Warcraft (2016)
Directed by Duncan Jones
The peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course that will decide the fate of their family, their people, and their home.
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What critics say influenced Warcraft
An adaptation of a long-running video game, it comes across as an unholy mash-up of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars,” and Jones’ attempt to add some humanity to the splashy but empty exercise comes across as a fool’s errand: presenting nonsense like this with such seriousness only makes it more ridiculous.
This is probably conservation of resources rather than sentiment, but given how one-note blockbuster villains tend to be, and what a glowing-eyed caricature of evil Gul'dan is, his choices stand out as much as if Star Wars featured a few scenes of Darth Vader playing with kittens in his downtime.
Así como el proyecto televisivo de Galáctica: Astronave de Combate debe su existencia misma y estilo visual al éxito de la primera película de Star Wars, Warcraft le debe con creces a El señor de los anillos.
As human characters appear against patently computerized backgrounds, or the camera pulls back to reveal impossibly vast canyons, towering cliffs or dazzling cities, the effect is reminiscent of the shimmering vistas of those ghastly Clone Wars episodes in the Star Wars franchise back when filmmakers were drunk on the possibilities of CGI.
But the film cribs freely from both of those sources anyway, as well as “Star Wars,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “Avatar” and numerous other recent blockbusters.
The eventual fate of their improbably cute, pointy-eared infant suggests the filmmakers are not above plundering the Old Testament, along with “The Lord of the Rings,” “Star Wars” and other seminal pop mythologies.
If “Lord of the Rings” and “Battlefield Earth” had a baby, it would look like the plot of “Warcraft.”
And the very best any sci-fi and fantasy devotee can hope for right now, is that "Warcraft" disappears into a black hole of failure so huge you could chuck "The Green Lantern," "John Carter," "Fantastic Four" and even "Battlefield Earth" right in after it.
That this succeeds is enough to make me dismiss critics who call the film the Battlefield Earth of the 21st century.
This is pure boondoggle, the kind of impenetrable morass that would usually get a confusing opening with a head floating in space vomiting up exposition, a la “Zardoz” or David Lynch’s “Dune.”
While I was watching “Warcraft” I kept thinking of “Dune,” and how David Lynch’s film adaptation became a bewildering series of place-names and minor characters.
Quien la señala como tal, quien se queja de mundos alternos no humanos abigarrados y con hipogrifos en vuelo, probablemente ha olvidado la juvenil emoción de películas como Conan el bárbaro (EUA, 1982) y Krull (EUA-Reino Unido, 1983), del señor Peter Yates.
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Digo, yo creo que Mortal Kombat (1995) y la terrible Street Fighter (1994) tienen su encanto: la primera por ser una completa locura alucinada (y por Christopher Lambert con rayos en los ojos); la segunda por tener el honor de ser una de las últimas apariciones de ese gran tipo mítico que fue Raúl Juliá.
Gul’dan is essentially Shang Tsung from “Mortal Kombat” opening the portal to Netherrealm and allowing its sinister inhabitants to wreak havoc.
Digo, yo creo que Mortal Kombat (1995) y la terrible Street Fighter (1994) tienen su encanto: la primera por ser una completa locura alucinada (y por Christopher Lambert con rayos en los ojos); la segunda por tener el honor de ser una de las últimas apariciones de ese gran tipo mítico que fue Raúl Juliá.
But the film cribs freely from both of those sources anyway, as well as “Star Wars,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “Avatar” and numerous other recent blockbusters.
Warcraft's look and tone often falls somewhere between Avatar and John Carter, two other similarly CGI-heavy, narratively overstuffed would-be fantasy-franchise launchers.
The film owes a particular debt to James Cameron’s “Avatar” — not only in its skillful use of performance-capture technology to bring a fictional race to credible life (Kebbell’s Durotan is an expressive standout), but also in the way it complicates our sympathies where its human characters are concerned.
Actually she looks quite a lot like Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) from “Avatar,” except with, you know, little tusks.
This narrative is strongly constructed with a workaday plot of sacrifices and betrayals, plus a few hints of the environmentalism that animated James Cameron’s Avatar.
Jones’s much more intelligent and aesthetic approach to the problem is not entirely new – the Resident Evil franchise has been credited with successfully reflecting the video-game sensibility – but it does make Warcraft visually interesting throughout.
Antes tuvimos la terrible película de Super Mario Bros. (1993) –a pesar de Bob Hopkins, John Leguizamo y, claro, el gran Dennis Hopper como Koopa–, y luego vinieron los horrores imperdonables de la saga de Resident Evil (2002); babosadas sin sentido como Pixels (2015) –que, aunque no sea adaptación, se empantana en revivir viejos juegos ochenteros–; las locuras de Dead or Alive (2006); las espantosas Alone in the Dark (2005) y Farcry (2008) del pobre Uwe Boll –que quiso dirigir Warcraft pero que Blizzard, con justa razón, mandó a volar–; los horrores recientes sin alma de Angry Birds (2016) y Need for Speed (2014); las dos bazofias de Hitman (lo siento Mila Kunis); la pésima adaptación de Doom (2005) y un largo etcétera que sólo se salva, tal vez, con la visualmente impactante e innovadora Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001).
Sin embargo, a diferencia de otras adaptaciones de videojuegos, como Resident Evil, aquí el atractivo para los profanos es escaso, porque el interés por los personajes y sus situaciones está muy atado a la base de fans y se apela menos a resortes cinematográficos clásicos que a esos factores de venta de "marca previa" que tanto contaminan el cine de hoy.
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Antes tuvimos la terrible película de Super Mario Bros. (1993) –a pesar de Bob Hopkins, John Leguizamo y, claro, el gran Dennis Hopper como Koopa–, y luego vinieron los horrores imperdonables de la saga de Resident Evil (2002); babosadas sin sentido como Pixels (2015) –que, aunque no sea adaptación, se empantana en revivir viejos juegos ochenteros–; las locuras de Dead or Alive (2006); las espantosas Alone in the Dark (2005) y Farcry (2008) del pobre Uwe Boll –que quiso dirigir Warcraft pero que Blizzard, con justa razón, mandó a volar–; los horrores recientes sin alma de Angry Birds (2016) y Need for Speed (2014); las dos bazofias de Hitman (lo siento Mila Kunis); la pésima adaptación de Doom (2005) y un largo etcétera que sólo se salva, tal vez, con la visualmente impactante e innovadora Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001).
You know you really want to be… Ingredient 6: 1/4 teaspoon Mad Max: Fury Road There is a version of this movie that is 2016’s Mad Max: Fury Road , and it is so close to that instant action classic that I’m a little mad it didn’t get all the way there.