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There most certainly is an audience for this kind of sword-and-sorcery fantasy epic; I most certainly haven’t been part of that audience for 30 years or so. The world of the popular video game is transformed into a movie about a horde of humanoid orcs fleeing their ravaged world through a portal to a realm populated by humans, dwarves, wizards and, I’m guessing, 20-sided dice. There are characters with names—taciturn human warrior Lothar (Travis Fimmel); contemplative orc chieftan Durotan (Toby Kebbell); half-orc/half-human outcast Garona (Paula Patton)—and even a plot of some sort, involving a dark, corrupting magic called The Fell. But mostly it’s about hacking and slashing and spell-casting, sporadically interrupted by people talking about hacking and slashing and spell-casting, dense with half-hearted attempts at “world-building” and “character development” that you might expect in the average middle-schooler’s attempt at genre fiction. The motion-capture performances include some spectacular work, and director Duncan Jones' single-minded commitment to mythology and battle spectacle is almost admirable. It just doesn’t make much sense, or offer much fun to anyone who no longer talks about movies using phrases like, “It was so awesome when …”
Official Site: www.warcraftmovie.com
Director: Duncan Jones
Producer: Charles Roven, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Alex Gartner, Stuart Fenegan, Jillian Share, Brent O'Connor, Mike Morhaime, Paul Sams, La Peikang, Edward Cheng, Qian Shimu and Wang Zhonglei
Cast: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Rob Kazinsky, Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu, Ruth Negga, Anna Galvin, Callum Rennie, Burkely Duffield, Ryan Robbins, Dean Redman and Glenn Ennis
Director: Duncan Jones
Producer: Charles Roven, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Alex Gartner, Stuart Fenegan, Jillian Share, Brent O'Connor, Mike Morhaime, Paul Sams, La Peikang, Edward Cheng, Qian Shimu and Wang Zhonglei
Cast: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Rob Kazinsky, Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu, Ruth Negga, Anna Galvin, Callum Rennie, Burkely Duffield, Ryan Robbins, Dean Redman and Glenn Ennis
