Hey, hey, Noclip Crewcast listeners.
This is Jesse, and this is episode 259 of the Crewcast, although this is not a normal episode.
Everyone is taking a break this week, as we're spending time with our friends and family this holiday season, and I hope you are as well.
But we didn't want to leave you hanging.
I'm sure many of you are making your way home from family gatherings which were hopefully uneventful and totally not full of political arguments.
So, to keep you company on the road, we have decided to release an episode of our previously patron exclusive podcast, the 2016 Warcraft movie review that we recorded and released in September.
You get it for free in just a minute here once I get out of the way.
But if you've already listened to that podcast because you're already a patron, then head over to patreoncom slash noclip for a brand new movie review podcast about 1993's Super Mario Bros movie that myself and Jeremy recorded last, starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper.
The movie, of course, not the podcast.
It's just the two of us.
If you want to check that out again, patreon.com slash noclip.
Become a supporter and support all the great work we do and join the Battle Pass holder list, if you'd like, to which I'm going to read out now, as is tradition here on the show.
That list includes Lil Toast, Corey, Lovepreet, Yutt, Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me, Ferrario, Senator Armstrong, Redredge, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, James Brown, Mark Rojas, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez, John Akers, YouIntNate,
Tim Robinson, Forrest Pruitt, Dark Insanities, Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Fatui Enox, Grizzly Mug, Cameron Ladd, Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sercotis, Jacob Godserve Entheogen, James Med Tohir, Tillyev and Rison.
Thank you to all those lovely people for their support.
Everyone who's given us support this year, of course.
Thank you so much for allowing us to do all the cool stuff that we do.
And we look forward to doing more of it with you in 2016 and 2026.
We're not going back 10 years.
That's when the Warcraft movie came out, which you're about to hear a review for right now.
Hello patrons and welcome to your patron exclusive podcast for September 2025.
We've done it folks.
We have. dog dove back into the world of azeroth all of us world of warcraft fans here we've decided to get back to the game that we love in cinematic form with 2016's warcraft directed by duncan jones son of david bowie creator of such uh fantastic movies as moon we got a lot of moon fans in here who doesn't love moon moon fans good waves be like waves be like what being waves be like big moon fan love love moon source code yeah thank you for that was a good joke this is not funny oh yeah waves got it uh source code in 2011 um mute i did not watch i heard it was not particularly well received And apparently the animated, uh, Rogue Trooper is apparently coming out this year that he's been directing.
So, uh, look forward to that one.
Uh yeah, Warcraft came out in 2016.
Not necessarily the height of World of Warcraft's popularity might've been actually wedged in between sort of the original, you know, 04 to 2012, sort of hotness.
And then the, uh, the, the the anniversary classic wow versions that came out just after 2016.
So actually is this, I'm, I am coming over here as the true poser of the world of Warcraft lore.
I know nothing about this series at all.
Um, is this about Warcraft or is this about world of Warcraft?
Uh, do we want to get into that now?
Do you guys want to?
Okay, we can wait it out.
I was just yeah yeah, i just i'm doing.
Let me finish my intro stuff here.
There's a bunch of uh, great actors in this as well um, A bunch of people who, I feel like either blew up after this or this signaled maybe the end of their blowing up.
I couldn't tell which one.
Travis Fimmel, who I feel like has been weird-looking guy in every sci-fi thing ever since.
Raised by Wolves, he's in, of course.
He's in the new Dune show as well.
I believe he might have been in one of those Viking shows.
Paula Patton's in here.
Ben Foster.
Sort of Dominic Cooper from Mamma Mia, most people remember him from, I suspect.
Clancy Brown's in here.
You wouldn't know it because he's a big orc.
He's not the meanest SOB in Shawshank in this one.
Ruth Negas in this as well.
Famous Ethiopian-Irish actress.
You could hear her accent creeping through a bunch in this one as the queen and uh and a bunch of other folks, although they're mostly the big ones.
And yeah this, this story takes place in as the sort of orcs invade azeroth for the first time, which is part of the warcraft game lore and also the world of warcraft lore um uh, in in some ways.
I'm not.
I'm not super in on a lot of the wow lore stuff, but i sure did recognize that big portal.
So first of all, let's go around the wheel on this one.
What's everyone's Warcraft sort of exposure?
Like, how much do you know about Warcraft games?
How much have you played them?
And what do you know about the world's lore?
Jeremy, you go first.
I have played warcraft.
I've played warcraft 2, played warcraft 3, played world of warcraft, and i have retained approximately zero narrative information from any of them.
Um, just sort of the way that i interact with mmos and rtss as two sort of like outliers to my obsession with narrative in most games uh, i just can't, i don't know.
I it's not that i like skip the cut scenes or anything, but like can't tell you anything about starcraft either.
I know kerrigan.
Kerrigan was like a human and then she was a zerg, but that's like the only thing i remember, despite playing the campaign and starcraft and brood war a hundred times.
That's fair, frank.
What about you?
Yeah, i played like a decade of world of warcraft.
I played a little bit of warcraft 3, the frozen, whatever that expansion was um, but uh yeah, i never cared about the story at all, but i know, like the races and their home worlds, like i know the world yes, very well.
Do not care about the characters and inhabitants.
But I know the level environments, and I can talk about that as we get into it.
But the actual story lore, I don't know anything of.
What about you, Jesse?
Yeah, I already outed myself as the Warcraft not knower.
I mean, I didn't, it was the game you played if you had money when you were a kid for me.
And we didn't have that.
So everything I knew about World of Warcraft started.
Well, I knew World of Warcraft, but everything I knew about it started and ended with the episode of South Park, where they play World of Warcraft.
And I was like, oh, that seems fun.
Was Thrall in that one?
I can't remember if they talked about Thrall in that.
The Goldshire Inn is in both this and that episode.
So sure you know it's been some time, although it takes them a while.
Hello, kitty island adventure.
That's all i know about world of warcraft.
Yeah i'm, i'm obviously a big way ahead as well.
Um, i played the classic warcraft games a bit, but not really all that much.
Probably the one i played the most was the first ones uh warcraft, or orcs versus humans, to give it its original title and i feel like this is this, feels like this, feels like the sort of what happened in that first Warcraft game, when the orcs and the humans first met each other, but taking place in the world of Warcraft.
Azeroth is kind of the vibe that I'm getting from this one.
Although also is Kalimdor exist in this?
Because, like when he, when the King, looked up in his room, all he had was the Eastern provinces and they said that they teleported from another world.
So I'm just guessing that they just like teleported from the other island and they don't know they're there.
That was my interpretation.
Is that kalimdor was dying, expressing it as another world was?
Was their sort of like medieval interpretation of a continent right?
Yeah, i was thinking yeah, there was a couple of bits and bobs here that sort of didn't necessarily line up or make sense.
But yeah, i think that's where it is jesse, and i think i also yeah, i suspect that this is heavily diverged from the original story, like i imagine this is them then taking that and running with it in their own direction.
Um, to a certain extent, the warcraft games don't open with a pregnant orc laying in bed.
Is that not the opening cut scene for the first game?
Uh, did anyone else feel like in the intro sequence that they were watching a gritty reboot reboot of shrek?
Because i, when they whoa, when the orcs came on And they were like green people, but they looked like clearly like there was like some of them look more human than others.
They all had like human ish faces like there was clearly performance capture and mocap going on.
I could not help but feel I was watching a Shrek reboot.
That's beautiful.
Yeah.
OK, Shrek.
Let's, before we get into the plot stuff, let's let's, I guess, give our opinions on what we thought of this movie.
Who here thinks they enjoyed it the most of the four of us?
I think I did.
Oh, really?
Wow.
Three of us put our hands up.
I actually really liked especially the orc stuff.
I thought that was awesome.
I wish that was the whole movie.
