I mean, it’ll never reach the levels of the Lotr or Hobbit movies, but it is a good one nonetheless. The effects were good (there were a few moments where scenes looked rather fake, but all in all it was good enough). The costumes were good. The acting was sufficient, but it’s one of the reasons that keep it behind the lotr movies: sufficient but not great. This is where it lacked something. You get no hero-aura from Lothar, no greatness emanates from the king, specially at first, and no power from the young magician. The queen was sweet and good-hearted, but didn’t emanate any wisdom or greatness, and this was a shame.
I’m not sure now what could have been done differently, if it was the choice of actors or if there was something lacking in the direction or in the lights or in the music, I can’t point it out but there was no wow effect when we meet them. That’s mostly what keeps this movie below the others. The story too, of course, but they are totally different kinds of stories, it’s not really fair to compare them only because they’re both fantasy; if someone dares to say that ‘there are the same races and rules’ so it’s nothing new, instead of yell in their faces I could simply point out that action movies are all identical, indeed they are, and nobody complains. A fantasy movie must have different races and costumes and horses and swords, but that doesn’t mean that they are the same thing. They aren’t.
For someone like me who has never played the game and didn’t know the story at all, the beginning with the orcs was very bizarre and not much involving. I think it should have started differently, Lothar should have narrated the “this is how it all began” part, specially since he’ll be there to see how it goes while the one who narrated it will not.
I think we should have heard Lothar’s voice while watching casual images of the Azeroth world, the life and the different species inhabiting it. I know that in a way the orcs are more protagonists than the humans, but the audience is human and would have been able to relate more, this way.
The narrating voice over images of the world, describing what kind of a world it was before the orcs came, showing the elves and the dwarves and the humans, the people briefly and close up shots of the ones in power, without dialogue. Then he should have started to talk about the orcs that changed that world, describing a species of terrible strength, fierce fighters who came here to kill and destroy... and then we should have seen Durotan and Draka joking and talking about the baby coming, making a strong contrast with the ‘fierce’ part and capturing the viewer’s attention!
Also, work out a way, with lights or close-ups or music or whatever, to make us ‘feel’ the greatness of certain characters. I appreciated the idea of making it look like a normal thing, I mean, a normal world with normal people, in the character’s point of view that’s how it is, but the audience must ‘feel’ more.
Since the names are all difficult and strange, they should have been spoken more. The characteristics of the characters should have been explained sooner - I admit it took a while for me to understand that the green came from the magic, and that not all the orcs were under its effect.
It might seem now that I didn’t like it, but I did, I kept watching and it grew on me, and I liked the guardian’s outfit and the magic special effects, and yes, the story too, I liked it, it was good. A sequel would probably be better because the audience now knows everything already about the species and the types of magic and everything.
We see two orcs, Durotan and Draka, and they talk and joke and they’re going to have a baby. He tells her that she must hide her pregnancy (or she won’t be allowed to join the horde). Their world is dying so they must search for a new home for their people. We see their leader Guldan, he uses the lives of prisoners to feed his magic and use it to open a portal to another world. They plan to invade Azeroth, attack and kill, and keep prisoners to feed the magic (and themselves, I think).
We move to Azeroth, where a leader, Lothar, is informed that villages have been attacked my a mysterious force. A young mage named Khadgar (I looked it up on the internet because I didn’t understand it watching the movie) examines the body and understands there’s a dark magic at work, and insists on speaking to the king about summoning the Guardian. They speak to the king and he agrees and gives Lothar his ring and Lothar and Khadgar go to the guardian’s tower to explain. He can’t refuse if the king summons him, so he joins them (not that it looked like he wanted to refuse, but anyway, he had no choice). With magic he teleports to talk to the king. Later, while on the road they are attacked. Khadgar creates a blue magic shield to protect the guardian while he works his magic and he kills all the orcs under the effect of the fel magic (fel is another word I found on the internet, watching the movie I understood ‘vil’, or ‘veel’ for the English pronunciation), which means only the green ones. Durotan escapes, finds and frees the half-orc Garona that was kept as a slave by the green orcs. Garona stumbles or our group and Khadgar imprisons her with his magic, so they take her prisoner.
Durotan talks to his friend and tells him to look around, everywhere their chief uses his magic, the earth dies, and he thinks that it was Guldan’s magic that killed their world, and the same thing could happen again. Guldan is too strong to be defeated though.
The king talks to Garona, who learned their language from the people the orcs kept as prisoners. Garona tells them why they have so many prisoners, and the king promises her her freedom if she helps them save their people. She takes them to see where they are, and tells them that they’ll be used to open the portal and let in the other orcs: ‘there are others?’ - ‘many more, this is just a small group’ .... Durotan sees her and tells her to inform the king that he wants a secret meeting, that this magic will kill everything and must be stopped. The king can’t refuse such an opportunity. A group of men meets Durotan’s group of orcs and they talk, but then a group of green orcs hiding comes out and starts fighting them all. Both men and Durotan’s orcs fight them, and finally the guardian comes to help, creating some kind of lighting barrier that separates orcs from humans. This would be great, if only a group of humans hadn’t remained on the other side. Among them, Lothar’s son. Lothar starts shouting for the guardian to let them through but there is no reply. The young man fights bravely but there is no hope. He is killed in front of Lothar’s eyes. When they go away, Garona finds the guardian, who has fainted, and brings him back to his Essence Font (again, internet) where he regains his strength. She stays with him to make sure he’s alright, and when he wakes up they talk and it is clear that she’s in love with Lothar (this romance was totally unnecessary, respect and admiration and desire to gain his good will would have been more appropriate; this is a war story, not the place for romance), and Medivh tells her of a woman who had loved him but he had to leave her because of his guardian role, then she goes to Lothar who is completely destroyed after his son’s death, but does not blame her.
