Exclusive: Cannibal Corpse’s George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher Reviews the Warcraft Movie
Cannibal Corpse‘s George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher isn’t just a legendary death metal vocalist — he’s a legendary fan of the Warcraft video game franchise, too! As a result, we couldn’t think of anyone better to review the recent Warcraft movie for MetalSucks. Luckily for all of us, George agreed!
Get Corpsegrinder’s thoughts on Warcraft below. If you hurry you may still be able to catch the film in theaters. Definitely do NOT miss Cannibal Corpse when they headline this year’s Summer Slaughter tour starting at the end of this month. Get dates and tickets here.
When it comes to movie adaptations of stories I love from other mediums, I’m a purist. For example, my poor wife will come see the Marvel Comics movies with me, even though she doesn’t care up, down, right or left about comics; anything she knows about Marvel she only knows from being married to me. And after the movie, we’ll get into the car, and I’ll sit in silence until she says, “Alright, let me have it.” Then I’ll usually launch into a rant about the changes they made: “Captain America wasn’t The First Avenger!” “Tony Stark didn’t create Ultron!” “This wasn’t this and that wasn’t that!”
So going into Warcraft, I didn’t let myself get my hopes up too high. I was sure they would screw it up by making changes which would ruin everything cool about the story.
Boy, was I wrong. Warcraft is awesome! I’ve seen this movie twice. I’m thinking about going to see it again before it leaves theaters.
To be clear: Warcraft isn’t about the actual video game, but about the lore in the game, the actual mythology of the game and the characters involved in that mythology. It starts with the orcs following their evil shaman, Gul’dan, to Azeroth, the world on which most of the game takes place. And it continues to follow the mythology very closely, while still telling the story in such a way that even people who haven’t played the game will be able to follow the narrative.
Sure, you could nitpick about the few things they did change… but why would you? There are certain elements of the game that just would not translate well into a movie, and those are the only adjustments they really made. They’re small things. None of it made me go, “Aw, C’MON!”
(Actually, they also used some stupid modern day slang terms that seemed really out of place and didn’t make sense, I’m guessing because they wanted teenagers to get sucked in and play the game. But even that isn’t so annoying when you consider that some of that stuff is kind of in the game anyway — they use pop culture references in the game, for example.)
In fact, the movie did such a good job with the characters that they got me to sympathize with the Alliance. When I play the game, I am full Horde, all the way. Always have been. On the Alliance side, you have humans and gnomes and elves and dwarves. On the Horde side, you have the undead, orcs, trolls, and tauren, which are minotaur-type guys. C’mon! As a metalhead, which side are you gonna choose? Alliance ain’t metal. So when I’m playing the game, I’m just angry all the time: “Oh, I’m gonna kill this stupid night elf.” But in the movie, they really make you understand both sides.
The special effects looked great. The orcs were so awesome. I know there are people who will complain and say that when the orcs stand next to actual humans, they don’t look real. Well, guess what? They’re not real! I think they looked real enough, and they behaved the way they’re supposed to behave.
I’m not a guy that follows directors, so I wasn’t really familiar with Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) before this. But he nailed it. It really felt like he loved the game and managed to avoid any compromises which would have ruined it.
In case you somehow don’t understand: I loved this movie. It got me emotional. To see [the orc] Thrall as a baby… especially the last scene… I almost teared up! I hope they make ten more. There’s so much more in that game they can mine for material, and now I have every confidence that they’ll do it right.
