Warcraft Movie

Well, it hope its good. Too bad its not Starcraft though, that would be a so much cooler movie.

-Cent

Until it's released, I won't believe it'll ever see the light of day.

That said, I'll allow that it has potential, but I can't imagine it'll do all that well.

I'm not that worked up about it right now; I'll wait until something actually comes of it.

I'd prefer something StarCraft. Warcraft can go away. I don't care for WarCraft. WarCraft smells bad.

I still think they should make a Descent movie. My thoughts on that haven't changed since I was 6.

I hope it's based on the events of Warcraft I.

Oh man, that is awesome. I've imagined a Warcraft movie since ever I played the first game, and the universe simply begs for it. The fact that Blizzard has held out as long as it has was always a good sign to me, and when you factor in that Legendary Pictures was behind Batman Begins... well... this is good news. REally, really good news.

Between this and Halo, one of them just might break the video game to movie curse that seems to plague Hollywood.

Begemotike, what curse are you talking about?

I think it'll be cool, but i'd prefer a StarCraft movie myself.

...or it might simply make the plague worse...

It's almost like a EVN TC announcement at this point, but I sure am hopeful.

Go Sci-Fi and you're risking over-done Starship-Trooper-esque-ness

Go Fantasy and you're risking over-done Lord-Of-The-Rings-esque-ness.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see the end result.

Everything is possible, but in this case, some things are pretty darn unlikely. That's one of them, I think.

EVweb, all the movies that have been based on a video game, to date, seem to have been royal disasters, with the exception of probably the first Tombraider movie.

The first Resident Evil seemed to do alright...it did well enough they've made one sequel and another one is very likely.

I'm not convinced at all that it would be good. The general mythology that Warcraft draws on is so overdone, and you'd need a Lord Of The Rings-like budget to really do this kind of thing justice anyway.

Your optimism in the face of all that is logical and rational is amusing.

(although I will state that I agree with you about Legendary Pictures; once I saw that they were involved, my doubts and fears were slightly quelled)

Thats probably true, WC has more lore than anyother game has ever had I beleive. Its not just sketchy lore either, its pretty thick.

-Cent

Heh, I do not have high hopes. In fact I don't have any hopes, because I don't really give a damn. I don't really see a great movie coming out of the Warcraft lore, which I never thought was very original, interesting, or compelling. There's a lot of it, but it's not exactly movie material. It's long on bad guys backstabbing each other and horrendously cliched fantasy stuff, and short on good characters.

Starcraft, on the other hand, would have some potential.

The character development in the book is not bad, especially Lothar and Mideav. Thrall also has some nice character. Although, thrall seems to be overly good, he lacks any kind of Flaw, except maybe being young and inexperienced.

-Cent

It better involve the Naga, that's all I'm saying.

Thrall has to be overly good; he's the classic going-agaist-nearly-everyone-at-once-for-the-greater-good-of-society character. Who knows where THAT's going...

Let's see...

Maiv Shadowsong's backstory could be bulked. How was she trained? I've always wondered what the "Vengeance" thing the Wardens have was about, that Furion was talking about when she left for the final time after Illidan.

Oh, and of course, the Arthas-Ner'zhul union must come to something, and probably have some showdown against the Legion's dreadlord-led army.

This has been a random rambling by The Journailst. Any stupid statements can be disregarded as coming from not being overly familiar with the universe.

You know...there's about 1000 video games that BEG for a movie. Sadly no matter how good they could be they in fact are almost always absolute shit. The chances of either one of those breaking it I say are slim to none.

On the contrary, the chances are excellent. Both projects are involved with companies that have a high degree of control over the production, and are legendary for their quality. Both projects have employed extremely respected artists in the field. All of these things are completely contrary to what has been the norm up until now.

...and yet they are still based off of video games, and will suck. The only good game movie, in my opinion, is Mortal Kombat. Why? Because you don't heavily identify with your character in a fighting game. In a FPS, you do (since you're seeing out of their eyes, rather than watching them from the side). For WarCraft, its a RTS, a game where the player has complete control, being made into a movie, where the viewer has absolutely no control in anything that is going on.

