The Warcraft movie is ill-conceived propaganda for the Alliance

Warcraft

Garona is a half-orc slave of Gul'dan who knows how to slice a man in two with a sword, but decides to join the humans because they have warm, fluffy blankets.

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I'm not too proud to confess that I love watching vaguely humanoid creatures smash each other with hammers and broadswords. I mean, that's what's best in life. So here's some good news about Warcraft, the new movie based on the PC games: it delivers quite a bit of orc-on-orc action, particularly in the giant hammer department. The gryphons are good, too. But in spite of the action, you're left wanting more. That's because this movie lacks compelling characters whose adventures we actually care about.

The plot of Warcraft is needlessly complicated, though it all boils down to orcs fighting humans. Orc warlock leader Gul'dan has brought the Horde together to flee Draenor, the orc homeworld, because he's trashed the environment with evil fel magic. The Horde is preparing to head through a giant portal to the human world of Azaroth and take over. Meanwhile, the humans have never seen orcs before and are not crazy about orc colonial tactics, which involve the aforementioned hammers, as well as general burning and killing. All the battle scenes are genuinely fun, and it's entertaining as hell to watch the humans figuring out how to exploit orc weaknesses in one-on-one combat.

Too many cooks

Instead of telling a relatively straightforward story of the clash between two worlds pitted against each other by dark magic, Warcraft zooms from land to land, character to character, delivering a stew of a tale that suffers from way too many ingredients. There's the drama of Anduin, a great warrior whose son has finally reached soldiering age, who struggles to overcome the fear his son will die just like his wife did. There's Garona, the half-orc slave girl, torn between the world of the noble Horde and the vaguely democratic Alliance. Then there's Khadgar, a young sorcerer questioning his powers, whose mentor Medivh is sworn to protect Azaroth but is stricken by a mysterious ailment. And NO I'M NOT EVEN DONE, because then there's Durotan, a good orc leader who questions Gul'dan's fel-infused power-mongering. And there are also Orgrim and Draka, who secretly support Durotan's rebellion against Gul'dan.

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