"Warcraft," the long-awaited adaptation of the popular online video game, is finally in theaters.
The film, from Legendary and Blizzard, has been in production for over a decade and is the latest video game adaptation to hit theaters.
If you're familiar with video game movies then you'll know the track record for them isn't so great. The majority aren't revered by critics or audiences, and, other than the "Resident Evil" franchise (and arguably the first "Tomb Raider"), are not glorified as huge Hollywood hits. There are over 18 million searches across Google for "why video game movies are bad."
"Warcraft" itself currently sits at 27% on RottenTomatoes. While it may bomb stateside, the movie is already performing exceedingly well overseas. It's already made over $280 million internationally.
Still, at this point, you may wonder why a director would want to take on a video game franchise when the genre isn't so hot at the box office.
This is the question I asked "Warcraft" director Duncan Jones, who, yes, is aware that video game movies can suck. Tech Insider spoke with Jones a few weeks back on the phone after a screening for the film, and it was clear that if anyone was going to make a movie about the video game that he was probably the one to do it.
Jones is a big sci-fi and fantasy film fan. If you're familiar with his work, you'll know he directed 2009's "Moon," a modern day "2001: A Space Odyssey," starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey. When it comes to "Warcraft," he started playing the games 20 years ago. When Jones first learned the film was getting made, it was back when "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi was initially attached until leaving the director's chair in 2012 to work on "Oz the Great and Powerful."
Jones tells us that Legendary and Blizzard didn't approach him to make "Warcraft." He actually wanted in on the film and sought them out.
"I had just finished my second film, ‘Source Code' [2011], which had been well received," Jones explains. "As a fan, I actually reached out. They weren’t looking for me, but I actually went looking for them to see whether they’d be interested in me at least coming in and giving them a pitch. Fortunately, they did and it all worked out really well."
From early on, the idea for "Warcraft" was to pit the humans against the Orcs; however, Jones says when he came aboard he helped shape the story from what could have been a more generic adaptation of the source material.
"Their approach earlier had been a little bit more traditional in my mind. It had been that the humans were the good guys and the creatures were the bad guys. And my sort of spin on it, which I think was much more in keeping with the game, was that the bad guys, or the creatures rather, had heroes on their side, too," Jones explains to TI. "So good guys and bad guys was more a matter of the characters which made bad choices as opposed to monsters being bad, humans being good."
So we know that Jones is a big fan of "Warcraft," but what made him want to tackle a video game movie? Video games aren't known for lending themselves to films that are generally well-received. Naturally, that had to be something weighing on his mind when taking on the project. Jones says he knew what he was getting into when he took on adapting "Warcraft."
"I think one of the things that helped was that I was such a fan of the games in the first place so when I approached it, I was able to approach it almost purely as a filmmaker," Jones says of why he took on the video game adaptation. "[I was] just trying to work out how to make the best movie because I already felt like I was deeply surrounded and understood the material enough that when I made a movie, it would feel right for fans."
He acknowledged that you don't always get people working on video-game-to-film adaptations that really know the source material well.
"I think a lot people, who are kind of brought into these [movie projects] who don’t really know about the game, try too hard to bring in what they think the game is and maybe sometimes miss ... the experience that the players of the games are craving to see in a movie," he says.
While some may argue the movie was only made with fans of the game in mind, I didn't find that to be the case. Mind you, "Warcraft" isn't a movie I would recommend to run out and see; however, as someone who is not caught up in the game's lore and who knows little about the franchise, I was able to comprehend most of the story through the eyes of Garona, a character who finds herself caught in between both the Orcs and the humans in the film.
"I think with Warcraft, what we tried to do was just make a great fantasy movie," says Jones. "So the video game aspect of it is, you know, in the same way that Peter Jackson took the Tolkien story and made a great movie out of 'Fellowship of the Rings,' we tried to make a great movie out of the stories told in Warcraft."
"Those people who love 'Warcraft' will hopefully get a chance to see the film, and feel like they’ve gone home," he adds. "We want them to recognize this place that they’ve spent so much time [in]. But we also want people who know nothing about ‘Warcraft’ to hopefully come and see this movie and get just a little bit of a sense that 100 million people have been so excited about for 20 years."
