a review of 魔兽

#63 (March 4/31) I was never particularly a fan of the MMO, but I did spend a lot of time with Warcraft 2 back in the day duribg college. Beyond any of the creative missteps of the movie, I think we need to recognize that originally Warcraft was just a set of basic real-time strategy play mechanics dressed up in Tolkienian fantasy chrome. It wasn't meant to be an epic saga of anything, just a way to spend some time between homework and writing assignments. The mistake of the MMO and this film was thinking that you could make a satisfying narrative film out of a different kind of audiovisual experience, where the world enters your imagination through direct immersive conflict with it, rather than through character and exposition. Duncan Jones is a terrific filmmaker, but this was a fool's errand. I wasn't engaged or moved by a single thing that happened here, and the sequel-teasing ending is pure hubris for something that fails to tell its own story as thoroughly as this film does.