Sorry, but I still think these will suck. I look forward to being wrong, but I don't think it is likely.

Heh. Nicely put.

If it actually is realeased, I'm likely going to see it no matter how bad it looks. Cause I'm a dork like that. Wheee!

Man, I don't understand comments like these. What do you expect the movie to do.. make a movie of a RTS? IT's very simple. You look at the theme of the game, the atmosphere, the storyline, and you then say hey.. there's a coherent thread here, I bet I could take that as inspiration for a good story. It's not rocket science. The story in Warcraft is very simple, as has been pointed out... and that, in fact, works very nicely for it.

The story in doom was simple. The story in street fighter couldn't be any more simple(at least at that time). All videogame stories are simple. That doesn't mean they make good movies.

That's the thing, though. Often, a movie will take the source material and alter it horribly to the point where it is merely a movie attempting to cash in on the name (I'm looking at you, Street Fighter). Mortal Kombat is the only video game movie I've ever seen that altered the plot just enough to make it work (people are willing to accept certain things in in a game more readily than in a movie).

Bah to this pessimism. Blizzard can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. I'm yet to be disappointed with the quality of what they've made.

Of course, that's where they go wrong. As I've pointed out, there is no reason to believe that anyone involved with either Halo or Warcraft or going to do that. Historically, all the companies and people have experience with A) producing the highest quality work and B ) being behind adaptations that were recognized as brilliant.

With that in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable, and quite frankly, entirely likely, that the very simple mistake that other studios and companies have made will be avoided, which makes for an easy path for a fun time at the cinema.

I don't think that either project will be well received because it will, quite simply, be heavily truncated to fit the medium. Video games are all about their enormous length; a 2 hour game is simply unacceptable, whereas a 60+ hour game is considered a successful creative venture. To compress 40 hours down into 2 will take a lot of cutting and modifying, which I think will go over very poorly for fans. This goes into my next response...



Trust me: I want these movies to be good. I really do. I just don't have faith in the projects.

I think that Halo has the possibility for not compressing quite as much (I'm fully expecting Peter Jackson to make another 5-hour film, due to his heavily masturbatory directing style); at the same time, you should expect substantial editing (remember all the hub-bub about the changes in LOTR?). While I don't expect anything crazy like a gay Master Chief ("Plasma grenades? FABULOUS!"), it'll still be shredded.

The vast majority of a video game time however, is taken up in gameplay... something that doesn't have to be translated into the movie, except for the general feel of the action, in an action sequence perhaps, depending on the game. Indeed, it's my opinion that the larger challenge won't be so much compressing as stretching, IE, finding a way to flesh out the setory since in terms of cut scenes, conversations, missions texts, what-have-you I doubt even the most story intensive games have over an hours worth.




Oh, I'm sure, must as LoTR was shredded... heck, I think anything needs to be shredded to be good when it's in a new medium. So, I agree.

Well, the only games, I think, that have copious amounts of actual plot would be fairly intense RPGs (such as KotOR), but the entire "thing" about those games is that the player can make the choices that determine the outcome of the game. To take source material like that and force it into the extremely linear form of film would completely ruin the project. Other than that, yes, some games would require stretching to become a film (with the perennial exception of Mortal Kombat, which only made slight alterations to the storyline to work as a film, albeit in a very specialized genre).



Son of a... here I was, ready to call you a retarded monkey with an attitude problem, and then you had to go and agree with me. Bastard!

I guess, but then, you could probably just assume that all the choices I make in any given RPG are the best ones...

But really, I think that's a good example of how you would take a plot, characters, a theme, and a FEELING, and then just morph that into a story fit for the big screen. But it requires love. Lots and lots of LOOOOOVE.



I figure the best way for me to be annoying is to start arguing with something, and then, suddenly, agree! Ha ha!

Or, maybe it's all my relationship training.