If the world needed a film about the video game “World of Warcraft,” many routes would’ve been more successful than this mess of a narrative film. You could conceive, as ESPN has, of a live broadcast of gamers playing “World of Warcraft” to a rapt arena of fans. Or there might be a virtual reality film where audience members get to choose their own adventures. Or, perhaps better yet, a documentary about Warcraft cosplayers.
Ideas for better movie concepts float through your mind when you’re sitting through two hours of execrable high fantasy.
The film begins as if it’s a sitcom about an orc couple named Durotan (Toby Kebbell) and Draka (Anna Galvin). They’re just two huge green creatures trying to have a baby in this crazy mixed up world. Unfortunately, their clan is under the leadership of Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), wizened warlock who uses an evil magic called “the fel” to lay waste to the orc home planet, Draenor. Using the fel and the lives of his many prisoners, Gul’dan opens a portal and sets his Kryptonite eyes on a new conquest, Azeroth.
The territory he wishes to colonize is ruled by King Llane (Dominic Cooper) and his lieutenant Lothar (Travis Fimmel). Their reaction to the orc hordes is pretty much, “Oh crap!,” so they request protection from the mage Medivh (an embarrassingly bad turn by Ben Foster). He’s full of off-putting quotes like, “I exist to protect this realm.” He’s deputized by Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) a young buck spell chucker, and the wooden pair twitch about via teleportation, fitfully assisting the humans against Gul’dan’s dark charms.
After more earth is scorched, man and orc, Lothar and Durotan, find commonalities, like having silly names, not wanting to die for no reason and continuing to accrue fun piercings and bedazzled armor. They form a grunting and hirsute coalition against the fel.
Director Duncan Jones (known for his 2009 debut “Moon” less so than for being David Bowie’s kid) hilariously insists that “Warcraft” is his passion project, though he leaves his actors scarcely visible on CGI backgrounds of castles and griffins. The dialogue is so flat he would have been better served to cull it straight from the computer games for greater vérité.
The only (and even then just vaguely) interesting character is Paula Patton’s half-orc, half-human Garona - that means “cursed one” in orc if you didn’t already know - a sort of interspecies La Malinche (the Nahua woman who interpreted for and bore the children of conquistador Hernán Cortés, and has born centuries of victim-blaming for her troubles). Garona is not as large as other orcs and flashes demure little tusklets. She has creepy interactions with both human and orc males though, at one point, she succinctly shuts down Lothar: “You would not be an effective mate.” Not that it stops him, and the film, from awkwardly blundering ahead. If only, right after that line, we could open a portal straight to the end credits.
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“Warcraft” is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated PG-13. Running time 2:03. Visit cinemawest.com.
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