Box Office: 'Warcraft' Is A $430 Million Flop

[Vahir]

It could have done better justice.

I have the right vision to make a better Warcraft movie than what came to be.

I have a vision for better marketing even for trailers.

I have vision for how I would "retcon" this universe to make it more accessible because even I understand this franchise has some fat that narritively needs to be trimmed if needs to work as a movie. (The Pandas, certain areas in Azeroth that in the end are inconsiquential, certain races, etc.)

I... doubt it. More cliches and more unironic cheese wouldn't have made the franchise any better. Given the source material, I'm frankly surprised they were able to cobble together a plot that broke even at all.

It's almost certainly because of the fandom and name recognition around it. If the movie didn't have the Warcraft branding, it would have never have gotten even the small success it did.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

It could have done better justice.

I have the right vision to make a better Warcraft movie than what came to be.

I have a vision for better marketing even for trailers.

I have vision for how I would "retcon" this universe to make it more accessible because even I understand this franchise has some fat that narritively needs to be trimmed if needs to work as a movie. (The Pandas, certain areas in Azeroth that in the end are inconsiquential, certain races, etc.)

I... doubt it. More cliches and more unironic cheese wouldn't have made the franchise any better. Given the source material, I'm frankly surprised they were able to cobble together a plot that broke even at all.

It's almost certainly because of the fandom and name recognition around it. If the movie didn't have the Warcraft branding, it would have never have gotten even the small success it did.

Must everything be a cliche to you? When does cliche = mediocre?

Its cliche but at its best its done fantaistically and immersive. The locations, the music, the characters.

The lore has an auidiance. Just because Tolkien exists does not mean all other variations (even though they are not exactly the same)

Guardians of the Galaxy was cheesy and cliche as fuck and people enjoyed it regardless if its been done before.

So long as its done well its good. And in this case Duncan Jones has not done it well enough. I think he tried too hard to make the orcs not complete badguys which only gives us more charcaters to deal with.

He should have made this entirely about the humans and only reveal the Orcs being deeper charcaters later.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

And also name a Tolkien esque Fantasy setting in Movies that have Lovecraftian Old-Gods:

Alien worlds:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P6SwU3C9cyc/maxresdefault.jpg

http://www.innerwarcraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/WoWScrnShot_040815_211805.jpg

And Demons with Spaceships:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GPYI33g-ydU/VlOzVYFUMTI/AAAAAAAAWxU/eBvl3sZdpNA/s1600/better_spaceship.png

Stop looking at the castles and orcs and dragons and look deeper.

 

[bificommander]

I went and saw it with my colleague's. Most of us found it bad. Only one guy really liked the little details like apparently flying into Stormwind from the same direction as in WoW or something? I dunno.

The movie's story jumped all over the place, going from one plot point to the next with nary a rest, yet with big build-up scenes like the big Orc duel rendered absolutely moot in seconds. It seems they tried to cram too much of the timeline into one movie, and didn't have time left to properly connect all the bits and make us care for them.

I think they could've made a better movie from just the human campaign from WC3 (perhaps with a bit of teasers from the Scourge). That had a good, solid story that still leaves plenty of time for proper character scenes.

 

[Vahir]

Must everything be a cliche to you? When does cliche = mediocre?

Its cliche but at its best its done fantaistically and immersive. The locations, the music, the characters.

The lore has an auidiance. Just because Tolkien exists does not mean all other variations (even though they are not exactly the same)

Guardians of the Galaxy was cheesy and cliche as fuck and people enjoyed it regardless if its been done before.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having cliches. Tropes Are Tools, after all. But a cliched story is a forgettable story. Forgettable stories are perfectly fine in video games, because you're mainly there for the gameplay in those cases and it helps put you into a familiar context, but if you're depending purely on the narrative, such as with a movie, you need to have a story that holds up on its own, that stands out. And Warcraft definitely does not.

And also name a Tolkien esque Fantasy setting in Movies that have Lovecraftian Old-Gods:

Alien worlds:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P6SwU3C9cyc/maxresdefault.jpg

http://www.innerwarcraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/WoWScrnShot_040815_211805.jpg

And Demons with Spaceships:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GPYI33g-ydU/VlOzVYFUMTI/AAAAAAAAWxU/eBvl3sZdpNA/s1600/better_spaceship.png

Stop looking at the castles and orcs and dragons and look deeper.