Every time I cut back to the people, I was like, who gives a shit about any of this?
Go back to the interesting orcs.
I want to see my my homie Orgrim and whatever the other one's name was.
Just hang out for two hours.
I could do that.
Yeah, I thought this movie was better than i was.
I thought this movie was gonna suck, so fucking bad because it's it's got like a 27 on rotten tomatoes or something.
It's like i, i like this way more than the minecraft movie.
Um, oh yeah, i agree with part of that is just like you know, i this.
That movie was made for babies and this movie was made for, you know adults, slightly older babies.
No i, it's i again.
I'm not even like a warcraft, like lore head, like i you know there were a few like names i recognized and like obviously, you know every the places show up and i'm like, oh shit, it's ironforge.
But i wasn't like oh fuck, it's ironforge, like it wasn't like a recognition thing that i was psyched on.
I just thought it was like.
I thought there was just like some kind of interesting power dynamics playing out in the narrative here.
And, you know, I think the, there, there was some real like porn acting in this.
Like I don't think it was, like you know, cinema um, But like there was a cool – like the character, dynamics and the way that – props to Duncan Jones, because this felt like it so easily could have leaned way harder into the like I recognize that thing.
Genre of video game movie.
And it does do a little bit of that.
At 13 minutes, we get a murloc going.
They're like – like doing the yeah uh so it's not it doesn't shy away from doing that a little bit because like i feel like that's you got to pay the piper if you make the video game movie you gotta you know mario's gotta say like if you're doing the mario movie but um but i feel like he like treated the source material like real you know fodder for crafting a narrative about real characters and it's not like you know this isn't going in the criterion collection but i was like compelled by some of the power dynamics playing out yeah i'm i'm i'm like super relieved to hear you both say that because similarly i i have had this on uh blu-ray for like years like i have i have a blu-ray copy of warcraft i think there was a wario 64 like five dollar tweets that went up for something and i was like oh i'll watch that sometime and it'll cost that much to stream it so i'll just I'll get the physical, keep it physical.
I had to watch five ads before the movie started though.
That seems like brutal bullshit.
Um uh, and I've had it this long and I've never watched it because I was scared that I wouldn't like it.
I was like scared.
I, cause I, I similarly heard like people Duncan on it and, and no pun intended, uh, Duncan, um, uh, and maybe going in with low middling expectations helped but yeah i i thought this was a entertaining movie i thought like it's a difficult one to pull off i think it's it's not lord of the rings i think like you i think maybe it came out in an era obviously came out way after lord of rings but like There was a lot of movies that had had these multi-episode franchises like Hunger Games and, you know, every sort of sci-fi and fantasy thing seemed to be part of a series.
I remember actually talking about this with the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie, which is another movie that was way better than I thought it would be.
There's something about fantasy and big stories that is tricky to do, you know, i think maybe game of thrones didn't help too, because it's like you're, you're being able to do this fantasy that's a lot more serious and a lot more you know character development, because you just have the hours and this, this movie, doesn't have that, and i did think they may be crammed in a little bit too much plot into this, like i feel like there was one or two subplots that could easily have not been in this movie and it would have been fine um, and we'll get to that.
But uh yeah, i was the same way i i thought it was.
I was surprised by how good a lot of the performances were.
Like jesse said, the orc stuff was fucking great like oh, it was so emotive and like the cg was terrific and the performances were fun.
The cg on the orcs was terrific.
Yes yes it's, it's interesting.
The cg thing brings up sort of like one of the main, like the core dissonances that i think holds this movie back and i think it is something that you cannot do anything about because of the source material.
Uh, i think that the benefit of something like lord of the rings and something like game of thrones is that they're both very, You know, they're all sort of like broadly related to this, this phenomenon of like the fantasy genre and fantasy RPGs and fantasy literature and stuff.
And but I feel like those examples are more sort of grounded where they can play them as straight sort of medievalist fantasy with, when there are supernatural elements or over the top elements or there's like white walkers and stuff.
It's still treated in a grounded way.
Warcraft is, by its very definition and because it derives from Warhammer, is like it is.
It's chunky, it's exaggerated, it's over the top, it's pastiche, it's like you can't get away from that element of it.
And so trying to tell a grounded lord of the rings style story in a world where people look like little, like figurines it's, it's hard because everyone looks like a cartoon character.
So you fucking pauldrons on these people yeah, like the helmets, the storming guards and shit, and like you know, the orcs look like they can barely move because they have like 600 skeletons hanging off of them.
It just is like it's when it's To its credit.
There were moments where all of that sort of faded into the background and I was compelled by the drama unfolding.
But I kept just being like why all of these people are just running around in very high-budget Halloween costumes is how it felt for a lot of it.
They all look like cosplayers.
Yeah, it's like the best of Comic-Con costumes.
The King especially looks like he is acting or he is dressed up like Carl Urban, who was supposed to play that character.
I didn't read the Wikipedia.
No, no, no.
I don't know if that was the case.
It looks like he was supposed to be Carl Urban.
And then they were like, here's the drawing we did of Carl Urban, but we couldn't get him.
Can you make yourself look like him as much as humanly possible?
You did it.
That's great.
Uh also, everyone's young in this movie.
It feels like like there's a lot of like yeah, or like no one's over 40 like, except for like mages everyone, that's true.
That that's how you can tell they're mages, because they're the only old people.
That's great.
Yeah uh frank, what did you make of it?
No, i i feel bad because i'm always like trying to be positive.
I hate it, dude.
The last, the last 30 minutes, is like pretty.
I mean, it is a piece of shit, but the it's an interesting piece of shit.
But yeah, please speak on that.
No, it was just like watching a ps1 cut scene, but i couldn't skip it to play the fucking game.
I was sitting there the whole time like i wish i was playing world of warcraft.
I wish i was doing any like.
I don't know.
Like, like, yeah, it's just, it's, it's why I never bothered to watch it.
So I don't watch any video game movies unless, like I, if it was made in the nineties, where there was no CG and it was all prosthetics and makeup.
Oh, I would love to have seen that.
But like anytime there's a movie is thankfully there were like human actors, but it's mostly CG.
My brain just turns off.
That's why I never watched any of the Marvel films.
I love Marvel Punisher from the eighties with Dolph Lundgren.
That's camp.
I love it.
This movie wasn't campy enough.
It was just like there was nothing for me to latch onto other than man.
I wish I could play World of Warcraft right now.
So like, yeah, it's just like, wasn't for me.
And like, yeah.
So what you're saying is that as a commercial for World of Warcraft, it actually works really well.
Yeah.
I was like, oh yeah.
Like they use like the sound effects.
So what I loved about the film is every time it was like, look, oh my God, they're at Goldshire.
There's the Murlocs.
We have to go to Red Ridge Mountains.
Oh my God.
Like I recognize every location.
And the whole time I was watching this, I was like, Oh my God.
I remember when I played, like I remember playing in dead minds with my friends.
I remember being happy.
It was just like, it was just like, Oh man.
Like I just thought of other things I'd rather see.
I would rather see like a small, intimate story of a group of like Alliance trying to fight the defiest bandits in Westfall.
Make that an entire film.
Or if this was a mini series and each episode was its own quest in the world of Azeroth.
That is so much better than having a hundred characters cross-cutting every two minutes.
And it's like, That's what I did not.
I don't know.
Like, oh, Orog is over here in Lithol.
We have to go here.
Use the great scales of Uzara.
And it's like, I don't know what the fuck any of this means.
I don't care.
Like, and so I... Was that pulled from the movie or was that, did you make that up?
Because I literally can't tell.
No, exactly.
Like, that's just what the film sounds.
And I have subtitles on and stuff too, but it's just like...
Yeah, it's just not for me.
Now, if you're, like, again, even in World of Warcraft, I skip all the flavor text.
