War­craft: The Beginning

Let’s go back to the begin­ning. In 1994, Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment released its real-time strat­e­gy game War­craft: Orcs and Humans, in which orcs from the world of Draenor used a mag­i­cal trans-dimen­sion­al por­tal to invade the human world of Aze­roth. Its suc­cess led to two sequels – but it was not until a full decade lat­er, with the emer­gence in 2004 of ​‘mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online role-play­ing game’ World of War­craft, that the game would become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Two years lat­er, Bliz­zard part­nered up with Leg­endary Pic­tures to work on the inevitable film ver­sion. Noto­ri­ous video games adapter Uwe Boll put him­self for­ward as direc­tor, but was swift­ly rejected.

Bliz­zard want­ed to go back to the world(s) of War­craft: Orcs and Humans, build­ing a poten­tial movie fran­chise from the ori­gin sto­ry for what has become an expan­sive gam­ing mul­ti­verse – but pro­duc­tion was delayed over con­cerns that view­ers might find this saga of not just humans and orcs, but also dwarves, elves and wiz­ards, too close to the mythos of Peter Jackson’s then recent Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy. Even­tu­al­ly Dun­can Jones – best known as the direc­tor of cere­bral SF flicks Moon and Source Code, but also him­self an avid longterm play­er of the game – was brought on board, and the result is a sprawl­ing, effects heavy fan­ta­sy epic.

As pow­er-hun­gry orc war­lock Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) leads an advance par­ty through a Dark Por­tal from the deplet­ed lands of Draenor to fer­tile Aze­roth, clan chief­tain and new father Durotan (Toby Kebbell) begins to won­der whether Gul’dan and his destruc­tive ​‘Fel’ mag­ic might in fact be the cause of all the Orcs’ woes, rather than their sal­va­tion. Mean­while on the human side, Com­man­der Anduin Lothar (Travis Fim­mel), broth­er-in-law to the uni­fy­ing King Llane Wrynn (Dominic Coop­er), sees a threat to Azeroth’s very exis­tence, and joins forces with young rene­gade magi­cian Khadgar (Ben Schnet­zer) and tough-lov­ing orc-human half­breed Garona (Paula Pat­ton), even as Medi­vh (Ben Fos­ter), the mag­ic-wield­ing high pro­tec­tor of Aze­roth, seems off his Guardian game.

Much as Llane rules a king­dom of tol­er­ance and equal­i­ty (and is him­self in a mixed-race mar­riage with Ruth Negga’s Lady Taria), the screen­play from Jones and co-writer Charles Leav­itt (Blood Dia­mond) affords a bal­anced view of both sides in the con­flict, each with their own heroes, rebels, trai­tors and mega­lo­ma­ni­acs. The basic sto­ry (colour­ful­ly immer­sive fan­ta­sy idyll invad­ed for its resources) is essen­tial­ly Avatar with­out the SF – a debt that is acknowl­edged with Lothar’s aer­i­al swoop­ings on a winged gryphon, and with the blue tones that char­ac­terise Aze­roth mag­ic. There are also obvi­ous debts to Lord of the Rings, although this time around, instead of Gol­lum we get a golem. Last but not least, the mon­strous medieval­ism of Army of Dark­ness (whose direc­tor, Sam Rai­mi, was for a time attached to helm War­craft: The Begin­ning) is evoked by an ear­ly ref­er­ence to a ​‘boom­stick’, and by a deep seam of fun run­ning through all the sur­face earnestness.

It is all too easy to mock a film like War­craft: The Begin­ning for its sil­ly names, its arcane back­ground lore and its cheesy nerdism (as though Star Wars or super­hero flicks are so dif­fer­ent). Yet while Jones’ film is cer­tain­ly not for every­one (what film is?), it should also be remem­bered that, besides the legions of tween escapists, fan­ta­sy freaks, Tolkien zealots and Dun­geons & Drag­ons devo­tees for whom this mate­r­i­al may prove a per­fect fit, there are also over 100 mil­lion reg­is­tered users on World of War­craft. So the film seems like­ly to recruit a sub­stan­tial army of view­ers in sym­pa­thy with what it has to offer – and they will be amply reward­ed with the grand spec­ta­cle of the film’s design work, the immen­si­ty of its world build­ing, and the relent­less mobil­i­ty of its sto­ry­telling (where char­ac­ters always seem to be in motion, whether car­ried by horse, wolf, gryphon or tele­por­ta­tion spell). And if the ensem­ble roles here feel rather stock, at least they are human­ised – or orcised – with the occa­sion­al fun­ny, idio­syn­crat­ic line.

Best of all, the mo-capped, com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed orcs come with a real sense of bulk to match their brava­do. The first time they are seen fight­ing, in Elwynn For­est, they are gen­uine­ly ter­ri­fy­ing – and while War­craft: The Begin­ning is far from a hor­ror film, nonethe­less it shows count­less extras and even the odd prin­ci­pal get­ting ham­mered, sliced and crushed to their doom in bru­tal com­bat sequences. This is also, as the film’s title sug­gests, only the start of things, end­ing with one key bat­tle, rather than the war, being won (and lost), and with a lot of ges­tures towards the next gen­er­a­tion and a com­pli­cat­ed future (more mis­cege­ny and may­hem!) in store.