All fantasy worlds are /by definition/ alien worlds, because they're not earth. And if floating crystals and old gods are your examples for what makes your setting stand out among other fantasy ones, you don't have a very good case. (Every sufficiently expansive fantasy setting will include eldritch beings, after all.)

Demons and the Light IN SPACE is a bit out there for the genre, yeah, but it's hardly unprecedented (40k says hey).

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Must everything be a cliche to you? When does cliche = mediocre?

Its cliche but at its best its done fantaistically and immersive. The locations, the music, the characters.

The lore has an auidiance. Just because Tolkien exists does not mean all other variations (even though they are not exactly the same)

Guardians of the Galaxy was cheesy and cliche as fuck and people enjoyed it regardless if its been done before.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having cliches. Tropes Are Tools, after all. But a cliched story is a forgettable story. Forgettable stories are perfectly fine in video games, because you're mainly there for the gameplay in those cases and it helps put you into a familiar context, but if you're depending purely on the narrative, such as with a movie, you need to have a story that holds up on its own, that stands out. And Warcraft definitely does not.

And also name a Tolkien esque Fantasy setting in Movies that have Lovecraftian Old-Gods:

Alien worlds:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/P6SwU3C9cyc/maxresdefault.jpg

http://www.innerwarcraft.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/WoWScrnShot_040815_211805.jpg

And Demons with Spaceships:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GPYI33g-ydU/VlOzVYFUMTI/AAAAAAAAWxU/eBvl3sZdpNA/s1600/better_spaceship.png

Stop looking at the castles and orcs and dragons and look deeper.

All fantasy worlds are /by definition/ alien worlds, because they're not earth. And if floating crystals and old gods are your examples for what makes your setting stand out among other fantasy ones, you don't have a very good case. (Every sufficiently expansive fantasy setting will include eldritch beings, after all.)

Demons and the Light IN SPACE is a bit out there for the genre, yeah, but it's hardly unprecedented (40k says hey).

Nothing with Warcraft is forgettable once you actually experiance it.

I remember Grom's Sacrifice.

I remember Arthas killing his father and become the Lich King.

I remember the ending of Wrath of the Lich King word for word.

I remember some of the patch trailers word for word

What makes Warcraft special is how much of its lore is visualized and given motion and sound and voice.

I mean all the lore stuff you get in Warhammer Fantasy is in only in text. We are told about the End Times, but never actually shown.

We see the battle against the Lich King

We See the expidition to Outland

And we have compelling chararcters to follow.

I mean for pete's sake did no one play Warcraft 3 when it came out? Was I the only one?

 

[Vahir]

Nothing with Warcraft is forgettable once you actually experiance it.

Speaking as someone who experienced it, I politely disagree.

I remember the ending of Wrath of the Lich King word for word.

I remember some of the patch trailers word for word

That's proof of your obsession, not the quality of the work.

What makes Warcraft special is how much of its lore is visualized and given motion and sound and voice.

I... this is a very strange thing to hear in 2016.

I mean all the lore stuff you get in Warhammer Fantasy is in only in text. We are told about the End Times, but never actually shown.

The implication being that video games and movies are inherently better than books. We should of burned em all decades ago, amirite?

We see the battle against the Lich King

We See the expidition to Outland

I'll admit I was too busy skipping over quest text and clicking "Accept" to give much of a toss about those, but then again that says a lot about their interest in general.

And we have compelling chararcters to follow.

I'll tell you when I see one.

I mean for pete's sake did no one play Warcraft 3 when it came out? Was I the only one?

Yup. It was just you and a pidgeon that landed on someone's keyboard on Bnet on day one.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Nothing with Warcraft is forgettable once you actually experiance it.

Speaking as someone who experienced it, I politely disagree.

I remember the ending of Wrath of the Lich King word for word.

I remember some of the patch trailers word for word

That's proof of your obsession, not the quality of the work.

What makes Warcraft special is how much of its lore is visualized and given motion and sound and voice.

I... this is a very strange thing to hear in 2016.

