“Warcraft” and the Downfall of Fantasy Movies

Things have only gotten worse in the last nine years.

Remember when fantasy movies had a hope of being good? Me neither, but I’d like to think that time existed.

If you’re paying attention to the pop culture scene, you might look at 2016 as the year things started to go downhill. The whole MeToo extravaganza, identity politics, girl bosses, SJW’s…it was the perfect maelstrom and it descended on Hollywood, effectively destroying the type of good, honest storytelling that can be enjoyed by all. Sure, there are outliers. But it is no secret that movies and tv shows just aren’t that great anymore.

Back when this whole shindig started, there was this little, small, insignificant IP called Warcraft. (I know it’s a juggernaut; I’m being silly.) Warcraft is so tiny, in fact, I had never played the games, knew nothing about the lore, couldn’t care less about any of the world-building, and wouldn’t recognize a character if they bopped me on the nose. But I watched the movie because I like fantasy.

The only thing I remember liking about the movie was how the magic is portrayed. Since I didn’t care about World of Warcraft, I didn’t really give it another thought after watching it.

Until now, when I decided I wanted to re-watch it because I have genuinely never heard anyone mention this movie since it was released and I was curious if it deserves its forgotten fate. From the casual viewer’s perspective, yes it does. But I still find it impressive that they took this gigantic world with decades of history and so much potential and they didn’t just drop the ball; they butterfingered it into obscurity. They must’ve been gunning for sequels and spin-offs and prequels and tv shows and every other manner of money makers, but it was all for naught.

It’s not too hard to follow the movie’s plot, but it seems as if the writers dumped everything in a blender, hit “crush ice,” and forgot to put the lid on. It’s a hot mess, folks.

The basic plot is this: the Orc’s world is dying and they are coming to the human’s world. But oh no, they’re bringing bad magic and they’re killing and pillaging and whatnot, so now we gotta have a big battle.

The main issue, as I, the noob, see it, is that there are way too many characters. AND they’re all boring. It is the biggest limp noodle of a cast that has possibly ever existed in a fantasy movie.

There are about three factions it jumps between. We got humans, orcs and the magic users. But there are offshoots of those factions, and betrayers and backstabbers within those factions. I can guess why this is: they wanted to please as many fans as possible by including as big a variety of WoW elements as possible. They had to have the Horde and the Alliance, the Fel, the elves, dwarves, gryphons, boomsticks, this location, and that location, and some of this, and a dash of that, but nothing’s given the time it needs. This resulted in a fragmented, in-cohesive plot.

Granted, I am not the target audience and those WoW fans were probably filling in the gaping holes without even trying. But just because you’re catering to a devoted audience, doesn’t mean you serve them half-baked slop. And this is slop.

The humans are not well written or acted. The main human is trying to be different, but that means he stands out and it’s not in the good way (he does have one or two kinda funny moments). His son is badly written, worse-ly acted, and I didn’t care he died. The king dude is so generic, it had me wondering if he was even human; I also didn’t care when he died. The queen added nothing except questions about how she could possibly be the main human’s sister—I assume one of them was adopted. There was one other actor I recognized, but his character may as well not have existed.

The magic dudes, bless ‘em, are trying. The Guardian guy is cute, and powerful, and wearing a neat cloak. Then it turns out he’s the bad guy and I was upset. I’m not surprised I wiped that part of the story from my mind. Like, of course the one good lookin’ character who has any potential and didn’t get nearly enough screen time is actually the villain. Ty-pi-cal. And the dropout apprentice guy…his acting is not great, but of all the characters they could’ve centered a story around, his is the one I’d like to see.

The half-orc chick is awful and I’m about to say something that’ll light your pants on fire: the romance between her and the main human is worse than the dwarf/elf romance in The Hobbit movies. Did you hear me? It is WORSE THAN THAT! How?! And wow!

The rest of the orcs blur together. I was “distinguishing” them via their outfits and not at all because they were distinguishable via their personalities. I was a bit surprised when the main orc dude died, but then I realized I didn’t care. In fact, if all the orcs dropped dead nothing of value would’ve been lost. And I know that’s mean, considering they were showing the orcs as the heroes of their own story, but seriously, the orcs are boring. And oh no! the parents of the orc baby died! Great, now he can be like all the other humans in fantasy stories; you spread that equal orphan opportunity around, writers! No species shall be left untouched. (I did a post about this phenomenon.)

These characters are an utter smorgasbord of, “Did the writers even try?”

And the story…I really hope there are better ones in the WoW universe, ‘cause colonialism is such a downer in fantasy settings. I wanted something more from the magic dudes and the elves. Or maybe not the elves. I saw them and a couple of them spoke, but maybe they’re boring too.