Guldan orders that all traitors be killed, so Durotan’s clan fights with the green orcs: most of the clan is killed, but Draka escapes with her son.
Khadgar goes to the great council of all mages, whatever that’s called, to explain that he thinks Medivh has been poisoned by the fel (he saw the green light in his eyes); a strange portal opens for him, it never opened before, and the shadow that lead him to a book on the portal now tells him that the guardian has betrayed, which more or less is what he said. Basically she tells him that he must be stopped, killed. In favour of this line of action, the next scene shows us Medivh entering the font because completely without energy, and the font’s colour turning from blue to green, and he admits that he doesn’t know what he may have done, that he wanted to protect but instead he destroyed, that he can’t control the fel, nobody can... then his face looks up, with black eyes, and he takes the energy from his faithful servant, like Guldan did. Medivh goes to discuss plans with the king, who is unwilling to leave the lands unprotected - Lothar suggests taking ALL the soldiers to the portal to stop them from calling other orcs, that this should be his priority, but then Medivh comes and sides with the king, saying that his men and his own magic will be sufficient. He isn’t himself anymore, but of course nobody notices it before he looks the same - only acts a bit differently, and they ignore Lothar’s protests because he just lost his son and may not think fairly...
Durotan, who was in a cage, is freed by his ‘friend’ who opposed him before; he apologizes for going against him, saying that he could not understand an alliance with the humans against his own people, and lets him go. Tells him that Draka and the baby escaped; unfortunately we see that she’s found. She entrusts her son to the river in order to save him, and then attacks the orc who found her, to keep him away from the boy I suppose, and she succeeds in that. The orc is killed, but unfortunately she is too.
Durotan wants to show the others what kind of orc Guldan is, so he openly challenges Guldan to the traditional duel, and he doesn’t refuse, thinking it an easy win; Durotan is a better warrior than he thought though, and Guldan uses his magic on him, draining his life strength and defeating him. Before dying, Durotan shouts to his fellow orc that Guldan has no honor and is nothing without his magic. Durotan is killed with magic, and his ‘friend’ shouts that he will not follow this orc, asking the others if they will. Guldan’s magic is too strong though, and they don’t rebel.
Lothar has been locked in a cell, but is freed by Khadgar; the two of them go to the guardian’s tower, and immediately Medivh attacks them, looking like a powerful monster. Medivh is trying to open the portal (as Khadgar had worked out, the orcs couldn’t open it all by themselves; maybe Guldan didn’t know it, that I don’t know, but the portal was opened by Medivh). Khadgar tries to stop the guardian, while Lothar fights against his golem. He manages to get Medivh to behead it. Khadgar tells Lothar to keep Medivh busy and lure him in the Font, while he manages to lure the golem into his magic rune. Finally the golem enters and is transported into the Font, on top of the guardian, stopping his magic.
The king and his men, with Garona, attack the orcs. Guldar opens the portal and more orcs arrive. When Medivh is stopped, the portal closes. Khadgar has fallen into the green Font too, and is now ‘wrapped’ in it, the fel all around and in him, under Lothar’s eyes. Khadgar does a magic to him, but it’s a blue shield, to protect him. Khadgar had read that from light comes darkness, but from darkness comes light, so he works a big magic to get rid of the fel, a big explosion of magic and the Font is dry now. Lothar looks at his eyes to make sure, but they’re normal now (well, Medivh’s eyes looked normal too when he was out of the Font, when they talked to him, but he had to be already under its power if he had already helped open the portal, but Lothar is not a mage so...)
Now Lothar hurries to help his king, using his gryphon to save time.
Medivh is not yet dead, but he’s himself again, and with his last energy he does one final magic: he opens the portal, but to an Azeroth place, so the king can sent all the prisoners through it and towards safety. He keeps it open as long as he can, until the energy abandons him. He tells Khadgar that it’s solitude that makes us weak, and that he only wanted to protect, to save them all. The guardian dies, the portal is definitely closed and now it’s a very shitty situation for the human troops.
The battle is not going well, and the king knows that there is no hope of survival. There are too many enemies, there is no chance for them, so the king tells Garona that it’s no use to die both, and that she could be the hero who killed the king, the one to bring peace between orcs and humans.
She doesn’t want to, it pains her terribly, but at the last moment, when the orc champion is about to kill him, Garona uses the weapon the queen gave her to defend herself, and she kills him! She’s now welcomed among them as a true orc because she killed their leader.
Lothar arrives to see the king already dead. He tries to take his body away with him, but is captured. He fights their champion and easily wins, knowing that you can’t win in a battle of strength but he must use his brain, so he slides down and cuts him from beneath. Guldar yells that he must be killed, but that is against the rules, the duel is sacred among orcs and they don’t obey, not one orc stops him while he walks among them and flies away with the king’s body.
Obviously Lothar thinks she made her choice and willingly killed the king; Khadgar can’t believe it, but they have no other explanation.
At the king’s funeral, the queen makes a good speech on how it is important now to be united to honor the king’s sacrifice, and Lothar will be the leader in the battle that is to come - he’s also the queen’s brother.
We see that Draka’s baby is found by humans.
Now the portal has been closed, but there are a lot of orcs in this world now, and for sure there will be a war between humans and orcs.
I hope we’ll get to see it.
ITA warcraft l’inizio
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