Warcraft

Warcraft, the adaptation of Blizzard’s famous real-time strategy game, is a narratively ambitious movie that, despite some obvious problems, manages to fascinate the viewer with the complexity of its characters’ arcs.

The movie’s opening scene establishes a rivalry between orcs and humans and then the narrative goes back in time to tell how it grew: the orcs, having destroyed their own world, cross a portal to a place called Azeroth, where they immediately go to war with humans, dwarves, and elves. However, one of the orc leaders, Durotan (Tobby Kebell), believes that his commander Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) is to blame for the fate of their homeland and that if no one stops him, their new home will also be doomed.

Warcraft’s prologue works well in presenting the orcs, showing their tribal hierarchy (with clan chiefs) and bestial aspect while humanizing the protagonist: Durotan appears gently talking with his pregnant wife, Draka (Anna Galvin), worried about the prospect of her crossing the portal with him. It’s a sweet scene, whose dialogs mix warmth with the aggressive personality of the race: “Can you hide your fat belly?” he asks softly, to which she punches him and replies, “Better than you can hide your fat head.“

The following scene establishes the story’s central element: the magic called Fel, which offers incredible power to its user but drains the energy of living beings to function. Gul’dan appears killing dozens of prisoners and opening a huge portal through which hundreds of warriors rush across. The camera follows, traversing the portal, while the intense theme song composed by Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones) captures the climate of war.

Duncan Jones, however, is not a director whose main concern is the scale of the action. He doesn’t forget the impact of the deaths caused by Gul’dan, capturing the hand of one his victims falling among others, and neither the drama of the characters, quickly returning to the dilemma of Durotan and his wife. He is also visually inventive during this scene, playing with the perception of space during the journey through the portal.

It’s a prologue full of information, creating a pattern that the rest of the movie will follow with its frenetic pace. The main plot being very simple – Gul’dan must be defeated, because his green magic is bad – actually works in its favor since it stops that the narrative from becoming too convoluted or confusing. It also gives Jones time to build several characters whose stories intertwine. General Lothar (Travis Fimmel), for example, is the narrative center of the humans, with his relationship with his son Callan (Burkley Duffeld) and with the king Llain (Dominic Cooper) composing his character arc. These last two supporting characters also have their own arcs: the former wants to prove his worth as a soldier to compensate for his rejection by his father, while Llain wishes to extend to the orcs, if possible, the peace agreement that he maintains with the others races – both goals leading them to make terrible sacrifices. Most supporting characters in Warcraft follow this pattern, each having their own arc.

Lothar, for example, also finds himself working with a half-orc, called Garona (Paula Patton), whose nature reflects her narrative function: to be a bridge between men and orcs – and a bridge built by blood, as symbolized during the climax. Durotan’s friend Orgrim (Robert Kazinsky) also finds himself in a dilemma: as his friend plans to oppose Gul’dan, to be faithful to him means to betray his own leader and people. Therefore, despite the number of characters in the movie, few are flat. Now and then, they even challenge their stereotypes: when Gul’dan discovers that Draka is pregnant, for example, due to his villainous characterization – his right eye even shines in emerald green like the Fel – the audience is led to believe that he will respond with violence, but is then surprised by an affectionate – if still a bit sinister – action towards the child. Gul’dan’s magic can lead him to acts of incredible cruelty but, in the end, he still just wants to protect his people.

There is a clear effort on the part of the writers to not create one-dimensional antagonists. The orc Blackhand (Clancy Brown), for example, complains at one point that he doesn’t want to be forced to kill innocents again, while the character who designs the invasion of Azeroth does so with a mixture of good intentions and lack of control over himself. In other words, Duncan Jones avoids a Manichean, binary approach to the story, placing heroes and antagonists on both sides of the war. The real villain in Warcraft is actually the Fel magic, which corrupts and distorts the intentions of its users: despite wanting to protect their homes, Fel users usually end up causing their destruction. That’s where Warcraft’s narrative ambition lies: fantasy is a genre usually associated with adventure, but the movie’s story essentially a tragedy.

This is most evident in the arc of the guardian of Azeroth, Medivh (Ben Foster), in which tragedy manifests itself in one of its most classical formats. The guardian is driven by hubris, believing that he can be more than he is, trying to control forces greater than himself and helping beings beyond his scope, always rejecting help when it is offered to him. Medivh is then severely punished for his behavior, being directly responsible for his own ruin.

The character, however, becomes even more fascinating because of what is not said about him. Medivh suggests a troubled past and the existence of complex stories behind his motivations, but these things are just hinted at. He’s often enigmatic in his interactions with the other characters, leading to scenes fraught with ambiguity: when he opens himself to Garona, would Medivh be revealing that he is her relative or just venting his anguish and acting with affection? When the guardian claims that he wants to save everyone, is he also including the orcs in his plan? Those are questions that are never answered, leaving the character immersed in uncertainty.

The character arc of the guardian is further enriched by being physically manifested in the Golem that he constructs from clay: the creature’s initial purpose when juxtaposed to its function at the climax directly reflects the journey of its creator, while its final moments complements it symbolically. Medivh’s music theme, in turn, is appropriately melodic and sad, capturing the essence of the guardian’s journey.

In Warcraft, Jones builds a narrative packed with symbolism and hidden clues amid the action. If an attentive viewer looks closely at the scene in which Orgrim associates the presence of statues to the will of gods, for example, they will notice that, although the dialogue is primarily a joke, it also serves as a warning for the viewer to take notice of the identity of the only statue present in Azeroth.

The director also works with some interesting ideas, such as making the change of perspective between characters in a scene accompany that of the language they are speaking (Lothar’s English becomes an alien language when the camera focuses on an orc, for example), and making an aerial camera movement that briefly simulates the camera view of an RTS game, traveling through the battlefield.

So it’s a pity that Warcraft suffers from some very noticeable problems. Travis Fimmel, with his soft voice, is competent when he needs to be sarcastic or playful (as with the swift exchange of “It could be a trap,” “It is not,” “It could be“), but in his most dramatic scenes, he fails to convey any real emotion. On the opposite side, there’s is Paula Patton’s overacting as she constantly exaggerates in her facial expressions and always looks much more emotional than she should be. The editing by Paul Hirsch (The Empire Strikes Back) also falters with an abnormal excess of fusions, which give an amateur air to the project and end up suggesting the existence of several last-minute cuts. Incidentally, the film would have benefited from a slightly longer duration, allowing a more in-depth view of how Azeroth works: dwarves and elves, for example, barely appear, dissolving the force of the “For the Alliance!” uttered at the end.

Warcraft is a more ambitious movie that one would assume at first. Offering a large range of complex characters and a differentiated approach to the fantasy genre, the movie is one of the first successes in adapting videogames to the big screen.

December 04, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on June 17, 2016.