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.

Review: "In the Heart of the Sea"

“In the Heart of the Sea” works as a rousing sea adventure story, the inspiration for “Moby-Dick,” though it suffers from more grandiose aspirations that largely go unrealized. And some bad Boston accents.

The film makes a half-hearted attempt at a man-corrupts-nature environmental theme, and begins a Christian-vs.-Bligh type of conflict between the ship’s first mate and captain, only to drop it halfway through. Based on a nonfiction book by Nathaniel Philbrick, the screenplay by Charles Leavitt has some structural problems, with a big dead spot about two-thirds of the way through.

But director Ron Howard ably helms the action scenes, including the thrilling bout with the massive white sperm whale. And the movie brings a great sense of authenticity about what it’s like to be aboard a Nantucket whaling boat in 1820 -- the sun-creased faces, the creaking of the sails, the ever-present fear of a squall, the way men’s personalities rub against each other after a year at sea.

Howard reunites with Chris Hemsworth, who starred in the criminally overlooked racing movie “Rush.” Here he plays Owen Chase, a seasoned whaler who thinks he’s in line to become captain, but is instead put under the thumb of George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), a greenhorn with the right family name and financial backing.

As a “landsman,” the son of a poor farmer, Chase has had to work his way up from the bottom, and naturally resents the aristocratic captain. Pollard insists on showing the crew who’s boss, and nearly sinks the ship on their second day out of port. They spar, but agree to put their differences aside long enough to collect 2,000 barrels of whale oil.

Eventually they make their way into the Pacific Ocean, where they hear tales of a remote spot where the whales are bountiful. The story turns out to be true, but so does the warning of a giant bull who does not take kindly to having his colony attacked.

Their ship, the Essex, is sunk and the survivors are forced to flee on small boats thousands of miles from land, and things quickly grow dire. The actors make a believable transformation into starving skeletons -- unlike the recent “The 33” -- with the help of a little CGI.

The film uses a framing device of Thomas Nickerson, a 14-year-old member of the crew, being interviewed by Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) 30 years later as inspiration for his most famous novel. Now a mean old drunk played by Brendan Gleeson, he’s reluctant to share the true story of the Essex, which was officially recorded as having run aground. Tom Holland plays him as a boy.

(There’s a certain amount of historical shenanigans going on here with the storyline. Chase actually published an account of the Essex disaster immediately afterward, which was what inspired Melville. It was another writer who interviewed Nickerson, convincing him to write his own book. Interestingly, the film largely gets the events that happened at sea right but finagles with the epilogue.)

I’m not sure whose idea it was to have all these actors of different English-speaking vintages talk in realistic 1820s Nantucket accents, but the result is a mishmash of bent vowels and oft-indecipherable dialogue. At one point Hemsworth greets Cillian Murphy as an old comrade and they share a jaunty banter, of which I couldn’t understand a thing.

(Hemsworth is Australian, Murphy and Gleeson are Irish, Holland is English and Walker is American.)

Another swing-and-a-miss is the attempt to correlate 1820s energy challenges with our own. Whale and petroleum both lit the world in their respective eras and neither is a renewable resource (except as fast as adult whales can spawn new ones, anyway). The parallel is given a few feeble gestures, then dismissed.

“In the Heart of the Sea” is a great-looking picture; Howard is a top-drawer visual storyteller. It’s a good movie that could have been a much better one, either by being less ambitious, or more. Sometimes you have to drown your darlings.