Hear ye, hear ye! All heroes are called upon to heed these words!Ī call to arms has been issued by the ! All able bodied individuals are entreated to take up arms against the dark threat of the Kor Kron scum all across the lands of Azeroth ! Rumors fly of new threats rising from the depths of the Abyss ! There’s a terminal flimsiness, as if this virtually-derived world hasn’t quite assumed three dimensions.MINIONS, SERVANTS, SOLDIERS OF THE HOLY LIGHT ! OBEY THE CALL OF THE ALLIANCE !!! Director Duncan Jones, a self-professed Warcraft fan, has clearly put a lot of love and care into fleshing out a story, but it’s questionable whether it was ever really merited. Perhaps both problems are down to the film’s computer game origins. Much processing power has been put in the service of spectacular, bludgeoning combat, but the images are somehow insubstantial, and we rarely feel the heat of the battle. The heavy use of CGI, and its occasionally awkward interactions with the live-action elements, only serves to distance us even more. Here, we barely see Azeroth outside the royal castles and wizards’ towers and epic battlegrounds. In The Lord of the Rings, we had the Shire, the Hobbits’ idyllic pastoral realm, as an image of what everyone was fighting for – one that 20th-century Europeans could easily relate to. That’s part of the problem with Warcraft: there’s a lot going on and yet we’re never quite engaged with it. We want to find out more about her, but between plot demands and the speech impediment caused by her prosthetic dentistry, we don’t really get to. Played by Paula Patton, she’s one of the story’s most intriguing characters, a tough-talking warrior concealing a traumatic past. There’s also Garona, a green-skinned half-orc, half-human with divided loyalties. Durotan has his doubts about the soul-sucking orc leader and attempts to broker a deal with the humans. The first character we meet is Durotan, a principled orc chieftan and new father, played in expressive performance capture by Toby Kebbell (he’s lighter skinned than other, more evil orcs but let’s not dwell on that). To its credit, Warcraft does blur the us v them battle lines. Is this a veiled Ukip broadcast? Or a pro-Trump one? Nobody suggests the orcs are there to steal Azeroth’s jobs or exploit its benefits system, thankfully, though they are intent on overrunning their adoptive country and sucking the souls out of all its living creatures. The prospect of a predominantly white, European realm being invaded by foreign, primitive, darker skinned hordes (they are actually called the Horde) might set alarm bells ringing in our current climate of immigration anxiety. One badass has rhino skulls as shoulder pads, another has piercings through his tusks.
Accessories include dreadlocks, piercings, hides, pelts and not just bones but entire animal skeletons. When it comes to orc style, the art directors have really gone to town – or at least to the abattoir. These orcs aren’t the anonymous monsters of Tolkien lore they’re more like intelligent ogres, with tiny heads, tusk-like lower canines, and giant hands with fingers the size of human arms. Azeroth’s stability is rocked by a sudden influx of orcs, who pour in from another world through a magic portal. The population is mostly human, mostly white, but there are also dwarves, elves and various other mythical creatures in the fringes.
Our home world is Azeroth, a Middle-earth-like realm along the lines of medieval Europe. Newcomers have a lot to get up to speed with here. Its greatest battle could be against widespread indifference. Like the 2012 Martian flop, it’s a complex, jargon-heavy, deadly earnest battle epic, short on star power and with more than a touch of 1970s fantasy art about it.
But there’s also a whiff of the John Carter about it. And there’s much to admire in its ambition, its design, even its politics. It’s an expensive, high-fantasy epic reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.
T he World of Warcraft online game apparently had 12 million players at its peak, and every single one of them is going to need to turn up to see this – with their extended families – if it’s ever going to get past its first instalment.
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