Or how to take down a belligerent orc in two easy steps ...
WARCRAFT
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell
Rating: (M)
Three and a half stars
When not being the son of pop royalty, director Duncan Jones is known for two of the most acclaimed sci-fi outings of recent times, leaving one to wonder why for his third time lucky he would choose to potentially tarnish this legacy with an attempt at that most reviled of genres, the tent-pole video game adaptation.
As unlike the hallowed conversion of a novel, opera, comic book or sitcom to digital celluloid, this lowbrow undertaking, not worthy of any real consideration from serious connoisseurs of the cinematic artform, is a hack's game.
It follows that critics everywhere have not been kind: they never are when those predictable story beats are not adhered to, that simplistic delineation of good versus evil is not laid out, the seen-it-all-before plotlines are not religiously followed down a three-act structure of blandness.
The collective faux outrage is frankly ridiculous.
There's more creativity in most frames of this tale than in any one of the asinine hours of The Hobbit (apologies, Sir Peter), coherent storyline and relatable characters be damned.
For once, it feels like the overabundant (and brilliantly hirsute) use of CGI, the unintentionally wooden '80s-style acting and the mishmash of dexterously inserted allegorical allusions are artistically justified, not merely ironic fan-baiting gimmicks to sell seats.
It may not be Shakespeare, but it also has one very important thing going for it: there are no embiggening speeches.
- Jeremy Quinn
