Director Duncan Jones previous efforts Moon and Source Code were both clever and underrated movies but this time he takes on the might of the Warcraft name with it’s huge following across both the video and table top gaming platforms and delivers a good if not great game to screen transfer.

Fleeing from their dying world of Drenor the Orcs have chosen the peaceful region of Azeroth for their new home and they utilise a portal which is controlled by the use of magic called The Fel powered by human souls to transfer an advanced party of warriors to wage war on the region and gain enough of a grip to allow the rest of the clan to come through the portal.

Battling to stave off the Orcs is Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel) who is a knight that will give all for his King Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper) and needs the help of the missing fabled guardian Medivh (Ben Foster) to try and understand how this invasion has occurred and more importantly how to defeat it.

The wild card in the mix is a half-human, half-orc character Garona (Paula Patton) who is brought through the portal by the Orcs as a slave and acts as an advisor of sorts to the Orc leader Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) but gets captured by Lothar and finds herself torn between both sides.

It was the orcs that got the better character building with Durotan, the chieftain of the Frostwolf clan being the most interesting character in the movie. Their society chain and clan ethos were far more interesting than anything on the human side and their presence on screen is the main selling point of this film.

Having not played any of the games there may have been something within the story lost on me but it felt like a poor man’s Lord Of The Rings with good CGI and excellent battle scenes not being able to overcome the poor script and mediocre acting so I would suggest that you catch this in 3D or Imax as I can’t see the small screen version keeping your interest.

Unless the movie absolutely bombs this is going to be the start of a franchise and maybe if we get to invest more time with the characters it will improve the situation but this is a movie which suffers from not having the material to reach the levels of other epic fantasy movies so if they are going to build folklore it’s going to have to be done the hard way as I would be very surprised if this film is a massive box office success.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10