Review: Warcraft (2016)

“Lok’tar ogar!” is what cinema staff everywhere should have responded with when asked for a ticket for Warcraft (2016). If the response to that was a blank, confused face, the customer should have been escorted back to the showings board, and told to pick something else. I don’t mean that to sound as condescending as it does, but this one was made for the fans, folks. If it makes you feel any better, I never played the original games, and the part of lore chosen for this movie goes a bit over my head, too.

So no, this isn’t a World of Warcraft movie. I pray to the Movie Gods that there will be one day, I’d love to see Arthas’ story on the big screen, but years before the MMORPG was released, existed Warcraft, a PC strategy game from the 90’s. The World of Warcraft we know now has more races than I have fingers (8 and 2 thumbs, if you’re wondering) but the original Warcraft focused solely on the Humans and the Orcs, or so Wikipedia tells me.

There is so much lore surrounding these games that I won’t try to go into detail about the plot in fear of the fanboys shooting down my inaccuracies. I honestly started playing WoW 9 years ago just so that I could understand what my friends were talking about, and created a Mage named Lunar because I was told they could turn people into sheep, and I thought that was cool. The moment in the movie when Khadgar used Polymorph on a guard gave me no end of happiness! My point anyway, is that I’m a casual fan. I tend to click away the lore given to me in game for favour of hunting down quest items and treasure.

For the fans, there’s plenty to enjoy in the movie. One of my favourite parts was seeing the lands I’ve come to know better than my home town brought to life, as well as my favourite raid location, Karazhan. In fact, I almost wanted to get on my high horse and complain about the greenery surrounding that beautiful, looming building, and then the events in the movie showed just how Deadwind Pass came to be, and that was honestly pretty awesome. There are plenty of nods to the game, plenty I probably didn’t spot myself (I saw the fishing lure at the end, though!) but that’s just all the more reason to rewatch it.

That said, I wish Blizzard had picked a different story. I know that this one is the foundation of it all, and really the hardcore fans would have complained if they didn’t start here, but World of Warcraft brings so much more to the table. I want to see Illidan, I want to see the Lich King, I want to see my beloved Paladins in their Tier 6 armour, heck I’d even love to see Deathwing destroy everything I love and hold dear.

I just hope that Warcraft made enough money to warrant more movies. They’re all going to be CGI fests, I accept that, but there are so many great stories to be told that could be loved by fans and newbs alike. Just...leave the Pandas out of it Blizz, okay? We can do without them for a while…

P.S. Travis Fimmel for everything please. I love that man.

Review: Disconnect (2012)

One of my favourite things about co-running a movie blog is that family and friends tend to talk to me more about movies they’ve seen or ask me for recommendations. You’ll see quite a few movies I’ve reviewed that have been suggestions from my Grampy, but this one comes, funnily enough, from my boss! He’s not a movie buff at all but watches whatever movie Channel 5 or Film4 put on each Sunday night, and tells me about them on Monday morning in the office.

The latest one he recommended to me was Disconnect (2012). I’d never heard of it before but it starred one of my favourite actors, Jason Bateman, and with a topic so close to my heart I knew I was going to have to hunt this movie down as quickly as possible.

Disconnect weaves 3 separate stories all with one connecting theme. The internet is a dangerous place. Kyle (Max Thieriot) is a chat-room stripper who winds up in a heap of trouble when Nina (Andrea Riseborough), a reporter, pays to chat with him as part of a story and the FBI get involved. Two school boys, Jason (Colin Ford) and Frye (Aviad Bernstein) play a prank on another boy in their school, Ben (Jonah Bobo) by creating a fake Facebook account under the name Jessica. Their prank goes too far and Ben’s father Rich (Jason Bateman) investigates. Then we have Cindy (Paula Patton) and Derek (Alexander Skarsgard), a couple with marriage issues after the loss of their child, who become victims of identity theft.

It’s actually one of the scariest movies I’ve seen, but not for the generic reasons. There are no jump scares or murderers here, this is a drama, not a horror. But the fact is, this is real life. There’s no need for a warning of “these events are based on a real life story” because this happens every day in the real world.

I can’t confess to knowing anything about chat-room strippers, but we all know there’s a dark part of the internet out there. Again, I’ve thankfully never been a victim of identity theft, but my fiance had his Playstation account hacked and funds withdrawn from his bank account. That was scary enough! On a much smaller scale, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I fell victim to the cruel school prank. Some kids wrote me a love letter from a boy I fancied and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Social Media wasn’t a thing back then so it ended fairly quickly, but in this day and age, cyberbullying is a huge issue.  Aww what horrid kids! Give me their names, I'll sort them out! It's okay, I'm over it, I swear...*sob*

My only complaint about Disconnect would be that I was so fascinated by each of the three stories, I’d like them to be movies of their own. There’s just not enough time to connect with the characters enough in this format.

I think Disconnect is a must watch for anyone who uses the internet on a daily basis, especially parents who didn’t grow up in such a connected world.