If there’s a connecting thread between Warcraft and Jones’ earlier movies, it’s in its effervescent tone and clear affection for genre movies of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Where Moon lovingly referenced Silent Running or Outland, Warcraft appears to take its cue not from the blood-and-thunder fantasy of the trendy Game Of Thrones, but old-school fare like Beastmaster, Legend and the movies of Ray Harryhausen. Over in the Kingdom of Stormwind, King Llane (an ermine-clad Dominic Cooper) learns that his garrisons are falling one by one to a new enemy, and dispatches Commander Lothar (Travis Fimmel), a young magician, Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) and a powerful Guardian, Medivh (Ben Foster) to investigate. On the orcs’ side, the mighty chieftain Durotan (a motion-captured, unrecognisable Toby Kebbel) begins to suspect that Gul’dan’s magic may have been to blame for destroying their homeworld in the first place, while half orc, half human Garona (Paula Patton, delivering her lines through tiny plastic tusks) defects to the side of the humans. In creating a conflict where there are heroes and possible villains on both sides, Jones, who co-writes with Charles Leavitt, give himself an awful lot of introductions to make, and Warcraft’s opening minutes are the film’s shakiest. But once the great chunks of back story and world-building are in place, Warcraft begins to find its stride. Twinkle-eyed novice magician Khadgar has the most entertaining plot thread, where he tries to figure out exactly how the orcs have managed to tear open a door into Azeroth; Ben Foster is enjoyably hammy as a powerful mage, while Travis Fimmel gives a strangely woozy, Captain Jack Sparrow-like performance as the bearded warrior, Lothar. Warcraft marks Jones’ first outing as a director of effects-heavy battle scenes, and it’s arguable that the set-pieces improve as the film goes on. Viewed in 3D, early fight sequences judder by in an ugly blur, yet later ones are better orchestrated and shot with a steadier hand. With blasts of magic picked out in dazzling flashes of blue and acid green, Jones captures the vibrancy of the Blizzard games. The acting and dialogue is best described as functional, but the characters are endearing, and it’s refreshing to see a summer movie where it’s seldom too obvious who will survive to the end credits. Warcraft doesn’t aim for the obsessive vastness of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but the overwhelming sense that Jones is enjoying the chance to play around in a world of magic and monsters means his splashy film succeeds on its own broadly entertaining terms. Whether Warcraft can break the stigma attached to videogame-to-movie adaptations remains to be seen. Will the games’ legion fans appreciate the light, pulpy approach to Warcraft? Will a broader audience embrace its quirky charm? For this writer, at least, Warcraft feels like a throwback to the kinds of films that used to appear on Sunday afternoon television about 20 or so years ago, which is by no means a bad thing. Warcraft: The Beginning is out in UK cinemas on the 30th May.
