Released in 2016 and directed by Duncan Jones, shortly before World of Warcraft's next expansion, Legion, Warcraft serves as the first full-length live-action-ish feature within the universe of Warcraft; an exciting event for many fans of the franchise.
Unfortunately, the film has a number of issues, but none of them are particularly large. The film itself isn't terrible. It was a decent attempt to broaden the narrative of the franchise by bringing it to the cinema, it just felt incredibly lacking.
With all the depth, the lore, the characters, strange events and locations within the games, Warcraft seems to have centred itself around a very, very small portion of it. For the most part, I believe this is where it felt so underwhelming, allowing it's overall focus to just miss.
The narrative is set around the events in the previous expansion, Warlords of Draenor, in which a powerful warlock advances his Orcish Horde to the lands of the Alliance through a portal created and powered by the life-force of captives themselves. With the Alliance set on defending their land and people, and many Orcs within the Orcish Horde disbelieving in Gul'dan's torturous magic that thrives on life itself, the two groups combine forces to combat him.
While there are many scenes that are pretty enjoyable, they're often the ones that really feel like they belong in the film and universe of Warcraft, but a considerable amount of the film's structure is trying to make the viewer care for the characters by showing us brief moments of their lives. It just doesn't really manage to connect with the little time it was given, but to a degree it is nice to see the attempt made; rather than sticking entirely to action and 'cool things'.
It's safe to say that the film was made to help advertise the next expansion within World of Warcraft -- and dwindling subscription numbers have been evident for a while, given Blizzard no longer displays the total count -- but I truly believe having it a feature rather than a series was its mistake. There was simply too much to say and show, and just not even time. A series would have worked better, giving space to the character development, action, and world that many fans were expecting to see on a larger screen.
It's good to establish that this film is a disappointment, but only due to the fact that it fell deep into mediocrity. It's not necessarily a bad film, it was just already carrying a heavy weight of expectations on its shoulders the moment it was announced. As a standalone film, I believe Warcraft would have performed a lot better, even established its own little extended universe.
