The WARCRAFT Movie Is the Ultimate Version of the First WARCRAFT Game
This past Friday the full trailer of Warcraft premiered as BlizzCon 2015, and it was quite an amazing experience watching it in a room full of Warcraft fans. I haven't played Warcraft since Warcraft II, but I don’t think you will have had to play the game to be able to enjoy this movie. This seems like it will be the kind of film that will appeal to all fantasy movie fans! Judging by the reactions to the trailer, though, some people are surprisingly not that excited for it.
While I was at BlizzCon, I had the opportunity to go to a closed press conference for the film that was moderated by Chris Hardwick. He brought out director Duncan Jones to talk about the movie along with members of the cast that includes Clancy Brown, Dominic Cooper, Ben Foster, Toby Kebbell, Paula Patton, and Daniel Wu. Also on hand was Chris Metzen, Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development for Blizzard Entertainment.
One of the most notable parts of the conference was when Metzen and Jones were asked about how the story of the movie will be true to the game. Metzen jumped in to answer that question, saying:
“The story is obviously a retelling of the tale of Warcraft one. The video game Warcraft one orcs and humans. We, many years ago novelized that story in a book called The Last Guardian. So in that novelization the lore was buffed a little more. You gotta remember guys, back in 1994 when War one came out story telling for games, you can argue this today still, I guess, but it was super crude. You had like a page of text in-between each mission. It was really hard to tell a story in gaming, it was super crude. So with the novelization we got to kinda plus the mythology, and kind of build out these characters more and more, and really once Duncan came on, we were very clear we wanted to do a movie about this timeline about this conflict since it’s such a, since its the point of commonality between the two franchises, or sorry, the two factions that make the franchise work witch is alliance and horde. This is where it all begins. So in looking at this story in terms of a script and what capable you can shoot, what you can literally build a story around for film. The mythology grew a little more, we made some kind of tactical calls to simplify certain themes or ideas, and really just make it work as a film. So it is not, there’s literally nothing to base it on. The game was crude and old, although I love it, I hope I didn’t sound like I’m… there’s no one left alive that worked on Warcraft one… so, you know, it’s kind of, I always like to call it, kind of… it’s the ultimate version of Warcraft one, I mean that like Ultimate Spider-Man where it’s all the greatest hits. it’s all the beats it needs, it’s all the right characters, and right kind of chemistry, but it’s streamline, it’s cleaner, it’s better, it’s sharper.”
Jones then interjected and explained:
“It’s twenty years of storytelling and a lot of it overlaps, so it’s not always going to be completely water tight or dove-tailed. There are going to be elements that but up against each other as far as lore goes over those twenty years. So I got to work with Chris and work out… ok, so where it’s a little rough and where it doesn’t quite match up or where it just really hurts our ability to tell our story, how can we shake things and smooth things over and still be true to the spirit of what the story is.
Metzen concluded with:
“I think in many ways, this is totally bullshit, but I’ll say it anyway. And not bullshit as in not true, but it’s cowardly. We made some really weird decisions with the lore over time. Things I wish I could take back, very proud of WoW, but in a way, retelling this story again in Duncan’s deft hands… it was an opportunity for redemption, conceptual redemtion. So it’s totally the Warcraft 1 everybody remembers, but it’s better, tighter, smarter, it is a much better version of its tale and were super proud of it.”
Jones also confirmed that this will be the first installment of a trilogy of films. He then went on to reveal a that there will be a little Easter Egg in the film that pays tribute to Sam Raimi. Why? Because Raimi himself is a huge fan of Warcraft, and at one point he was attached to direct the movie. Things obviously didn’t work out, but it's awesome that Jones is going to throw a nod to Raimi and the work he did to help bring it to the big screen.
If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know what this movie will bring audiences. Even though I haven’t played Warcraft in years, I’m still excited as hell to watch this movie! It sounds like they really approached it in a way that is going to make fans very happy. At the same time, they wanted to make it appeal to general audiences. Jones explained:
“That was the plan right from the start. If we could do this right, we could put our audience right into a world that seems rich and lush. But for fans of Warcraft, you’ll know every detail.”
Warcraft hits theaters on June 10th, 2016. To read up on all of the previous Warcraft news that we've posted, click here.