<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Duncan Jones. Starring Travis Fimmel, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Robert Kazinsky, Paula Patton

Running Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Fans of the MMO (massively multiplayer online) game World of Warcraft rejoice. Your dream film is here.

What can you say about a film that looks so much like Lord of the Rings? It even has the same characters: Orcs and elves and dwarfs! And Lord of the Rings was great wasn’t it? Yes it was. So it figures that Warcraft would be too.

It’s a lovely film about an evil Orc who uses some strange green power to control other Orcs into taking life as fuel for their powers as they plunge into a portal to an ancient Earth where of course, they must burn it down and take it over. It’s a plot device used in at least half of Hollywood films nowadays. It must be a fantastic and life-altering idea if they use it so much and make so much money out of it. Surely you, the humble movie watcher is contributing to that abundance. You love the game, so now you (have to) love the movie.

The good humans and their noble king and his noble warrior sidekick must fight to save their lands with the help of some ‘traitor’ Orcs who look like they’re on steroids and will certainly make those young 18-year-old boys at the gym reach for their 2 Kg box of whey protein in the hopes of being big and strong. This film should get a medal for promoting fitness among the young, oh-so-obese population of America. Of course, the thin population of China, where Warcraft is expected to do very well since they’re a big gaming nation, will perhaps want to learn the ways of sorcery just like the ‘guardians’ in the film, sort of like Merlin from King Arthur’s time.

The CGI is so awesomely real that you’d rather watch the Orcs beat the shit out of each other than the ugly humans (let’s be honest, this cast isn’t exactly winning any beauty contests, especially not in that make up).

I know absolutely nothing about the game and have never played it in my life but it makes me curious: what would it be like for a male Orc to mate with a female human? This is a thinking man’s movie. It propagates interspecies mating, which is a metaphor for universal brotherhood and fosters amity among varied communities.

And talk about great inspiration: there’s a scene in there when a female Orc, trying to protect her child from the marauding green Orcs, puts her baby Orc in its crib into a river to protect it. Ten Commandments, anyone!

Kudos to the filmmakers who put in so much effort to show us death, destruction and betrayal on such a grand scale. We don’t get to see enough of it on TV or in the papers. It reminded me of the great battles of classic films, only when I went home instead of feeling inspired I felt bleak and empty inside. People keep telling me to think less and stop being burdened so the emptiness is probably good for me. Hallelujah to the film for achieving the impossible. This truly is award-winning stuff and you mortal dimwits will fuel the fire to the next Warcraft movie. Such is the power of this movie. Kings have fallen and now, so shall we!