The race is on to be the first team to successfully adapt a hit video game for the big screen. Michael Fassbender and Justin Kurzel are currently in pre-production on Assassin’s Creed, which certainly has the potential to outgun its many disappointing forebears. And now comes Warcraft: the Beginning, with a highly-rated young director, Moon and Source Code’s Duncan Jones, who clearly cares enough about the outlandish fantasy world imagined in the game to risk his career on trying to convince non-believers.
For let no one fool themselves, even with a whopping 5.5 million subscribers, Warcraft is not going to succeed at the box office unless it can convince those of us (myself included) who have never played the game that this is a universe worth delving into. That also means persuading mainstream film critics, most of whom don’t strike one as the type to spend their evenings battling through swords and sorcery-style adventures, to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in this world of giant, muscular orcs and beardy warrior humans.
At first glance, the debut trailer for Warcraft looks fabulous. The invading orcs are photo-real, the fantasy vistas are gloriously epic and the various giant beasties on offer are gorgeously palpable in lush CGI. This is also an environment which will be easily recognisable to film fans who enjoyed Peter Jackson’s classic the Lord of the Rings trilogy, though the effects for me recall the more computer-gamey look of the Hobbit prequel movies. In any case, there are heroes jumping on giant eagles, windswept snowy mountains, spectacular cities built into the sides of mountains and a whole lot of feisty blokes who resemble members of 1970s folk rock bands: every Tolkienesque box ticked, in other words.
But where is the story to lure in the uneducated viewer, the filmgoer who hasn’t played the game? The storyline seems to be pitched around the first encounter between human and orc civilisations, the latter arriving through a portal into a peaceful world that doesn’t seem to have enough room for their giant green asses. I’m told this is a repeat of a classic dynamic from the game, but it isn’t instantly obvious which side – or even which characters – we’re supposed to be rooting for.
Neither are any of these environments – yet – as alluringly cosy-colourful as The Shire, Bag End or say … The Prancing Pony from Tolkien’s books. Warcraft seems to have jumped straight to later episodes in Jackson’s movies where enormous CGI battles have become the norm. Where are the relatable, humble heroes to compare with Frodo or Bilbo Baggins, the home comfort-loving homunculi whisked from their cosy hobbit hole into the terrifying wider world beyond their borders?
This isn’t to suggest that Jones, an accomplished film-maker, won’t find heroes to make us care about, of course. But the trailer, to these eyes, offers such a panoramic view of the world of Warcraft that it’s hard to get much sense of the details. Perhaps that’s the best we could have expected, with the studio presumably determined to secure the support of all those subscribers first and foremost.
I’m intrigued to hear if the gamers out there “got” the trailer, because it frankly left me a little baffled. So please do lend me your comments below: is Warcraft set to take its place in the grand pantheon of swords and sorcery fantasy, becoming the first video game movie to break through to a wider audience in the process? Or is Jones’ movie destined to appeal only to those who have spent many hours exploring every corner of this vivid, but on the face of it pretty formulaic online world?
