maxkonge

Warcraft is a movie with a very unique feel and press surrounding it. With a massive lore both before and after the period that the movie takes place in, you are undoubtabedly going to either add too much too the movie or remove too many important lore-bits, depending on who you ask. I for one consider this movie to be very confusing, despite being a die-hard fan of the lore. The movie spends too little time developing characters and too much time showcasing lore-references such as Ironforge, Dalaran and high elves, that for a non-wow fan the whole presentation may seem very random and difficult to grasp. The visuals alone are also very interesting to touch upon. At times it is a beautiful movie. The orcs are well executed and the landscapes are gorgerous, but the human armor and much of the props give it a very B-movie feel for most of the runtime. The story is relatively straight forward, but the characters fall flat and those were the most important to get right. Anduin Lothar is assumably a caring father and a competent soldier, but we only really see him as the latter. Many of the other characters, such as the king and Blackhand, don't really have much of a personality and they appear as common character cutouts from other movies. The only character with a clear motivation and compelling struggle is Durotan. The rest fall flat. Overall the movie is a visual marvel and as a fan it is great to see some of the characters and landscapes from the games up on the big screen. As a movie in its own right, the story premise is too simple, the characters are not compelling and some scenes feel random, unimportant and underutilized.

Kubo and the two strings offer an odd if not beautiful viewing experience that both hits home and misses some great opportunities. The marketing alone showcases most of what is so great about this film; the soundtrack, the voice acting and the animation is all done to perfection. If you can enjoy a movie for its visual presentation alone, this can possibly be considered one of the most enjoyable films ever made. Where the film falls short for me is in the overall storyboarding, the themes it tries to tell and the exposition. The movie establishes early on that the use of origami and Kubo's magical guitar can be used to tell stories and yet we only see this being used effectively once. Other times we have odd and moment-breaking exposition during action sequences, that could have been used so much better in earlier scenes involving Kubo's magic. The twists and turns of this movie also appears out of nowhere with no hinting or foundation for such twists earlier in the movie. The story sort of follows the typical quirky adventure beat, without being smart about laying the foundation for the bits in the second and third act that could have had a much stronger impact. It's a shame, because the story and themes of this movie are well-intended, if not a bit rough in the finished product. All in all Kubo and the two strings is a good watch, that effectively relies on its animation and visual storytelling. The logic and structure of the story is excused by the adventure which is presented, possibly making the movie a spectacular watch for someone less critical than myself.