I mean all the lore stuff you get in Warhammer Fantasy is in only in text. We are told about the End Times, but never actually shown.

The implication being that video games and movies are inherently better than books. We should of burned em all decades ago, amirite?

We see the battle against the Lich King

We See the expidition to Outland

I'll admit I was too busy skipping over quest text and clicking "Accept" to give much of a toss about those, but then again that says a lot about their interest in general.

And we have compelling chararcters to follow.

I'll tell you when I see one.

I mean for pete's sake did no one play Warcraft 3 when it came out? Was I the only one?

Yup. It was just you and a pidgeon that landed on someone's keyboard on Bnet on day one.

Do you say this as person that has immersived himself in EVERY fantasy genre?

Are you well versed in Narnia, Everquest, Ultima, Might and Magic, Dragon Age, Warhammer Fantasy, etc?

 

[Vahir]

Do you say this as person that has immersived himself in EVERY fantasy genre?

Are you well versed in Narnia, Everquest, Ultima, Might and Magic, Dragon Age, Warhammer Fantasy, etc?

Of course not, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes. Not really seeing the relevance?

 

[Dalisclock]

Still not what happened here. Reading the Forbes article and the Hollywood Reporter article it is based would have explained that to ye. Film is 15 million dollars in the red.

Never claimed that. I wasn't commenting on Warcraft in particular, just on the sometime tendency where otherwise succesful products are still considered flops if other (similar) products end up even more successful.

Jim Sterling neatly summed this up: Some people aren't content with making money. They want to make ALL the money, and consider it a failure if they don't.

 

[Lykosia_v1legacy]

Before you declare Warcraft movie a flop, you should wait for DVD/Blu-Ray sales, TV rights sales etc. Those can make a box office flop into a profitable movie. Waterworld is a great example.

 

[Skatalite]

Box Office numbers and rotten tomatoes disagrees:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_an_unexpected_journey/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_the_desolation_of_smaug/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_the_battle_of_the_five_armies/

Box Office numbers aren't a determiner of quality, and the Hobbit movies are critically abysmal when compared to the Lord of the Rings movies:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_fellowship_of_the_ring/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_two_towers/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lord_of_the_rings_the_return_of_the_king/

And sure they did better critically then Warcraft, but I sure didn't enjoy them as much, and I'm not a fan of either series so I didn't go into either with a bias.

I can't believe the user ratings for the Hobbit movies are as high or even higher than those for LotR... And what's up with the amount of user ratings for The Return of the King? That can't be right. :I

 

[Hawki]

I can't believe the user ratings for the Hobbit movies are as high or even higher than those for LotR... And what's up with the amount of user ratings for Return of the King? That can't be right. :I

A lot of people are put off by the endings (yes, plural) of Return of the King and/or its running time. That might be it.

I wouldn't be too worried either. The Hobbit trilogy is still clearly less popular than the LotR trilogy on the Tomatometer, and that includes user ratings. Rankings look fine to my mind - we have an excellent first trilogy be followed by an overall good prequel trilogy.

 

[eberhart]

A lot of people are put off by the endings (yes, plural) of Return of the King and/or its running time. That might be it.

Which is ironic, considering watching Hobbit trilogy takes more time than reading the original. Hell, you could easily finish RotK if you skip appendixes.

...and if you imagine you managed to skip garbage "gastric funnies", hamfisted "love story", Azog being there for no reason whatsoever, battle of 5 armies without goblins and WITH an orc army that never even existed (and with Isengard-level armor, no less), then you might even suspect which way means time better spent.

Sadly, it's all hindsight - though I can blame myself for not figuring out what was visible in the trailers and certain choices that screamed "focus groups first!":/ My excuse - PJ earned himself a decent amount of trust with OT - even despite its flaws - and stories about production horrors tend to be drowned out by merketing. Probably yet another reason it would be nice to know marketing budgets - which one is more interesting anyway: how much money went to actors or to people and companies who manage the hype?

