Marvel Studios anyway), and with what could quite arguably be said to be a fringe character at best in the Marvel Universe.

Eh. In any case, I'd argue that the successes have far outweighed the flops when it comes to comic book based feature films. Where I think your analogy does work is being able to take less well known characters and make good films with them. And that is something that Marvel seems to have figured out. If You'd asked me whether a film based on Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy had a chance of being much more than direct to video releases 10 years ago, I'd have laughed out loud at you. So yeah, it's possible to figure this out for game based characters and stories, but they need to find a way over that hurdle. Maybe start with a good story first? We seem to basically get a rehash of the plot to "Dungeons and Dragons: the movie" each and every time.



Hah! Yup. That was a classic. So bad it was actually good. Not quite "Mom and Dad save the Earth" good, but close.

Mostly I stopped buying games because I don't have the kind of time to play them that I used to. But you are correct that I've never been a huge fan of games with story "rails", so to speak (always more preferred more strategy/tactical games or open world games). I'm not sure Warcraft falls remotely into that category though. In fact, I'm quite sure it doesn't. But if someone were making a film based on one of those types of games, they'd run afoul of not having nearly enough time in a single film to include the entire story, which would certainly result in fan rage.

Eh. And even games with tight stories still tend to have multiple character choices along the way. Again, that's tough to implement as a film. You either stick to a single instance of the story (specific character choices) and get stuck with a smallish fan support (cause honestly, my other beef with those games was the almost universally moronic nature of the plots within, which means only people who are *really* fans will want to see the film, and half of them will be pissed at the character choices the film goes with). Or they deviate completely and get fan rage from that too.

Ironically, I actually think your best odds would be a film set in a more open game setting (like any of the MMORGPs out there). So Warcraft had as good or better a shot as any. But, as I mentioned above, you actually have to write a good story. It honestly seems like the folks who write the scripts for films set in game universes kinda phone it in or something. It's like they think that the fact that it's set in <insert popular game world here> will make audiences forget that the plot they wrote is moronically simplistic and trope-laden. I have no clue what the plot for Warcraft is, but I'd guess it's got the usual mix of world threatening danger, band of unlikely heroes rising together to fight it despite differences in background, race, class, national identity, etc that might otherwise make them adversaries, a mix of poorly defined magic/tech/whatever to drive the plot forward as needed, random luck that gets them through, and probably every other stereotyped story element that we can think of.


Funny thing is that you can include all that stuff and still have a great film. You just have to get the right balance. I also firmly believe (cause I've seen it too often) that many writers mistakenly assume that if the world you're writing for requires suspension of disbelief for some form of magic/tech, that this means the audience will suspend disbelief in basic plot elements as well. I'm not sure what it is about a sci-fi/fantasy setting that makes writers do this, but they do. And the result is gaping plot holes that the writer thinks aren't a big deal because "magic/tech", but the viewers will hate because "magic/tech doesn't work like that". Dunno. Just a general trend I've seen.

Wow what a ******* necro Time good **** fam as the kids say.

I think the bigger question is where the $450M figure comes from. Yes, the article mentions the source, but how did that source determine that figure? Assuming the $160M figure was the actual production cost for the film (it calls it the "budget", which is kind of an odd term to use since budgets are usually projections. Why not just tell us how much it cost to make and promote the film?), where does the additional $290M come from? I mean, I get that production companies want to make a profit, but three times the cost of the film seems a bit off, and would not remotely be the "break even" point (not for normal definitions of the phrase anyway).

So yeah, Not getting that at all based on the data we have.

I mean, I really don't know and don't care enough to to dig into the nitty gritty, but as I said, I assume the theater take is the biggest portion.

http://www.rogerebert.com/letters/how-your-ticket-price-is-divided

So the question remains, is 450M good enough for a 160M production, with the various intangibles Blizz gets in addition? I mean, it's no Captain America, but it's not Ghostbusters, either. (#14 on the 2016 list.) A meh, it didn't bankrupt us but probably not going to spawn a sequel?