I don't care.
Like, great, 10 wolves to kill.
Here's the guts.
Give me XP.
Give me loot.
Here's the guts.
And like it maybe would have been too insufferable if they went the other way and was campy and they have level-up dings.
But I would have rather have seen that.
I thought that would have been cool.
Oh, funny, yeah.
But like it was.
So for me, world of warcraft is a goofy game.
It is like it's the art style is so cartoony all my experiences with art is a hilarious game to play with friends and everything the.
But maybe the movie was more in line with the rts games.
I didn't play the rts games but it was like so serious that was just like, oh man, i just like i don't know and i like like game of thrones, stuff i like, because it's like it takes its time again as a tv show.
The format exactly right.
So this it's so rushed, like So you don't even get time to learn about the bureaucracy of that world or the culture.
It just moves too fast.
Like you guys said earlier, if the film was just the orcs, oh, that would have been cool.
The graphics were really good.
It was like, oh, I wish there was a new WoW that looked like this.
That would have been awesome.
I did think the half-orc girl was cool.
I did like her.
I couldn't get over her teeth.
Oh, me too.
Fake.
They were so bad.
They looked like some spirit Halloween shit.
Frank is pointing to again this core dissonance of the film that it is trying to because, like it is a, like the lore of Warcraft, is serious in its content.
It is about like.
It's about like a Viking, like invasion force of these, like brutal otherworldly forces.
You know marauders who were like savagely killing people and like rolling through, like murdering entire villages of, like that's sucking their life, like doing fucking necromancy in, like a horrifying, visceral way, that's like draining people of their life before your eyes.
It's like.
It's so heavy and, i think, to frank's credit.
The reason that works in a lot of warcraft is because you'll you'll get a quest where it's like go see the king and the king is like this world is dying and then right after that you'll go meet like a goblin named like grimgrom and he has like a helicopter that's powered by farts or something like i.
That is the core, like weird pairing of warcraft that works.
It's like it the lore is so serious but the world is so fucking cartoonish.
Yeah, it's like all the like.
You know all the stuff you do and like Duskwood is like super scary stuff.
Everyone's so scared, but you're just like, lol, this is like Halloween town.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's like Jack Skellington hangs out and it's like a really difficult worlds to do. a movie in.
Like I was just like I was sort of I think at the end of it I was like oh, they did a really good job of like trying to pull this one off.
And like box office wise, it made like three times its money.
It made like 450 million globally.
Like it's.
It was a massive success, but and and clearly set was setting up a sequel that never happened.
Right.
Um, uh.
I don't know if we need to go beat by beast just on the plot stuff, because there's so much of it will be here all day.
But let's talk about some of the plots.
Let's, let's like, let's try.
And if we can, but between us, uh, outline all of the plots that exist, we'll go around in a circle.
Okay.
I'll go first.
Then we'll go, uh, Jesse, Jeremy, Frank.
Okay.
And each of us try and think of a plot, a narrative arc that's in this.
Okay.
I'll go for the most obvious one, which is the orcs are invading.
They have this, um, uh bad what's his name again the gold on the necromantic mage orc who is using um a green magic called fell which needs life to to power itself um and comes it's basically monkey paw magic it's it's going to be bad for you um He is he is he is sort of stripped their world raw of life by using it.
And now they are going to use this to invade the Eastern kingdoms or Azeroth, whatever they call it.
And then that's sort of the main arc of the movie.
Jesse, what you got?
Uh, there's a, a CAD Gar, the mage from somewhere in the sky uh, who comes down because he's trying to investigate part of this working with the guardian.
Who's like a, I'll save that for somebody else, but a different character.
Uh, and his whole thing is trying to solve this crisis of the portals between the two worlds that the orcs are using to enter.
And that's his whole beat for most of the movie is figuring that out.
And then, when he finds it out, he joins with the alliance to do what he does best, which is nothing really.
Jeremy, we got Garona, who is the hot orc lady with the little teeth.
She's one of the only orcs that doesn't look like a weird CGI cartoon.
In fact it feels like she somehow has infiltrated the orcs in green face makeup um, and hasn't been found.
She's definitely like half human, half or yeah they allude to the fact cursed, i think.
Yeah, she's like they like killed her mom because she like gave birth to like a normal looking, because she had sex with a human.
I yeah, i don't know, they never say that that's right, but i.
But then they like talk about how, like i don't work, having sex with a human would kill them.
But then there's like a guy who's like maybe like flirting with the orc.
So i don't know how the whole sexuality thing, death by snooze.
I don't want to speculate On the intimacies of orc human sexuality.
It's a whole rabbit hole.
But Garona is part of the sort of like invading war band of orcs who come through the portal to Azeroth to colonize it.
And she gets captured as a prisoner by the Alliance.
And then they're like, actually, we're the good guys.
And she sort of like slowly comes around to seeing the necessity to help facilitate peace between the Alliance and a sort of separatist group of orcs who realize that Gul'dan the necromancer is maybe not the best leader for the orcs.
And that's another plot.
So there's that plot, the Frost Wolves, who are the other orc alliance, that are having yeah, a bit of argy-bargy between the the, the orc tribes.
Frank, what about you?
It looks so boring.
Yeah, i do like to be anywhere else, but here i do like there's, which is the flying city, right?
No, and it mentioned, i don't know, there's a fucking baby thrall.
That that's they tease for the sequel, which never happens.
Um, i don't know, the guy's got the mark on his hands.
I don't know.
Baby Thrall's one yeah, like baby at the start born and then gets put in a Moses basket like any messianic figure I guess, and then gets picked up at the end and goes rawr at the end of the movie, which is one of my.
I love that bit.
That was great.
I love that.
How about I'll throw this one in.
Lothar, the sort of head champion of the Alliance... played by Travis Fimmel.
Him, him, for some reason, this is one of the plots they easily could have caught.
There's a whole subplot of him and his son.
Yeah.
And his son, like, trying to, you know, impress his dad and his dad saying to his sister, I believe.
Is his sister the queen?
Is Ruth Nega his sister?
Like anduin's sister is the queen?
You mean like loath yeah yeah, anduin sister?
I think so, because at some point the garona is like oh, is that your mate?
And he says it's my sister right yeah, is that him?
I don't know.
He said i think he said it earlier too when, when they were chatting and he was saying you keep putting my son on in the on these missions and like don't do it and year about yeah, i think he said it's.
Are you saying it's like a sister, like literally, or is it one of those like that's my cousin sort of situation?
No, i think it was.
He said literally a sister, which also makes it really confusing where at the end he is proclaimed kind of the new king or something.
I don't know what that was about.
I was like are you married to your sister?
Now, the last 25 minutes of that movie might as well not happen.
Man, that was some shit.
They crammed in a lot.
Yeah, the running time was coming.
So yeah, there was that whole subplot which I guess was used as a way for him to be motivated against Medivh the Guardian.
We haven't talked about Medivh, the Guardian yet.
Who also, Jesse, you want to take Medivh, the Guardian?
I actually really like Medivh for most of the movie.
Like I think he structurally is basically like Jesus for town, but also the Guardian, like he protects everyone and has all of the cool superpowers.
He could do all the magic without needing to, you know. prep it or he just knows all of them.
He could set stuff on fire.
That was really cool.
I like that visually.
I don't know if that made much sense, but he lit all the notes on fire in one room.
Um, he's introduced as yeah, the, the protector of, of Azeroth and he works with the royalty, but also there's something else going on on the side where he's working to stop, uh, Katgar from figuring out what's going on with the portal and, eventually you learn oh he's the bad guy sort of he was working with the the orcs he's working with uh guldan to bring them across for some reason he wanted something power did we ever get there was never an answer on why he did it was there i think it was just because it was just because of the fell right i think yeah the fell just i think mcguffin basically yeah exactly Yeah.
