fantasy

Warcraft Review

| Rachel's Reviews

warcraft5Anyone knows me knows I am not a video game player. I have a lazy eye and so video games have always been tough for me to play and so I’ve never had any interest in them. However, I’ve seen a good movie based on a board game in Clue. I’ve seen a good movie based on an amusement park ride in the first Pirates movie. Anything can produce a story worth telling on the big screen.

I wasn’t planning on seeing Warcraft with everything going on getting ready for my trip but I ended up with a free evening so I figured- why not give it a shot? I went into the theater with an open mind hoping to at least have dumb fun and I came out baffled. I think I’m a pretty smart person but I can’t think of when I’ve been more confused over a film’s narrative in my life. I couldn’t even tell you a name of a single character.

The thing about a movie like Lord of the Rings is it seems complicated but in reality it is very simple. There is good vs evil and a powerful ring that needs to be destroyed.  That’s it. Everything else is either an obstacle or assistance to that objective.

We also build characters slowly. We start with 2- Frodo and Gandalf and then add Mary, Pippen, Sam, Aragon, Legolas etc.

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The problem with Warcraft is it splits its time between 2 groups- humans and orcs. It’s never clear who is the good guy and who is bad. There are many characters within each realm and each has a backstory and motivations. Without a lead narrator to focus on like say Willow in Willow it felt impossible to remember all of this. I guess that’s where being a fan helps because you already know who all these characters are.

Then there is magic called the fel and a portal but I didn’t really understand what that magic did or how it was used. The rules of the portal were very murky.

And some scenes just didn’t make sense. Like towards the end the characters are battling and then Travis Fimmel’s Lothar is knocked down to the ground. The screen goes black and he wakes up. All the orcs are watching him and then he takes on the leader orc. Why are they all watching him? What has changed from when they were just battling with each other? I have no idea.

warcraft6There is also a pool with special fel powers that seemed to be both good and bad. Ben Foster plays Medivh who is a wizard I think but he’s no Ian McKellen. That’s for sure.  Most of the time he seems good but then he is bad and I didn’t know why he was bad.

warcraftmoviebonePaula Patton is one of the most beautiful women in the world and she looks like a bad Princess Fiona at Comicon. She is half orc-half human but her relationship with Lothar and Dominic Cooper’s character is confusing.  She’s so wooden in the part I think she will be nominated for a razzie.

warcraft4Toby Kebbell is the best part as Duratan but the movie goes away from him for long sections and I felt like he should have been more of a narrator. It was confusing why the bad orc Gul’dan didn’t just take Duratan out when he had the chance. Why did the orcs put up with Gul’dan was never clear when Duratan seemed like the natural leader? There was the fel but I didn’t get it.

warcraft3Honestly I fell asleep twice for a minute or two. I guess it looked ok but other than that I found Warcraft to be a boring mess. I’m told fans of the game love it, so that’s cool. I can only speak for myself and say it didn’t work for me.

The acting was also really poor from everyone.  Glen Close does appear and that scene made no sense to me (sensing a trend here…). But Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Paula Paton, Ben Foster, Travis Fimmel, Daniel Wu have all done good stuff but here they all felt flat and wooden.

My advice to future fantasy directors- KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid.  Fantasy that works like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings are at their core simple stories of good vs evil and a heroes journey. All the cool special effects and world building mean nothing if the story doesn’t work for this kind of movie. KISS! KISS!

Overall Grade- D

Rankin/Bass 1: The Hobbit

| Rachel's Reviews

hobbit 1977So we are starting off Rankin/Bass month off oddly enough by looking at a non-holiday TV special they made.  It was the first attempt to translate JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels to either big or small screen and while imperfect I enjoyed watching it.

I should state out front a couple of biases I have.  First, I love the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies.  They are in the running for films I’d take with me on a desert island. Second, I hate his Hobbit movies.  I found them deadly dull and without the moral weight of the LOTR movies.  Third, I like the LOTR books, but do not like The Hobbit, which I have never been able to get through. There are no stakes in The Hobbit.  It’s just an adventure and that’s not enough to draw me in  (I’ve never been that into fantasy especially as a kid).  I probably would have liked the Peter Jackson Hobbit films if he had made one or at most two.

All that out of the way, let’s talk about this film. It is traditional sketch style animation and aired on NBC in 1977.  I’d say for a made for TV movie the production values are top notch.  Everything from the voice talent of people like John Huston and Paul Frees to the wonderful music by Jules Bass and Maury Laws is done at a feature film level.  There is also not as much rotoscoping as the Ralph Bakshi LOTR film, which I also see some value in and don’t hate.

hobbit1977The Hobbit of course tells the story of Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit in Middle Earth who goes on an adventure to help his friend Gandalf, the wizard, Thorin and the dwarfs to burgle his way into the Lonely Mountain. The goal is to confront the dragon Smaug and get the treasure in the mountain that belongs to the dwarfs. Along the way they meet elves, a creature known as Gollum, a race of giant spiders, and have a Battle of Five Armies.

hobbit 1977 4Amazingly enough what took Peter Jackson nearly 9 hours and 3 movies to tell, this film tells us in 1 hr 17 minutes!  That’s a huge win in this films column for me! That said, there are times when if I hadn’t seen the Peter Jackson films I might be confused.  The Gollum scene, for instance, makes sense because I know the book and live action films. If I didn’t I might wonder what the heck this strange creature was doing?  It seemed to me this film assumes a cursory understanding of the Tolkein world for all of its viewers which may not be unreasonable given the popularity of the book.

hobbit 1977 8There are also large sections of the book that are left out or are compressed into just a few minutes when I could have used a little bit longer. Particularly towards the end with the battle it felt very rushed.

hobbit 1977 2The music is  wonderful with much of it coming from lyrics in the novel.  Folk singer Glenn Yarbrough has a beautiful tamber to his voice and it was really quite calming whenever his singing would come on screen.  I particularly like The Greatest Adventure.

I will say if you don’t like this kind of folk music you won’t enjoy this film.  It’s very predominant but luckily I do so I enjoyed it.

hobbit 1977 6I appreciated some of the touches that were different than the Jackson films like the take on Gollum voiced by Brother Theodore was totally different than the Andy Serkis version. This is more like a monster with riddles than the more human-like characters we get with Serkis.

hobbit 1977 5I guess enjoyment of this The Hobbit depends on how open you are to something different than the version you are used too.  As I don’t care for the recent Hobbit films I was more than open to this different telling of the story. It’s very sweet and more like a fairytale than an epic quest of good vs evil in LOTR.

That said, there are some scary scenes for very small children such as when they are caught by the giant spiders.  But in general if your kid is dying to see LOTR this may not be a bad option.

Like I said it is sometimes too jam packed and certain elements in the animation feel a little dated but for a made for TV movie from the 70’s I was impressed.  It’s different and overall I liked it.

What about you?  Have you seen this version of The Hobbit?  What’d you think?  Please put in the comments section.