Will The New ‘Warcraft’ Movie Sink Or Swim?

With less than two months to go until the long awaited release of the movie Warcraft, Legendary Pictures has started releasing much more in the way of promotional items. Recently, the Internet has been rife with new images, and early fans of the movie based on the immensely popular World of Warcraft games are starting to get excited. However, it is also tinged with anxiety as, so far, game to movie translations have managed to get lost in translation. Nearly. Every. Single. Time.

And for the Warcraft movie, the fact is that it has managed to take a whopping ten years from the press release announcing the collaboration between Legendary Pictures and Blizzard Entertainment to the actual movie release date of June 10, 2016. That’s an awfully long time for gaming fans to build up their expectations for the Warcraft movie. And, to be honest, if the movie fails in any way, it will seem worse than if it were just slapped together and sent out into the world.

Although, in all fairness, considering just how bad some of those game to movie translations have been, perhaps the lowered expectations will actually do the Warcraft movie the world of good. After all, movies like Doom, Mortal Kombat, Double Dragon and Street Fighter have conditioned gamers to the fact game adaptations can be pretty bad. On the flipside, though, there is the relatively good (although critically slammed), Resident Evil series that manages to hold itself above the sludge pile of normally dismal game conversions.

As Forbes points out, this time around it may not be the movie content that deters consumers. Some of the merchandising for the Warcraft movie may have also gotten lost in the translation. For a movie like Warcraft, a lot of CGI is involved. In fact, some of the actors billed as starring in the movie aren’t even recognizable once CGI is applied. Once a trailer for a movie like Warcraft is compressed down for YouTube, you find the video is less than what it would be if it were viewed on the big screen during the trailer section of another movie. And for gamers and moviegoers alike, it is this sort of loss in the translation that might really hurt the movie’s potential. Especially when the movie posters (which you can view in the gallery below) are much more clearly defined than the video content.

You can view the latest images and movie posters released for Warcraft in the gallery below.

What do you think, will the new Warcraft movie be a success? Let us know your thoughts by commenting below!

Legendary’s website provides the synopsis and other movie details for Warcraft via the blurb below.

“Legendary’s Warcraft is a 3D epic adventure of world-colliding conflict based upon Blizzard Entertainment’s globally-renowned universe. Directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) and written by Charles Leavitt and Duncan Jones, the film is a Legendary Pictures, Blizzard Entertainment and Atlas Entertainment production. The producers are Charles Roven, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Alex Gartner and Stuart Fenegan. Jillian Share, Brent O’Connor, Michael Morhaime and Paul Sams serve as executive producers. Rob Pardo, Chris Metzen, Nick Carpenter and Rebecca Steel Roven co-produce.”

The Warcraft movie will be released in 3D by Universal Pictures on Friday, June 10. For fans of Aussie actor Travis Fimmel, Warcraft has been reported by News.com.au as premiering in Australia on June 16.

[Image via Universal Pictures]