So there's something with that.
And yeah.
And then eventually he gets spiky.
I thought that was stupid.
I don't look up what Medivh looked like.
He already had a beard.
So they were like, oh, he's transforming into Medivh.
Now he has a spiky beard.
I just want to put on the record that I got way too high watching this movie.
And Medivh was kind of scary looking by the end when he turned into Felvedive.
That's a scary looking design.
They did a good job.
Yeah.
And then he gets Charlie Brown footballed by the two heroes of the story.
His own golem falls on him and then that's it.
And he's beaten.
Yeah.
Chekhov's golem.
We forgot about that.
That was a whole point as well.
No, it's not Chekhov's golem because they set it up and use it later.
That's Chekhov's gun.
That's Chekhov's gun.
It has to go off by the third act or whatever. if a golem is being made it has to come to life on someone yeah that's the rule stage minecraft movie this movie we've a lot of dungeons and dragons one i think had a some golems in it probably the dnd movie is a good sort of like let's just talk about that instead yeah because oh it's so it's it's very much better and it's very funny and it's very like playing with the mechanics of the the story and it's just different like this is this is clearly like trying to set up uh the remit of this i don't think you can do a warcraft movie and not piss off all the fans without touching some of this lore stuff because yeah like i think all four of us here don't really care about warcraft lore and i've played loads of many of us have played loads of hours of world of warcraft but unfortunately there are five to 10% of Warcraft players who really care about the story of, uh, of these games.
You're kind of stuck.
Like D, and D is so broad that you can kind of like tell your own story within the universe, but would would Warcraft?
You're a little bit more stuck.
I feel like uh, any other ones we have uh, we have the lots of the orcs have their own little subplots or stories about how they feel.
You know about uh Gul'dan, his whole thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's, there's a lot and you're right.
Like they're jumping between these a lot.
There's a lot of back and forth.
And because of that, like in a way, in a way it worked, because I did understand everyone's motivations.
I did understand that Medivh was a complex character that had been taken over by this but was trying to fight it but was sort of couldn't.
And that's why he had hid himself away for six years, basically.
I did understand Anduin's, you know, he also had a love story with Corona, which didn't really.
Everyone had a love story with Corona.
The king had a love story with Corona.
I think I was 40 minutes in and I said sure are a lot of dudes in this movie, because I think the only women in it had been so far was pregnant orc and queen.
And if you have a king, you have to have a queen.
So that does not feel like it didn't really count.
I don't know if it passed the Bechdel test.
Did any women speak to each other?
Oh, yeah.
Orc lady.
And the queen.
And the queen.
And the queen, Garona, did talk about her being cold or something.
She gave her the sword, right?
Oh, she gave her the dagger as well.
Yeah, true.
Yeah, the warcraft movie passing the bechdel test is like the fucking greatest, like i just let it.
Let it be a testament to the our our reverence for the art of cinema that we're having these kind of conversations about the 2016 ducky judd's warcraft movie.
I mean, if they really cared about blizzard's history, they wouldn't have had any women in it at all.
That's actually no, they they would have.
That's just terrible.
Things would have happened to or around.
Yeah yeah, that's true, exactly yeah yeah Um, so let's go.
I want to re-engage Frank.
I feel like Frank, I'm just, I'm giving him, uh like, a mental health episode, forcing him to watch this movie and then talk about it.
Let's talk about one of the fun parts of this movie, which is seeing some World of Warcraft shit.
So what were your favorite like wow, stuff that you saw in this, in this movie, Frank?
Yeah, like i said oh, like there's a part where they're like getting ready for battle and they're in the stockade's armory.
I was like that was such a specific like that.
That's seriously what i like i didn't notice.
Yeah, it was like every green screen background was straight up like that is that?
I mean, you know they're redesigning it, but it was like iron, like one of the opening shots is iron forge.
It's the two guys dwarves.
I'm like oh yes, in that main chamber.
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
So it's like that's the thing i liked is like i was so tuned out.
I mean it's honestly sometimes like when I watch like Sentai shows, I'm looking for the Tokyo filming locations.
So my brain's just been trained like that.
But that's what it was like.
Again, I'm not kidding.
When they go to Goldshire and they cross the bridge where the Murlocs are.
I know exactly that geography.
And like that was, yeah.
Did you find it funny that when they said we have to go to Goldshire to see the king, that they're like off on this expedition and it like has like a day night cycle?
Yeah, yeah.
I was thinking...
That's like two minutes down the road, guys.
It's like, you can probably just like, you can just hop on a Griffin.
It's like a 22nd Griffin ride.
It's the shortest Griffin ride in the game probably.
Or you can, you can just run it.
So I did find that very funny when they, when they went to Goldshire and it took them all day.
Um, that was, that was pretty, pretty dumb.
Yeah.
There was, like I said, cars, like that was the thing I completely forgot.
It was Karazhan, the giant wizard floating sky.
I'm like, Oh my God, they're flying into that. um here's a quick shot i think they're in like they're like black rock mountain or burning steps like they're like again near the end of the movie and they're getting ready for the battle like the commander is saying like oh we'll have our troops here by red ridge over here by black rock and it's like i know exactly where that is um but they don't do too much of it do they it's not no yeah it's like the fan service that that was the only thing that engaged me and it's like yeah um i wish there was more like i don't think what's the there's iron for the troll there's no night out they missed out on having any night elves in this movie did they have right no you're right well they the first of all the night elves would have been on the other fraud the other uh continent right where were the panda people why didn't they're on a whole they're not even on that i haven't been patched in yet uh but there was like there was elves in the the big meeting at the end though there was one there was two elves i saw yeah okay there was there was um there was a lady elf and a a guy elf but yeah there was no there was no dark elves no blood elves yeah no gnomes right like there's a few dwarves i feel like yeah there's some dwarves gnomes also are in a different island they got patched in and then what well there were i think there were non-playable gnomes in around iron oh you're right um you're right was uh are there this is a this is a deep lore question in warcraft there are blood elves and there are night elves are there is there a like vanilla elf because there were elves in the okay they're just like allies alliance has elves Night elves are on the Horde side, right?
And then blood elves got added and they were... Either?
Okay.
They were with the Draenor.
I was just making sure there was a standard elf, that was not a night elf, because I could not remember the differentiation.
Right, isn't it?
Because they're like wood elves, right?
Or whatever.
Am I wrong?
I feel like... Am I crazy?
Night elves... Okay, wait, hold on. elves come in many flavors world of warcraft uh has night elves and void elves for the alliance blood elves and nightborne for the horde i don't think there's like why am i wrong i don't think yeah yeah because but that the reason i'm asking is because i i thought the night elves were i guess some of them are like gray and white i thought they were all like weird blueberry color what it was weird because the the like lady elf was like gorgeous like just like classic uh wow elf like you know crazy glowing eyes all that stuff but then the guy elf was like really weird 40 cans of red bull deep man look at that guy yeah he was yeah his teeth were all fucked i was like that's that classic blizzard touch just grotesque dudes and really hot women yep um yeah but you're right there wasn't too much it was mostly around orcs and humans which i guess is sort of the remit of this but yeah apart from that one spit and iron forge and the the one table scene the like lord of the rings council scene there was not much uh there were draenei dwarves or anything the draenei were in they were used as fuel to open the portal originally that's who that was yeah in the cage oh i was wondering i wrote it down at the start who the fuck are the blue people they were you're right the draenei which was the draenei who would have been on kalimdor which i think is further evidence for our kalimdor theory here yeah so they must have just come over from the barns then or whatever is there a portal on that side in the game because the only portal i know is the great portal that's in alliance but that's that doesn't bring you there that brings you to to our world yeah burning crusade stuff yeah i don't i don't think so i feel like the the portal in this movie is a is a utilization of that sort of like in-world lore mechanism but applied in a way that it is not applied in the uh in the games because the only way to traverse between the continents is um is a is a ship right yeah it's been a while can't swim or some shit what the fuck it's like granddad they can't make boats exactly yeah they can't they can't make boats i guess yeah that's weird um yeah uh what else was there there was we got to see a lot of stormwind they uh saw some we saw the griffin they did a bit of a gag when the griffin's flying into the griffin place stormwind looked great Yeah.
