The Warcraft fan’s dilemma: A movie, but it’s based on the 1994 DOS game?!

"Blizzard should make a movie" has been a wish for just about every fan that has seen one of the company's gorgeous CG cinematics. And this weekend, these gamers sort of got their wish when the Warcraft movie finally arrived stateside.

Sadly, I can't imagine many fans wanted to see this Warcraft story get made into a movie. While the film was obviously created due to the success of World of Warcraft, it is not "World of Warcraft: The Movie." The story simply doesn't take place in the "Modern" Warcraft era depicted in WoW and Warcraft 3. Instead, this is the "First War" film—depicting the battle between the Orcs and Humans. If you're going by the games, the story more or less follows "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" (aka "Warcraft 1"), the original DOS real-time strategy game from 1994.

This is a really weird choice for any movie. As a gamesake, "First War" represents a time before the Warcraft world really fleshed out into a solid, cohesive story. The Warcraft series has a ton of amazing stories some 20 years later, but the First War in Warcraft 1 isn't one of them. Blizzard's serious world building truly started with Warcraft 3 in 2002, which introduced fan-favorite characters like Thrall, Cairne, Jaina Proudmoore, Arthas, Kel'Thuzad, Sylvanas, Malfurion, Illidan, and many others. Warcraft 1 and the Warcraft movie take place a full generation before any of this happened.

Most fans would probably rather see a Frozen Throne/Wrath of the Lich King movie, where Prince Arthas turns from a promising young paladin into a death knight that embraces the dark side and leads an army of the undead across the continent. Or how about a movie centered on Illidan Stormrage, a night elf whose quest for power turns him into a demon and one of Warcraft's preeminent badasses? Even the Moses-like story of Thrall (who is just a baby in this movie) as he leads the Orcs away from Fel magic slavery and settles the new Horde in Durotar could be epic on the big screen.

Instead, Warcraft fans can see a Warcraft movie without any of their favorite Warcraft characters. (Unless you want to count Baby Thrall, and I don't.) The characters we do get are just as one-dimensional as they are in the 1994 DOS game. As a fan, the lack of Warcraft VIPs or interesting characters means this movie instead becomes about the locations, spells, armor, and weapons on display. The filmmakers even seem aware of this—some of the movie posters are just weapons. The film seems less interested in plot and more determined to be a super HD remake of World of Warcraft that you aren't allowed to play. Seeing glimpses of Stormwind (which should not exist yet), Dalaran (which should not be floating yet), and Ironforge was amazing. So if it were up to me, I would have spent more time ogling the towns and armor rather than dealing with the minimal plot.

The Warcraft film's super early timeline also means we don't get much in the way of combat variety. Warcraft, even the RTS games, has always been a game of many different classes (or units) with different fighting styles and approaches to combat. Rogues stay in the shadows and ambush their prey with poison daggers and stun moves; Paladins are plate-wearing champions of the light, mixing support spells with a bigass hammer; Hunters fight from a distance, flinging arrows and sending their animal companion in for close combat; Priests are purely support, saving lives with healing spells and buffs.

None of this is in the Warcraft movie. Other than the two mages, Khadgar and Medivh, everyone in the film appears to have two combat options: 1) swing sword, 2) punch face. I don't think there was a single bow and arrow on-screen. Nobody is healed. Paladins, a staple class of the alliance, don't exist yet. The Horde, which for now is just Orcs, doesn't know about Shamanism. Even the characters that have classes don't have those classes respected by the movie. Gul'dan, a Warlock so decrepit his staff doubles as a walking stick, still just rips off his shirt, hulks out, and starts punching when it's time to fight. All the usual diversity in Warcraft's combat has been sucked out, leaving viewers with mass warrior versus warrior battles like any other Hollywood blockbuster.

Despite all the complaints, there are some minor bits of joy for diehards. The armor and weapons depicted are fantastic, striking a good balance between ornate and colorful while skipping the massive scaling issues Blizzard's designs can create. There are a ton of little in-jokes, too. You'll see a murloc, a guard gets polymorphed, and a couple of people get /dueled. Mages port all over the place, and if you watch carefully, someone even dings (levels up) at the end.

Ultimately, like the Warcraft 1 game that inspired it, this film feels like the setup for a sequel. In fact, it's even called "Warcraft: The Beginning" in some territories. The problem with this, of course, is that the "First War" storyline doesn't lend itself well to a sequel. Assuming the next movie takes place in the modern Warcraft era when Baby Thrall is all grown up, most of this film's cast should be dead from battle or much older. Lothar will die and have a statue built in his honor outside Stormwind. Khadgar should have rapidly aged in this movie. Gul'dan dies, and his head becomes a magical artifact. This movie, as the only story to tell in its generation, feels like something that should have been a five-minute flashback before a Warcraft 3/WoW-era movie: "A dark portal opened. Orcs came out. Everyone fought." Seriously, that's all this film established anyway.

Rather than feel like they have one shot to tell a good Warcraft movie, it seems like the filmmakers worked under the assumption that a long series of Warcraft films was a guaranteed thing. As such, they started at the very beginning in order to get as many stories as possible out of the lore. The result is a Warcraft story that exists before anything cool was invented in the Warcraft universe... yet the movie apparently did do well enough to earn a sequel.

On the bright side, this film's success might mean we eventually get to leave the "lame" era of Warcraft. But for now, it's hard to shake the disappointment of a Warcraft movie that isn't based on Warcraft's most popular stories and characters. Here's hoping production on a sequel won't take another 10 years.