I fast-forwarded the final Hobbit movie and skipped cinema altogether after 1st. I guess fast-forwarding Warcraft either means I learned my lesson or than it was even less interesting. Or both. Travis Fimmel was playing Travis Fimmel and I get enough of that from Vikings; the rest made me either cringe or shrug. Jackson managed to screw up with what was essentially a kids book, but he had to make an effort against the original. This one here feels like it was painful partially because there had to be some homage to the original, which says a lot about its quality when dragged out of its gameplay armor. Te fact it took them SO long to make a movie also meant many players had enough time to get cynical

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Before you declare Warcraft movie a flop, you should wait for DVD/Blu-Ray sales, TV rights sales etc. Those can make a box office flop into a profitable movie. Waterworld is a great example.

I am still curious if the 40 minute extended cut will fix some of the pacing.

 

[elvor0]

Before you declare Warcraft movie a flop, you should wait for DVD/Blu-Ray sales, TV rights sales etc. Those can make a box office flop into a profitable movie. Waterworld is a great example.

I'm personally still really hoping on a directors cut. Like really hoping.

Duncan was so enthusiastic throughout the whole thing and it felt like there was so much attention to detail, that I feel judgement on the version we got when 40 minutes were cut from the editors own cut and bits screwed around with is slightly off. I don't feel like I got to watch the movie I was supposed to see. I mean, a directors cut isn't going to save the human characters all being stoned as fuck or the King being as charismatic as Father Paul Stone, but it might fix the pacing issues and fill in some of the blanks or oddities. It all felt very rushed.


OT: All the Orc Scenes I really enjoyed(particuarly the Gul'dan and Durotan scenes), they were great and they ironically felt much more alive and realistic. Their actors seemed to be far more into what they were doing, Durotan and Draka had some pretty good chemistry and the Orcs were all much easier to connect with.

The CG also felt much better in motion though the mix of CG and Humans still felt off, the opening scene with Garona at The Dark Portal was particularly jarring. And the problem was the Orcs looked like Warcraft Orcs, but hyper realistic and put next to real humans, which ruined the scale, when Warcraft Humans are much less far apart from the Orcs; I mean it was always going to be a problem but I felt they could perhaps made the Orcs a bit less big just for visual cohesiveness. The orcs are fucking MASSIVE compared to real humans.

Spoiler: for scale

I wasn't exactly blown away by the movie, nor did I board the hype train because video game movies, but lore snarls and tangles aside I was pleased with what I saw on its own merits. It didn't frustrate me, I enjoyed my time with it and when the end of the movie came I was surprised two hours had already passed. I'm unlikely to watch it again without a directors cut but it was what it was, and what it was wasn't bad. It has potential so long as they learn if they get a sequel.

 

[hermajesty]

One look at this trailer and I was like NOPE, then carried on with my day.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

One look at this trailer and I was like NOPE, then carried on with my day.

They should have followed the example of the game's actual trailers:

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Huh.

Guess even the Chinese rescue wasn't enough. Apparently they dropped it like a hot rock after an initial surge of interest.

Also, Samtendo, weren't you championing the shit out of this movie when it released?

In the vain hopes of a better sequal with Arthas

Soo... you're telling me you were presenting an insincere opinion of a crummy movie in the hopes that the movie would be successful enough to spawn sequels.

Wow. That's not quite the definition of shilling, but damn if it isn't getting awfully close.

Yes because when the movie revealed the people of the production team (the writers, the actors, the director, etc.) I was a bit bummed out that not only have I not heard of these people, but they all made rather mediocre things so I had my concerns, how can such mediocre talent would possibly do a Warcraft movie justice?

Then the trailers came out and I was rather please out how Warcraft-y it did looked. So I imagind the plot in my head of all the stuff they revealed in trailers and interviews and it was much better than what we got.

But again I was just supporting this movie because as a kid I WANTED Arthas' story to be adapted into a movie and I don't care how fucking cliche it was, it was my first encounter and I have not watched Darth Vader, or Arthurian stories prior to seeing the story of Arthas the Lich King.

That is all I want and if someone adapts that story faithfully and with justice my life will be content.

 

[wizzy555]

I'm going to be incredibly unpopular with this but I think the Arthas storyline is far too long and complicated to be made into a single movie.

Having read "the last guardian", I thought that would be a good story to make into a movie and that is exactly what they did. That is not to say the last guardian is better than the Arthas story-line (it isn't), but it is far easier to movify.