Entertainment Affair

‘Warcraft’ is a Visual-Effects Feast Where All Races Have a Hero

by Rocio Vidal | June 8, 2016

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The highly anticipated epic adventure film Warcraft is a visual-effects feast, a seamless marriage of facial animation motion-capture and CG magic, that stands in a world-colliding conflict between Orcs and Humans; a film adapted from Blizzard Entertainment's hugely successful game series and developed in partnership with Legendary.

The film is set in the world of Azeroth which is on the brink of war as its civilization, led by humans, faces a fearsome race of invaders, orc warriors; These monsters as seen by humans are fleeing their dying world of Draenor and through a portal connect the two worlds and colonize Azeroth. As the gateway, known as the Dark Portal, opens the humans face destruction while the orcs face extinction. Anduin Lotha (Travis Fimmel), leader of the humans, and Durotan (Toby Kebbell), leader of the orcs, as opposing heroes are sent on a collision course that will decide the fate of their families, their people and their home. With a refreshing structure, the director and writer Duncan Jones explained the opportunity he had to portray the complexities of reality and real life, where there's more than one hero, he said "It's a bit of a structural juggle, it was always gonna be a challenge and I like those kind of challenges but I think what Lord of the Rings and Tolkien did so well and kind of established in those books and films, was something which now maybe feels a little bit dated, the idea that humans and the good-looking characters are all the good guys and the monsters are all the bad guys, you know that worked then but now we have an opportunity to kind of try something different, the idea that all the races have heroes, that their perspectives are all completely reasonable if you look at things through their eyes."


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Jones, also brings to the mix, a mixed half-orc, half-human character named Garona (Paula Patton) she is caught in the middle, she was slaved by her comrades and thrown out of her nest she then faces death in the hands of either of the groups, she's a wreck of torn loyalties and while confused by her own identity she fights back and is ready to do whatever it takes to survive.

Paula and Garona share their conviction on how important it is to face your fears to come triumphant. " I was so scared I was going to ruin it and if I was going to do it justice and how I will be going to become a half-orc, half-human and so then I realized that the things that you are more scared of doing those you should do" Patton said while relating the moment she found out she got the part.

In a similar fashion to Disney's 'The Jungle Book', Warcraft brings eye-popping visual-effects but only with a heavier emphasis on facial motion-capture technology, the subtleties are massive and every single detail will leave you in awe. The director already facing comparisons says "I thought Jungle Book was fantastic as well, so that's high praise to say that we are at the same level as that, which I think we are, so thank you." and Toby Kebbell further talks about the amazing work that went into creating these amazing characters "I think the difficult thing was the soft tissue was such a complex thing right at the beginning, I just came out of 'Planet of the Ape's and I was aware of the subtleties that you could perform in a motion-captured circumstances and I think I at that point was very comfortable with the hard shelf technology and soft tissue... so it was a situation where I was very aware, they were constantly asking all of us orcs to do it big, and we have these huge cores of course it made sense to do it big and of course we were all capable of doing it but what was nice was doing small, and 11 months later going thank goodness you and Duncan sat and said let's also do the subtle version every time because that technology was already advancing and get across what we were trying to do."


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Because the film taps into the science fiction subgenre of fantasy, it also draws comparisons with 'Lord of the Rings' which the director also wishes to get Warcraft, into a trilogy like Peter Jackson's masterpiece. "One of the things is that science fiction in particular has a number of different sub-genres over the years, whether you have a gritty movie like Blade Runner, 2001 or AI there's a big spectrum of what science fiction could be and in fantasy this kind of gorilla in the room is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the original one with Peter Jackson and it kind of feel like the spectrum of what is fantasy is much smaller than there is for science fiction. So I love the opportunity to maybe try to do a film which will hopefully reach the same bar as Lord of the Rings but gives fantasy a kind of a new voice, a new feel and that's what we are trying to do with Warcraft." Jones said.

Speaking of 'Lord of the Rings', in Warcraft, there's really not good guys and bad guys, you would think it's orcs against humans when then there's factions in between them and it was very rich and the characters are very complex, and the director shared that "It's a bit of a structural juggle, it was always gonna be a challenge and I like those kind of challenges but I think what Lord of the Rings and Tolkien did so well and kind of established in those books and films, was something which now maybe feels a little bit dated, the idea of humans and the good-looking characters are all the good guys and the monsters are all the bad guys, you know that works then but now we have an opportunity to kind of try something different, the idea that all the races have heroes, that their perspectives are all completely reasonable if you look at things through their eyes."


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Robert Kazinsky who plays Orgrim Doomhammer, an orc who is Blackhand's right-hand man and extraordinarily cunning and tactically brilliant brave warrior destined to wield the Doomhammer; Rob shared to the extend he would've go to be part of this fantastic film. "I would've killed a many puppies to be a part of this film I would've had done any part in it and literally I think I offered to pay Legendary, literally pay them to have me in it and so I was more than happy when I was asked to be Orgrim and for me this game has been my life for 12 years so it feels much like a full circle for me to get to be in this."

Ben Schnetzer who plays Khadgar, a gifted young mage embarking on a daring search for the truth during his apprenticeship with Medivh, also shared why he was so drawn to this film. "I was a big fan of Duncan since seeing Moon, my first real introduction to world of Warcraft was through the script; and the story and the narrative that Duncan and Charles set forth was very faithful to the mythology of the game but it also crafted a very human narrative and it was a very real character driven story and about 10 pages into the script I have forgotten I was reading an adaptation of a game and whether your source material is a game or a novel or whatever it is, a good story it's a good story and Duncan was very diligent in getting equal weights to both sides of the story and I was captivated and compelled by it and the opportunity to do something iconic was extraordinarily exciting."

The film has all the ingredients to be an amazing movie to gamers and lovers of the Blizzard Entertainment series and to non-gamers looking to enjoy a new fantasy adventure as Jones points out. "I'm a big fan of Pixar, I love the fact that when Pixar makes a movie they make a movie that works for kids and that also works for their parents, and it works on two completely different levels, what we were trying to do was make a film that work for the fans on one level where we will bring them to a world that felt like home to them but then also on another level it felt like this grand brand new fantasy for people who know nothing about Warcraft and in an ideal situation is where people who know the game and love the game who will go to the movie could bring people who knew nothing about it and communicate to them through the movie this is what I love about Warcraft."

Warcraft in theaters, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D Friday, June 10.

 

 

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