Is that Alden?
Is that what it's called?
Alden?
That square that they see, the cube that they see in Wizard Space.
Oh, yeah.
What the fuck was that about?
Is that a thing in World of Warcraft or Warcraft?
I don't know what that was.
I don't remember it.
That was in... Lang Close was in there.
Let her out.
What's that?
Is it Dalaran?
Yeah, that was weird.
Yeah.
Hold on.
Is Dalaran the floating city?
I think it is.
Yeah, home to the Kirin Tor.
Yeah, at the center of Dalaran.
I don't remember if the weird fucking... black cube was in the game no i'd never seen that thing before that was weird i thought it was the tower that uh medivh was in no i know that but like in the in wow where's cars it's like an end game raid isn't it yeah i think so what's the thing i'm in in in uh the the the uh the nordic Iceborne.
What the hell is the second expansion called?
Lich King.
What's the... Darnassus?
What's the hub world in Lich King?
That was the floating city I was thinking of.
Oh, okay.
Is that Dalaran?
That might be it.
Darnassus is the elf hometown, isn't it?
Yeah.
We're probably...
Dalaran.
Yeah, Dalaran is the hub.
So Dalaran was the floating city.
That's what I was thinking.
No, Dalaran's what, that's JFK just banned Dalaran.
That's the thing that's given everyone autism.
Prescription Dalaran.
You're not allowed to take Dalaran anymore.
This is a great term.
Dalaran is the capital of the Majocratic nation of the same name.
Majocratic meaning run by magi.
By mages?
I just love Majocratic, like plutocratic.
Oh, man.
Yeah, Majocratic.
That's pretty cool.
That's pretty cool.
Fucking Majocrats.
Majocrats.
All major crats, yeah.
As someone who was also in the same mental frame of mind as Jeremy Jane when I was watching this movie last night.
Mental.
I couldn't stop laughing.
There's one scene where Gul'dan is basically taking drags off this human.
Do you remember the scene where he's talking to Ogrim about uh yeah, and he's just as a human.
He's just talking to him about like, how great fell is.
He's like man, you gotta get a hit of this fell.
And then he's like i'm gonna give you some fell, you're gonna be so strong.
And then it's just like a dude, like a human guy on his knees beside him, and every couple of seconds he just goes like takes a little rip off.
That takes a rip off this dude, and then goes back to him and he's like, he's like.
He's just like.
He's like nursing the end of a joint.
You know what i mean?
He doesn't want to like waste it.
So he's like, and then at the end he just kind of goes Ooh, it takes a big hit.
He does smoke that guy like a blunt.
That's actually incredible.
Amazing.
I couldn't believe it.
Cause everyone else he like does it in like one big thing, you know like a whole hundreds of them, or dozens of them.
But this one guy was just like super dank, so he was just like really enjoying him and the fella's green.
I think there's a extended allegory.
I think duncan jones is staunchly anti-cannabis and we've unraveled his true intentions with the the fell subplot.
I bet he isn't.
No, i bet he's pro kippy ziggy stardust's kid and not being a drug.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I have a well, we'll do this at the end.
But uh if, if i'm allowed to spoil moon later, i have a great moon story about.
Well, we'll get back to it.
Has everyone here listened, watched moon?
Yeah, I think so.
Frank, you watch Moon?
Okay, can I spoil Moon at the end?
We'll do that at the end.
Do you want to do that at the end?
Let's do it at the end just in case because we don't want to spoil it for everyone else.
Yeah, okay.
Who is your favorite character in this movie?
If you had to go through every one.
Who's your favorite?
Jesse.
Durotan, 100%.
I love that guy.
Durotan and Orgrim's relationship was like the only reason I gave a crap about anything which makes the last 30 minutes of the movie really hard to watch when Durotan's gone and Orgrim's kind of like.
This guy sucks right.
Shouldn't we kill this guy?
I'm not going to do it, though.
That was a little disappointing.
But yeah, Durotan's whole thing of like.
You know I didn't really care about the green baby stuff at the start, but he has this like attitude about him where he gives a shit about his wife and he like wants to see his world to be good.
Like he feels bad that his world's messed up, but he also seems to feel bad about his people being used in order to achieve that goal.
Like he feels as though there's some way to have that resolve.
I feel like his.
His ultimate goal is perhaps misguided but, like he, wants it to be their choice to do it, as opposed to just having to do what Gul'dan is forcing people to do, or or taking their lives away.
Like just a really interesting dynamic.
I like his relationship with the other characters.
I think the orc stuff is the best stuff in the movie.
Um, and just, he like, I don't know, the performance was great.
It was by the end of the movie.
When he has this sort of final fight against Gul'dan, it's like he's dying.
And I, I believed it.
I like, I forgot I was watching this bad CG movie.
It was like, that's a real motherfucker on the screen.
Who's losing his life.
That was a testament to the, like, that was the moment where I was like, you know what?
They actually like created some pathos with this fucking corny ass.
Like movie that is based on little fantasy miniature orcs that people hand paint.
They, they took that.
And when there was like a fucking Spartacus moment where they do the, the, the mukbang, what is it?
What do they call it when they do?
They do a mukbang.
Durotan and Gul'dan are just sitting there eating ramen for two hours straight.
They have to respect the outcome of the mukbang as is a work tradition.
And um, And you know the fucking Gul'dan cheats because he's like we have to close the open to do something with the portal.
And then they're like, no, you have a very important meeting.
Five minutes.
Exactly.
His phone is going to do an interview, but we're going too long.
He just sucks our souls out of our body for later.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I felt I felt emotions when Durotan was on the ground and he was getting he was getting sucked.
You know, I was shocked.
I didn't think he'd die.
I was like, oh, they fucking killed him and his wife.
They both died.
The wife's death was very disappointing.
The way that she died was her entire plot line.
Like you know, we were saying earlier, this movie doesn't seem interested in having women in it.
But, like her, entire plot thread was basically you had the baby and You are not allowed to do anything for yourself.
You have no autonomy except for when your husband lets you for a little bit.
And then she puts the baby in the river and gets stabbed.
And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
She didn't even like get the fight back.
Like, yeah, she bit him.
But like, that's it.
That's the whole thing.
Like, oh, my God.
We got to check in with.
I know we have.
We need to know what Medivh's going.
We need to see that his old guy that lived with him that he sucked the life force out of the life force that he sucked out of him.
That specifically is dead on the ground.
We need to know that.
I'm like, I don't care, man.
This character, I give a shit about her.
Bring her back.
Yeah, this movie could have benefited from settling a little deeper into some of its more compelling characters and cutting a little bit of the less consequential stuff.
Yeah, Garona was a funny one, too, because I actually think the performance was good.
And I thought some of the arc was good, but some of it was weird.
Like I really didn't think we needed the her and anduin to have that you know flirty stuff going like, especially after his son died.
It was a weird timing.
She was like kissing his neck when he was like grieving his son.
He's like i'll never know what it's like to hold my boy again.
And she's like yeah, what if i crushed all the bones in your body with my hot hips?
Boy, how about?
Yeah hey, there we go.
I think they made her green in post.
I watched a bunch of behind the scenes stuff on my 4k blu-ray.
Yeah, i'm pretty sure they like changed their own post because all there's a couple scenes reverse chroma keyed her skin color.
