I’ll be honest, Warcraft wasn’t on my list of anticipated films for the year of 2016. I played around with the original strategy games, even did a free WoW trial, but I’m not invested in the franchise at all. And while I do enjoy the occasional big dumb fantasy movie, Gods of Egypt left a bad taste in my mouth because it was just too dumb to stay within my threshold. I was morbidly curious though, because while the movie was critically clotheslined, several of my friends on Twitter and Facebook mentioned that they rather enjoyed it, while admitting that it was pretty dumb, but in a fun way. I’m sure your enjoyment will vary, depending on your level of exposure to the gaming franchise it’s based on, but even if you’re totally in the dark, there’s stuff here to entertain you.
For starters, CGI or not, the Orcs looked really good, sounded pretty game-accurate, if memory serves me correctly. Yeah, it sorta feels like every other fantasy/action movie you’ve ever seen, both better and worse, but I can think of ten of the best movies of all time that borrow heavily from similar films that came before it. The two main questions I ask myself when watching a movie like this, are “Does it borrow, or blatantly plagiarise?” and even if it’s guilty of both of those things, “Does it do so in an entertaining way?” so I’m easy to please in that regard. Some stuff is just bad, and nothing could have saved it. I mentioned Gods of Egypt before, but how many of these things were borderline unwatchable in the last five years alone? The fun ones are few and far between, but Warcraft makes the cut. It’s not perfect, and you might roll your eyes a time or two, but it’ll probably win you over. And if it doesn’t, well it falls just short of two hours, excluding credits, and you do get some brutal fights, and a Ben Foster doing his best Gandalf impersonation, and you could probably do worse things with your time.
I can’t say that I was overly compelled by the story itself, though it really only exists to connect the set pieces. You can tell that they were going for a world-building movie, as this one takes place well before the games in the series. A keener eye would recite to you all the little easter eggs that imply bigger things in the future, but as I said, it’s not really my world. If that is you, I’m sure you’ll have an even better time with Warcraft than I did. universal’s Blu-ray release of serves the film well. For the purpose of this review, I was sent a 2D copy of the film, so I can’t comment about the quality of the 3D Blu-ray, but it looks nice in 1080p. It’s a new release title, so you really don’t have to worry about artifacts and digital scrubbing, but I didn’t spot any sort of obvious errors in the transfer. I know the Dolby Atmos track shook the walls in the room directly above me, so I feel safe in saying that it is an effective one. The bonus content is about as plentiful as we’ve come to expect from new releases from big studios. It’s nothing worth stopping the presses over, but they do give you some cool little bits, if you feel hungry for more after the movie. See below for full technical specs, and a listing of the extra features. Warcraft is now available on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, 4K UHD, Digital HD and DVD from Universal.
Special Features:
Deleted/Extended Scenes
Gag Reel
The World of Warcraft on Film
The Fandom of Warcraft
Warcraft: Bonds of Brotherhood Motion Comic
Warcraft: The Madame Tussauds Experience
ILM: Behind the Magic of Warcraft
Warcraft Teaser – 2013
Technical Specs:
Language & Audio: Blu-ray: English Dolby Atmos / English DVS Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo / Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround / French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Subtitles: Blu-ray: English SDH / Spanish / French