I watched the behind-the-scenes stuff (thank you, library), and it must’ve been around 85% CGI. It hasn’t aged too poorly, but there is something off about it. It’s like they tried to merge the game cinematics with regular CGI, and it doesn’t work. And the cities—I assume they’re accurate—are weirdly lifeless. The whole world is lifeless. I saw plenty of things that looked like Easter eggs, but it’s all just there. Compare this to Bilbo’s house and it’s wildly different; Bilbo’s house is lived in, whereas this whole world is merely pieces that were placed to fill a void. There’s no soul or vivacity or care. It’s all washed out and dull.

I still really like how the magic looks though. I like the detail of the Guardian being able to instantly make a portal, but the apprentice still has to draw the symbols. Tactile magic users are something that is always enjoyed by me, especially if it’s not just a generic fireball. The magic users are where I see the most potential in this world and it sucks that they’re both given too much to do and it’s not fleshed out enough to feel like it matters and fits, or makes sense. The movie starts in the midst of their story and just assumes everyone knows the secret context going on here; they use the viewer’s knowledge to skip out on doing actual character work. Sometimes that might work, but when it’s a unique world like this and people have been clamoring to see it in action, it makes sense to show the long-awaited cool things.

The music sucks. It’s by the same composer who did Game of Thrones and I’m always disheartened when someone with obvious talent just doesn’t care and puts out generic epic stuff that’ll be forgotten in minutes.

The costumes aren’t that great either. I know WoW stuff is supposed to be exaggerated and slightly implausible, but this is mostly forgettable.

I’m guessing the fans wanted something else or where underwhelmed. I bet most of them no longer talk about it and have put it out of their mind. It’s not hard to see why.

So what is it about fantasy movies that makes them unlikely to succeed? (I will say, the Dungeons & Dragons movie is enjoyable. That’s about it in recent memory.) There’s a plethora of reasons why this genre consistently fails, but nowadays, I think it comes down to these two:

They Need to be Big and Successful

Fantasy is expensive to film. You need a unique world, costumes, castles, battles, strange creatures, magic…it’s a lot and will cost a lot. I get it. So when you’re making this new place with a big ol’ budget to recoup, you have to get it in front of as many people as possible. But fantasy, even in today’s larger pop culture pool, isn’t something everyone wants to see.

What do the film companies do then? They diversify (in all senses of the word). They add in every possible thing that could entice every possible viewer. Doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not, or if it completely muddies the whole soup. They must have sex, violence, politics, romance, wars, peace, intrigue, hot guys, hot women, more politics, big dragons, sword fights, morally gray characters, kings and queens, rogues and outlaws, magic users, magic users who lose their powers, morals quandaries, murder, mayhem, and probably some madness. Some stories can handle a lot of things. But if you have to keep all those different parts concurrent and satisfying to make sure all the viewers stay with you, well…you can’t. Something’s going to be lost in the pursuit of greater heights and once you start losing your grip on all the pies, you’re going to have a mess.

Because fantasy is so expensive, they pick the biggest worlds to pilfer from in hopes of reaping the biggest audience. And if something makes even the tiniest ripple, out come the sequels, prequels, reboots, offshoots, side quests, books, games, theme parks, Mamma Mia! It’s too much. Every IP is squeezed to exsanguination, then pumped full of rancid juice and squeezed again. Just stop already!

When chasing the big wins, you’re going to miss out on a lot of small wins. And that’s because…

They Don’t Know the Audience

You’ve maybe heard the term “modern audience.” If such a thing exists, they’re not doing much to save Hollywood. And if such a thing exists, they certainly aren’t in the fantasy space.

The audience that wants quality fantasy stories is not that big. Yes, The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit pulled in the dough, and Harry Potter was no slouch either. But those movies were a long time ago and what have we had since then? Warcraft? The Fantastic Beasts trilogy? Another Disney live-action remake? And don’t even get me started on the absolute wasted opportunity of fantasy shows.

The fantasy audience—now, correct me if I’m wrong—will gladly take the small, tidy stories over the mega sprawlers, if it means quality. We have experience waiting for stories, perhaps more than most. We will wait for the amazing stories of that one farmer guy traveling across the dangerous swamps to save his cow, because that is where fantasy starts. It begins with the solitary figure, the wandering bard, the jaded mercenary, the hobbit. Throwing a metric ton of disparate characters at the screen and expecting instant investment from the audience is not going to work, even if we know who these people are supposed to be.

Fantasy has decades of history, but the fat cats in Hollywood see the beloved works following a small group of adventurers, and they wonder how it can be expanded to include the entire world, story be damned. You can have your big battles and epic speeches, your sacrificial deaths and lost homes, but it ain’t gonna mean a thing if you skip the origin of what makes them worth fighting for.

Until film and tv show creators realize they can’t throw whatever they want at the screen and expect victory, we will never get more filmed fantasy worth sharing. It’s sad, but I’d rather have no fantasy than another bad fantasy.

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