Yeah, exactly yeah.
And then with the little but yeah, but.
And then the other thing was that those tiny little, those tiny little uh tusks she had were just ridiculous.
She was doing a monologue about her mom dying and she had the little tfes sticking out and i was like bro, you gotta fucking do something about this shit.
You gotta like i've just i was imagining i like the actress in that moment.
It took me out of it because i was imagining being like you've devoted your life to the, the craft of cinema and acting and theater and this like rich artistic tradition.
And then they're like all right, this is the, this is like the big monologue for you.
This is when garona like talks about her mom and like she has like her mom's like tusk necklace and it's like this is a real, like origin story moment.
And then you have to deliver that with like prosthetic, fucking Halloween vampire teeth in your mouth.
There's a lot of funny moments in this as well.
I feel like there's some good like gags in it.
Um, i'm trying to see if i wrote some of these down because i get well, i like yeah, the murloc one was a was.
That wasn't really gag, it was just a funny moment.
But did you see when the portal was coming down?
Did you see that one guy who jumped in the last bit of portal, that was there?
Oh yeah, i i.
I read the reverse.
I thought that was so funny.
The portal's like coming down, all the like all the civilians from stormwind are trying to get in the portal, and then it's like coming down and on the other side the orcs are and there's like a little sliver of portal that's left and one of the guys just looks and just dives into it.
I thought that was really funny.
That was a good little bit.
It got funny.
Uh, near the end, i think, all this stuff with um, what's his name?
Again anduin, whatever last name, and thank you.
Uh, loath to win.
Loath are One of the two.
Lothar Anduin.
They read the first name second.
It's like Japan.
Exactly.
Oh, it is Anduin Lothar.
You're right.
OK, all right.
So he like him and Khadgar, when they're hanging out and fighting Medivh, I was like OK, they're trying to do like that.
Felt like proto.
Honor among thieves.
It was funny.
It was silly.
There was like he's he's hooked into the back of the golem and he's using the strings to pull him around.
He almost falls back out the window.
Whoa, wacky antics.
It felt totally like it was from a different movie and not in a complimentary way.
That's what i wanted the human stuff to be basically from the start is like be silly, be a little like this is ridiculous and funny and we're having a good time, and like he clearly wanted to be that, that sort of swashbuckling hero who has a good time with everyone, but they kept dragging him back to be like the hard ass until after his son dies and then he's free to have a little fun.
Yeah, he had a lot of you know, travis travis film had a lot of That character, was definitely complex, had a lot of different things going on.
But it did seem a little bit weird that him and – Khadgar I thought was great as well.
I thought the two of them were great.
I think it sounds like we all thought Medivh was good.
Like he was pretty – he had some good stuff going on.
But yeah, it was weird that they turned him and Khadgar into this sort of little buddy thing at the end.
It was like Gaston and his buddy, whatever his name is.
After his kid had died and all that stuff.
It just seemed like the motivations were a little bit all over the place.
Yeah, it was one of the weaker relationships, especially because a lot of the sort of like there are these sort of like character dyads throughout the story structure where you have Khadgar and Medivh are sort of the young magic user and the elder magic user.
And there's like a power dynamic there which initially seems like sort of like a dick swinging contest but you know emerges more as like the secret subplot of the fell taking over Medivh.
Thought that was interesting.
The sort of like tense building of trust between Garona and the queen really interesting, very different power dynamic that emerges between them where like showing sort of vulnerability and kindness to this hard, like hardened warrior being is like.
That was interesting.
I agree that I think, like the, the sort of like buddy cop thing they were trying to do, very slap shot and last minute between uh, Khadgar and Lothar was sort of just like it didn't live up to I can't believe I'm saying this it didn't live up to the standard of character dynamics in the Warcraft movie.
And it opens.
I think the first interaction they have is Lothar finds him because he's trying to creep into town or whatever.
He goes to see him and he's like, what were you doing, spell chucker?
And I was like, whoa!
I could not believe they fucking dropped a hard SC in this movie.
You cannot be doing that shit, man.
Crazy.
It's a video game movie.
That's pretty good.
I thought yeah, the way they did like some of the the hand magic was good, like the drawing on the ground, the force of the magic.
I thought like all that stuff there was some nice touches there.
I didn't think the combat was particularly great, like the actual fight scenes themselves they were.
Some of them were good.
Yeah, because i think there was a lot of like c is the problem with like close proximity cg fighting.
The weight of stuff is sometimes hard to pull off, but then it also that's very warcraft is that type of cartoony big, chunky fight stuff.
So i kind of get like picking up the horse.
That stuff was funny, you know what i mean.
Like there was some, there was some good bits in there, like that.
But the funniest combat bit is when they're doing the shield wall from 300 and then all of a sudden a giant bear, monster and an orc go on top of them and they're like yeah, we'll kill them this way.
It's dead guys.
It's going to crush you.
And then it did.
And I was like, are you, are you kidding me?
Stupid.
I liked Watts' face.
Anduin trying to get through the lightning with the shield.
That was cool.
Yeah, I like that visually.
For my son.
For your son gets mentioned twice in two minutes as well.
Should have said For the Alliance more.
Did they say For the Alliance?
Right at the end.
They say For the Alliance right at the end when the king thing happens.
When he's like... I was too built up on when they said Zug Zug.
I was waiting the whole movie for a Zug Zug and we got one at the end. did we the orcs who said the orcs were like zug zug zug oh you're right like a bunch of frat boys amazing yeah exactly so yeah totally kek nobody said kek but he said kek the whole movie it's been it's been too co-opted by uh edgelord online communities yeah exactly Especially in 2016, actually.
That was right in the prime of Keck.
One weird thing we've not talked about is it's a rite of passage for a video game movie to have a sequence that totally breaks from the form and tradition of cinema, to do something that is so overtly video game-y that it makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit, unless you're really on board with the fan service here.
For example, in the Doom movie, we get the weird first-person bullet time bullshit.
In this movie, when they were talking about the warcraft or the orcs like ravaging the landscape, there was an overhead sequence that was like sort of pseudo orthographic that looked like an RTS of zooming between the different towns being taken.
It was insane, awesome it was.
It was amazing and the dumbest shit i've ever seen.
Uh, i just it was the, the audacity of doing something that bombastic.
I was like you know what?
I gotta fucking give it up.
This is so stupid that, like i love it.
It didn't ever say it's welcome to.
It was so fast that it was over by the time i realized what the gimmick was uh, but i thought that was so funny that they're like remember, remember real time strategy.
I liked it i.
I liked it because it was one of the only times where i got like a, like a zoomed out picture of the world.
Yeah, i think this was an issue the the movie had as well as that, like i i thought as well, especially for people who don't know the world, who don't know that continent, like because, like at least we know where, like fucking iron forge and storm wind are like kind of far apart, but not that far.
And you have to take a griffin, and he did and that's why he's there, because he rides a griffin not everyone rides a griffin.
Like those, these things that like make sense to somebody who's played wow and understands, like gold shard, all this sort of stuff.
But I did find that to be one of the things that the game didn't do a great job of like giving people an idea of kind of where like North is, you know where anything is, or how much of the land that works have taken over or how big is the land.
Like all those types of things.
Like I think if you were coming into this having no knowledge of that stuff, maybe that might be a bit confusing, maybe an open question.
But that one sequence was one part where I thought oh, at least they're like giving me some idea of the sort of zoomed out you know second lord of the rings where they have.
They're constantly going back to the map right and saying like we're going this way.
Yeah, it's.
It's funny you say that i kept thinking during this movie that i you remember how in final fantasy 16 i don't think it was in 15 and 16 they introduced the like you can pause and check like a lore reference guide of like who the fuck is this guy?
Again, i wish i could press m on my keyboard during this movie and see the world of warcraft map and see where we were in any given scene.
