Review: "Warcraft"

The record for movie adaptations of video games is just atrocious… and it’s not getting any better with the release of “Warcraft.” Fantasy movies don’t fare so well either, so it’s got the double whammy effect.

“Warcraft” has been in development for literally 10 years, when the World of Warcraft online game was just reaching its peak, with millions of people playing characters from a broad range of fantastical races and abilities. There are also some precursor strategy games, novels, collectible figures, replica weapons, and other offshoots of a multi-billion-dollar empire.

(And I know of which I speak. In the years B.K. – before kids – I was an 80 paladin/80 warlock/80 death knight/68 priest/59 rogue on the Kul Tiras realm of WoW.)

It’s not an overstatement to say that Warcraft is the first video game to become a cultural phenomenon. The movie, a $160 million extravaganza heavy on top-drawer CGI animation, became almost inevitable.

I wish it weren’t.

The movie has a slapdash, chaotic feel, as if the filmmakers were trying to stitch together footage shot during two or three different productions. There are continuity errors all over the place – one warrior is broken out of prison, given his armor back, and in the very next scene his armor is gone and he’s barefoot for some reason. Another major figure is revealed to be corrupted by dark magic… but when and how was he corrupted?

There’s missing backstory and motivations all over the place. We watch characters do things without understanding why.

Director Duncan Jones, a promising filmmaker who made the excellent “Moon” a few years ago, co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Leavitt, and I can only guess they were shackled by restrictions from Blizzard, the company behind Warcraft. I would posit they were given a checklist of story elements and characters and ordered to fit it all together somehow.

The story is set in the early days of the Warcraft mythology, when the bestial orcs first crossed over from their dying world into that of the humans, setting off battle. There are also quick nods to a few other races on the “Alliance” side of the game, notably elves and dwarves, but the Horde is just orcs. (Thankfully no pandas, at least!)

The orcs are a wonder to behold, painted with wondrous detail by the animators. They’re huge, seven feet tall and thick as oaks, with green skin and protruding tusks, and a vaguely American Indian style of adornment. A few of the nastier ones even have… other protrusions.

Toby Kebbell plays (through voice and motion-capture performance) the orc hero Durotan, a noble savage who fears for the plight of his people, including a newly born son. Their leader, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), is a mighty wizard wielding a terrible green magic called Fel, which he uses to open a portal to the human world of Azeroth. But it requires a sacrifice of lives, not to mention poisoning the very land.

On the human side is Lothar (Travis Fimmel), commander of the forces of King Llane (Dominic Cooper), who’s called upon to resist the orcish invaders. He’s an odd hero; he seems more peckish than resolute.

Ben Foster plays Medivh, the stern magical guardian of the realm, who mostly broods in his lonesome soaring tower, occasionally dipping into a pool of blue goo to revive his powers. Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) is the classic exposition character, a wayward wizard who turns up whenever the plot needs explaining or moving along.

Somewhere in the middle is Garona (Paula Patton, in heavy green body paint), a half-breed orc who’s captured by Lothar and recruited to their cause. The two start exchanging jungle fever-type stares, though Garona helpfully warns him that he would be injured if he tried to lie with her.

Question: if this is the first time the orcs have crossed over into this world, how did a human breed with one of them years ago to create Garona? If you’re asking these sorts of questions, you’re thinking too hard to enjoy this movie.

“Warcraft” is a great-looking flick that should have been a lot more fun, and a lot less silly, than it is.

Video review: "Pacific Rim"

“Pacific Rim” tied the knot on a substandard summer of movies – it had something old, something new, plenty of stuff borrowed and something totally badass.

Some have dismissed co-writer/director Guillermo del Toro’s film as a mere mash-up of old Japanese science fiction, mecha and kaiju. And there is some truth to that: he basically took the big monsters of Godzilla and the mammoth robots of 1960s TV and said, “Hey, what would happen if they fought each other?”

The premise is that the Earth is under siege by skyscraper-tall alien creatures that emerge periodically from a portal at the bottom of the ocean. At first they laid waste to large swaths of the planet, but eventually humanity banded together to create the jaegers – hulking metal automatons controlled by two humans whose minds are linked through something called “the Drift.”

