by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

Going into this article, the thing I wish I could use the most is an insert of the footage, or screenshots, or even just pictures of the movie screen in the specially-constructed Dolby Atmos Theatre used to screen the footage. All of these things were expressly forbidden, though, so I’ll need to try and communicate how amazing this footage was just with words. That’s… gonna be a challenge, folks. Also, as an aside? The header image you see of Orgrim does not do justice to how the footage looks on screen.

The teaser that we saw was in two parts: first was an extended version of the trailer that was shown at SDCC earlier this year. Included in this first section were wide shots of Stormwind, the throne room of King Llane, as well as shots of the decaying world of Draenor and the Dark Portal. There were plenty of close shots as well, showing off Dominic Cooper’s King Llane, Rob Kazinsky’s Orgrim, Travis Fimmel’s Lothar, and Toby Kebbell’s Durotan. Teases of an epic fight between footmen and grunts. Brief shots showing off Medivh, Khadgar, Garona.

No, I think a visual representation is absolutely necessary for this. Imagine that this is what Warcraft looks like when you’re playing the game:

Now compare how those dwarves look in that shot with this:

There’s a degree of realism, proportion, and authenticity in how the movie looks that is light years beyond what Blizzard does in the game, and that’s including the latest cinematics they’ve done. It’s the same degree of evolution as you’d get between a cartoon produced 40 ago and a live-action film being produced and touched-up as we speak.

Now, just to make sure I’m not causing folks expectations to blow over, let me be clear: how the orcs look in the footage we saw IS DIFFERENT from how they look in Blizzard’s cinematics. The proportions are more subtle, the face is more expressive, and the body movement feels more natural whether the orcs are walking, charging, or fighting.

Which brings us to the second part of the teaser we saw, which was a single tight shot on Durotan’s head and torso during what is clearly a bigger scene. For easily 10-15 seconds, that’s all there is to the scene, before there’s a bit of dialogue that I won’t reproduce here. During that time, though, you’re seeing the face of Durotan go through all kinds of subtle emotion: fear, concern, consideration, determination. It’s the most emotive face I’ve seen in a long time even in comparison to actors being filmed in the flesh, and something that I’d say that’s far above how emotive Gollum was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gollum was meant to be a monstrous character who we still sympathized with despite all of his villainy; Durotan, and likely all the orcs we focus on in this film, are meant to be fully-realized heroic human characters who just happen to be orcs.

Metzen put it best during the panel earlier: “I forgot I was looking at an orc.” The level of realism is there. And when Duncan Jones prefaced that shot by saying that it was still an in-progress version of the visual effects that was closer to (but still not) the final product, all I could breathe in response was “how do you improve on this?”

The statement has been made that the footage won’t be released online or to Virtual Ticket-holders, which Jones himself has protested publicly. It’s likely that we won’t see any of this footage in the wild until summer of next year, but if I had to distill down all my feelings on this footage to a few words, it’s these: it’ll be well worth the wait.

A full write-up of Friday’s movie panel is forthcoming, and there’s certain to be even more movie news in the pipe as it continues going through post-production. We’ll keep you up to speed.