I would have loved that, Yeah.
Yeah.
That was a problem that I had in general of like, especially in the first hour of the movie.
They spend maybe three seconds everywhere.
They go for the first hour.
That's true.
It was very show up like this is Jon Thar of Miffle Florf and he's going to take you to Jim below.
Like Frank was saying earlier, it's just a bunch of proper nouns and place names for like an hour straight.
And it bummed me because I think like I haven't played much World of Warcraft.
I maybe did like a free trial for like an hour or two.
Um, but something I remember about that game is like the places are huge.
The scale of that world makes so much sense.
There's very little loading screens between locations.
I don't think there was any really.
Um, so like that made the place make sense.
But every time they show you a location in this movie, it's like okay, we're inside of this important room.
This is an important place you want to be.
And now we're somewhere else with the same cast of characters and you don't know how they went from point A to point B.
I'm not asking for a movie that walks me down hallways, but i at least want to get an understanding of, like physically, where this room is in relation to other stuff, because later on in the movie they're showing you storm, wind or wherever the hell, and like you see the big guardian statue and i'm like i don't think i've seen that more than one other time when you did a big, wide shot of the town.
That should be like a structure that i can put in a place like it's just so strange because the world is so big, there's reasons for everywhere Right,
So like I imagine you're totally right.
But like there there's probably logical reasons or not.
I'm thinking of why that's the case.
It is interesting though, that you make a very good, pointed observation that everything happens in a room in this.
Yeah, or or in the middle of nowhere.
There's no walking in a hall.
There's no like we're in the town square.
There's no like we're getting on a griffin at the griffin rider.
Like you know, the iron forge forge room is like the one you know.
We got a, we got a like a gv of iron fords, that the classic shot from the loading screen of iron forge.
And then we're just in the middle of iron forge with like, one other person.
It's not like outside the auction house or or walking around, it's just here and like All the stuff in Stormwind is in, like the king's chamber or like the big king's room or whatever.
Yeah, you're right.
There's no, like, you're never spending time.
Even when you go to Goldshire, it's just in the pub.
Yeah, exactly.
There's no, like.
But a lot of that's probably budget.
I was going to say the cost of CG is probably the main limiting factor.
A much more expensive and bombastic silly version – like a version of this movie that I think would have catered more to what Frank was hoping to get out of it.
I think would have been like you're at Ironforge.
There's the sequence where he gets the blunderbuss and then you have to go to Stormwind and there's like a whole – like a fucking – like a one take following you into the deep run tram, going between iron ford and stormwind, like yeah, and someone like falls off the tram and dies.
Like i think there's an alternate universe version of this movie that does like real, not just like fan service quick hits where it's like that's a murloc, but like a whole sequence about taking the deep run tram, where you're like, holy shit, they really, like really, went.
They committed to this.
Yeah totally yeah yeah, that's a but uh yeah, i imagine a lot of this is well.
First of all, we don't have any time, because we've got 14 plots to get through here, yeah.
And then secondly yeah, it's just gonna cost so much if you're moving through those spaces.
And it's also a problem where, like the dnd movie has like dnd is kind of largely just medieval earth but like everything in world of warcraft has to look like, like a, like a stone wall in world of warcraft doesn't look like they couldn't just use a regular stone wall.
Yeah, it has to be like a sort of a chunky, fat stone wall.
You know so like i bet just doing any of that stuff would have just.
But they cheat in a lot of ways though right,
Like not everything is perfect one-to-one.
There's locations that are similar enough that I think they could have gotten away with certain – but I get your point of like.
This is a world that exists, that has a look to it, and you have to get close at least.
Like even the books – in that library are big fat, chunky books with like big, you know, leather.
Fucking rip, like i.
Just i was just thinking like i bet everything like glasses had to be fucking huge big tankers because yeah, it was so funny watching them walk around and all these like big, chunky pauldrons and everything.
I just remember thinking like yeah, no wonder we're not like seeing a lot of them, I don't know, interacting with the world.
But yeah, this is I miss out on it.
This is a very stupid idea, but I think it would have been incredible.
I think I think this movie would have bombed at the box office way harder and not made anybody.
But this is how you could have made a better movie and done all of the like the insane deep run tram shit is.
You have physical costumes and you have physical props for anything that needs to be interacted with.
But every non-interacted environment is just filmed in-engine, in World of Warcraft.
And they green screen the characters into the world.
And they're just like if you're in Stormwind, you're in Stormwind in the game, but with real people, green screened into it.
And then you spend $0 on the fucking environments.
Yeah, you're a genius.
Thank you.
Okay, here we go, let's uh, no bad ideas and brainstorming as our last exercise for the world of warcraft movie.
I want each of us it's going to be hard for you jesse, i'm sorry each of us or any of it we can go around and around and whatever and this is especially for you frank, i'm so sorry to put you what parts of this of the game that would have been good in the movie, like either places or mechanics or things.
Frank made a really good observation earlier about the uh, the leveling up ding.
That would have been very funny.
I would have loved to have seen somebody die and then have to do a corpse run back to their body.
I think that would have been.
I think it would have been a bad idea for this movie, but i think that would be a funny thing to see, especially if, like they were going to aggro a bunch of people like they're too deep into like a high level area.
And so they're trying to like get as close to their body as possible where they can res without pulling anything.
And they keep pulling and getting killed and then having to go back.
But they don't want to take the the hit off the angel to to lose whatever 15 fucking damage for the next hour or two.
That'd be cool.
Yeah.
Who's next?
You know what they should have done?
Added Leroy Jenkins.
Oh, my God.
Why didn't they do it?
That's the fucking jump the shark moment that I would have.
It would have radicalized me against this movie if they did Leroy Jenkins.
And I love Leroy Jenkins.
My primary character in World of Warcraft had a name that was a parody of Leroy Jenkins.
Leroy Jenkins.
Was it G. Roy Lincolns?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
It was.
There was a Howie scream at once or there was a Wilhelm scream at one stage.
But I was thinking they should have had what they should have had something like that.
But like during the fight, somebody saying like more dots or, you know, something like that.
I would like to see a couple of things.
I would like to see like a little side quest in Booty Bay for the pirate area in the jungle.
I think that would have been a rich, you know, again, insane.
Another million dollars gone in the CG budget.
But that would have been cool.
Um uh, i would have liked to have seen.
I think it would have been really funny if they had a.
It doesn't make sense for the geography of the film but uh, if they had a scene in the barons where there was just like a bunch of like racist teenagers yelling at them while they were trying to do something like if they were just like trying to do main plot stuff and dudes were just like yelling at them like weirdly, like dog was saying keck to each.
Yeah, it was all like censored though.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a shame that they didn't.
At one stage, it looked like they were burning Westfall.
Did you see that?
There was like a sort of a Westfall ass farm getting raided yeah, and i was like i know the movie doesn't want me to think this, but all i'm thinking is they're very close to goldshire.
They're very close to like, they're quite close to storm wind.
They could get there in five minutes.
When they were in goldshire i was thinking to be hilarious if a bunch of people brought like hogger in you know what i mean.
Yeah, like they just like like hogger's pal.
They're like we got him finally.
He's been terrorizing this town for you know fucking years and then like, the body disappears and he's respawning again or something.
That's the kind of thing you could do in the version of this that frank pitched, which is like a tv, a serialized television show.
That is like.
It doesn't say, it never says mmorpg, it doesn't allude to the fact that it is a video game.
It's just about a, a nobody in azeroth who like, starts an elwyn forest and works their way through the zones and you do little.
That's just narratives.
How reality is this like?
That's how reality works.
If you die in this world, then you you do a corpse run.
Or is it like a sort of a Westworld situation where, like the computer, characters don't realize, and some of the people don't realize, that they're in a simulation?