Things haven’t been going so well for humanity lately, with the jaeger program nearly shut down while the monsters are bigger and badder than ever. A washed-up pilot (Charlie Hunnam) gets recruited by his old boss (an imposing Idris Elba) to make one last stand.

The action scenes are tremendous, and del Toro gives a terrific sense of the awe-inspiring scale of the jaegers and their foes. The characters aren’t particularly deep, but they’re designed to be stand-ins for the audience to experience the roller coaster of thrills.

“Pacific Rim” is an exceedingly entertaining movie, easily the best this summer had to offer.
Special features are quite excellent, and you don’t have to pay more for the priciest edition in order to get the good stuff.

The DVD version includes a feature-length commentary track by del Toro, deleted/extended scenes, blooper reel and several featurettes focusing on different aspects of production, including the technology/psychic bond of the Drift.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add “The Director’s Notebook,” consisting of personal video by del Toro detailing the journey from conceptualization to post-production.

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Review: "Pacific Rim"

Robots versus monsters. At its heart, that's what "Pacific Rim" is all about. And yet, this science fiction thriller is so much more.

Start with the obvious dimension: size. These creatures who rise from the sea, and the human-controlled metal automatons that confront them, make Godzilla seem like a yappy little dog. Director Guillermo del Toro brilliantly shoots these behemoths so they seem to envelop the screen; the eye can't track all of them at once. We're constantly reminded of their sheer immensity.

At a pivotal juncture, one of the robot guardians, called jaegers, picks up an ocean tanker ship and uses it like Casey Jones to wallop one of the toothsome beasties upside the head.

Like I said, big.

But what makes this picture really soar is that del Toro and co-screenwriter Travis Beacham take something old and turn it into something exciting and new and energizing. Essentially what they've done is take two Japanese film genres, kaiju (strange beasts) and mecha (robots), and melded them together.

It's wildly entertaining, a dizzying, dazzling flick. In a summer of sequels, rip-offs and remakes, "Pacific Rim" stands out not just for its elite quality but its original verve.

The setup is that beginning in 2013 (gulp!), these monstrous kaiju start emerging from a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, laying waste to whole cities and millions of people. All attempts to close the inter-dimensional pathway fail, but the world's nations pool their resources to build the jaeger robots to kill them.

"To fight the monsters, we created monsters of our own," we learn.

The robots are so massive, it takes the brains of two people to control one. They're connected in a psychic bond called the Drift, where all thoughts and memories are shared. So the best teams tend to be composed of family members or loved ones.

Cut to 2020, and the jaegers have the kaiju on the run. But then hotshot pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and his brother encounter a new type of creature that changes the game.

Jump forward again to 2025, and it looks to be end times for the human race. Global leaders have abandoned the jaeger program to focus on an ineffective seawall strategy, and there are only four of the mechanical giants left to mount a last-ditch effort. Marshal Stacker Pentecost (a commanding Idris Elba), head of the unit, recruits Raleigh to man one of the older jaegers, dubbed Gipsy Danger (which bears a more than passing resemblance to the robot in "The Iron Giant").

Like the jaegers, which were continually improved with each new generation, the kaiju appear to be adapting and evolving -- and emerging from the portal more and more frequently. It's an entire bestiary of critters, which are vaguely dinosaur-like but come with a variety of appendages and shapes. The jaeger command gives them appropriate code names, like "Knife Head."

The fight scenes are awesome and epic, taking place both in (and under) sea and on land. They smash through entire buildings like butter. Though there is a little of the "Transformers effect," in which it becomes hard to comprehend exactly what's going on when the titans grapple.

There are a couple of key subplots. One involves Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), the Marshal's protégé and wannabe jaeger pilot who is gunning to be Raleigh's partner. The other has to do with Newton Geizler (Charlie Day), a hyperactive kaiju expert who semi-worships them, and comes up with some crazy ideas on how to learn their strategy.

Also look for del Toro favorite Ron Perlman as a loathsome but charming black market dealer in kaiju biological trophies. Would you believe the things are so honkin' big, their skin lice are the size of bulldogs?

Ultimately, "Pacific Rim" doesn't add up to more than a fun time -- but what a time it is. I don't think there's any movie this year I've enjoyed more.