I'm a fan of the Warcraft lore (though not where WoW took it). I found it pretty awful too. It seemed to lack a story - "stuff" just seemed to happen. It was like a 6-year old telling a story: there was no coherence or continuity. I've liked tons of movies that have done poorly with critics but a common theme across all of them is that they had a storyline.
To put this in perspective, I enjoyed Doom (2005) which is renowned for being one of the worst game movies around.
They would just name drop locations and people, expecting you to know what they were. It was just mostly a fan service, "here is your movie, loyal fans!" types.
It still wasn't "great" even if you were a fan, but I can't imagine how bad a lot of it would have come off as if you didn't follow things pretty closely to begin with.
I've only got pop culture knowledge of World Of Warcraft, and the way they explained most parts of the movie was really hard to follow. They needed:
- More world-building, geography was hard to follow, jumping around too much.
- Better character introduction, characters would just appear, banking on fans recognising them.
- Less assumed knowledge...
The whole movie came off a bit amateurish in how the story was told...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/02/warcraft-fi...
I played WoW for years starting with US open beta (I'm from the EU) But the movie was just childish and simple. I'm starting to think that I moved on from simple plots to some more interesting things. Like Asimov instead of Star Wars...
I'd suggest it was the exception to the rule. Sure, it's not Oscar material, but it was a thoroughly well made movie - and the ratings support this.
I watched it out of a sheer morbid curiosity, and haven't played any Warcraft title newer than II: Tides of Darkness. I thought the movie was crap.
But maybe I and critics just aren't the audience for these movies. Seems most people who saw it liked it. Doesn't that make it at least "Good"?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_g...