My ideal would be it'd be a be hardcore.
It'd be if you die, you're dead.
OK, so it's just that the main character just never dies.
Frank, what would you add in?
Yeah, I mean, I was really mad there was no skeletons.
Like, that's a big part of, like, Dustwood is you're fighting skeletons.
There's no giant spiders.
There's no trolls.
Like there's so many, like all the small flavor.
There's none of the flavor like, none of the flavor I like in this in the game is in the movie.
And that was the stuff I, again, the Defias Brotherhood's not in here.
No stitches.
Yeah, you could have a campy thing where someone's trying to get dill charter signatures to join the guild, or he's trying to make a guild, no one's debating over loot, or only get that sword.
I want that sword.
Like it's like they didn't go for any of that, but it's like it's like they made the movie so serious i didn't want to participate in it.
Right, i do like the idea of there being a scene where a bunch of people have like just gotten out of dead minds and they're fighting over like who needed and greeted for the sword.
Yeah, i love that.
That's pretty funny.
Uh yeah, you're right, there's none of that.
Yeah no, no auction house stuff like so many core things about the gameplay of world of warcraft is like there's not, it's just all the like.
It's literally everything i skipped.
It's like the opening.
It's the two hour opening cut scene.
You're mashing escape so you can get to where you spawn your character and then the fun begins.
So it really is like i would hit escape, skip the whole two hours of the game.
Nobody conjured water the whole time either.
Yeah right, conjure.
Yeah, you can have amazing brewing stuff, cooking stuff, but like I don't know.
Like during the movie.
It really should be a thing where an escape button.
Do you want to skip this movie?
Click yes, and then you can start the game.
Just runs the credits.
Are there any AOEs in it at all?
Fucking Medivh did his big lightning AOE.
Yeah, he did.
Oh, yeah, that was a really big one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, there you go, folks.
All that stuff will be in the sequel which will come out any day.
Now that was Warcraft.
I'm glad three of the four of us enjoyed it, although I think Frank hated it so much that it might have outweighed how much we enjoyed it.
I think that might have been.
I think I'd like to temp the enjoyed it very much thing.
I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.
I did not think it was a good movie.
If I had watched this not for work, I would have felt very differently, I think.
Yes, absolutely.
I think the fact that watching it to have a... I think the Minecraft movie was similar.
I think watching a shitty movie to have a discussion that maybe the movie doesn't really earn, i think is like one of the funniest bits in the world to me, because i i like having conversations about movies in a very serious way.
It was like i fucking my favorite part about film school was like watching you know a felini movie and then just like chopping it up for three hours about this like it's one of my favorite things in the world.
And to do that about the warcraft movie or the minecraft movie or the street fighter movie is like to have you know, quote unquote, like intellectual discussions, to take it seriously.
I think it's like very fun and funny and so i think that is part of my enjoyment.
I agree honestly, and i wish that was the way we framed all like not all, but like a lot of criticism, because that's what no clip is too.
Like we talk about the process of making these things and how they ended up, the way they were, and like films are no different right, they are constrained by a million and one different things that we don't get to see because they are designed for us not to see them.
You know we don't get to think about things like you know budget, or which actor was having a bad time in their career, or who was really supposed to do this role, or how much the CG was supposed to work or what happened to the script doctor.
You know what I mean?
There's like all these things.
And I think I'm empathetic towards films in that way as well.
And it's hard to with like a big budget IP thing, I guess.
Yeah.
But I could tell there was a lot of heart and a lot of craft went into this, no pun intended.
It's kind of an impossible IP to make a film in.
Like.
It's such a weird.
Like you were saying Jeremy, and Jesse and Frank, I think all three of you made points about just how like.
It's just such a weird feeling one more than almost any other fantasy, ip warcraft in particular is such a weird one to try and do something earnest in um, because it's earnestness is almost the joke in world of warcraft the fact that everyone in this world is taking this seriously and you're just going, we bouncing around buying gold off chinese kids and trying to fucking.
You know, trying to sell linen so you can fucking.
You know it's like anytime any quest giver gave me like a big speech, i could not have given a shit in world of warcraft.
I've skipped through more quests, dialogue in any game in world of warcraft um, and it sounds like we all have.
Yeah, it's a bit like because Warcraft is pastiche of more grounded fantasy.
Turning Lord of the Rings and fantasy and DD, all stuff are like distilled into the silliness of World of Warcraft.
Turning that back into grounded fantasy is kind of like...
It's like an irreversible process.
You can't like it's like turning beef jerky back into like steak.
Yes, I was going to.
Dude, I was I had a note for this like where I was thinking like, how do you this is you?
You broke down every fantasy thing, made a game and then turn that into a movie again.
Of course, it's going to be boring.
My note was it's like trying to un-nugget a chicken nugget.
Yeah, that's perfect.
It's like trying to make a fucking smoothie into like a basket of fruit is what this movie is.
And they did an admirable job.
Yes yeah, i agree yeah, and that was it.
Warcraft available now on.
Where did you guys source it?
Internet youtube amazon, prime if you are in canada okay, in in america it was on hbo max, hbo max nice, and i watch, i'll be honest, the 4k uh, is this 4k?
It's a blu-ray.
It's not a 4k blu-ray.
The blu-ray looked fucking great.
It looked really good.
So i was.
I was really enjoying the pores on Durotar.
I'll tell you that much when I was watching this.
He was sweating profusely.
Yeah, Gork sweat a lot.
Yeah, they were sweaty people.
Yeah, he was real sweaty.
Real sweaty.
Same.
And that was Warcraft.
And that was our Patreon-exclusive pod for September 2025.
Thank you so much for listening.
Wait, wait, wait.
Jeremy, what was the moon thing?
Moon minute.
Oh, my God.
If you've never seen the movie Moon, stop right now.
And listen to the next podcast.
If you have seen Moon, let's talk about it.
I'm going to spoil half of Moon.
Moon is a movie where a Duncan Jones movie where Sam Rockwell works on a moon base as the sole worker there, doing every task by himself.
There is a sequence in Moon.
This is the spoiler where uh, duncan or duncan jones, duncan jones is not in the movie, he just made it, where sam rockwell figures out that he's a clone and that there are other clones of him in the base and that the real him is long gone.
He's not the real him.
Uh, the first time i took a this is a drug story, as as you might have expected the first time i took a very large amount of lsd, i had what is colloquially referred to as like an ego death the, the sense that, like the you that you've known all along, is like dead and gone and you don't even recognize it and whatever, and And.
Because I had just watched the movie Moon and this was like such a.
I had never experienced anything like this.
This was a very early experience for me with psychedelics.
The only way that my brain could contextualize what was happening is that I was like holy fuck.
I'm like
I'm like Sam Rockwell in Moon because like I thought I was the real me and there is no real me.
And it sounds funny in the moment.
It was the single most terrifying thing that's happened in my entire life.
Oh, that's that's horrible.
But I just think it's so fucking funny that like I had like a cultural touchstone for this thing that is like so outside of the Western cultural mind that it's like there is no touchstone for it.
And I luckily had watched Moon and I was like, you know what?
I know what this is because I've seen fucking Duncan Jones Moon, bro.
Wow.
So your tradition of taking drugs while watching Duncan Jones movies continues.
We need to do like source code on meth or something.
No, source code has to be done on Adderall.
He's sort of like a shamanic figure in my life, I would say.
Exactly.
I love it.
I love it.
Awesome.
Thank you to everyone for watching or for listening.
And we'll see.
And apologies to Frank Kelly for forcing him through that.
Between that and the skate tutorial, I feel like there were similar experiences for you.
So I feel like we'll move past it.
We'll find more interesting fodder next time around.
Thank you for listening, everyone.
And we'll see you next time on the Patreon pod.
Bye.
