Just watched Warcraft yesterday.
What can I say? Well, it's not a masterpiece, but it's another brick in my personal "critics are complete idiots" line regarding this year's movies.
It also made me understand how important the third act is for the movie as whole. Because Warcraft had an atrocious first act, with bad editing (a scene with Durotan and Orgrim overlooking burning villages is put right in the middle of a continuing flight sequence), bad introduction of characters (all is quite rushed, it's barely explained what sort of geas Khadgar was under, Lothar's intro is quite weak for a main character). The "realer than real life" orcs were the only saving grace of the first act, and, of course, Medivh and Gul'dan.
Medivh was quite fantastic. They were certainly going for a Jesus parallel, and it worked wonders. Bravo, Jones and Metzen, bravo. My only beef with this portrayal was shitty explanation of his transformation. Unless I missed something (the cinema theatre was too loud), they didn't mention him being possessed by Sargeras at all, and only said that Fel Magic transformed him when he tried to control it. That's a weak explanation, especially since they set up a scene with Aegwynn to explain that.
Yeah, Aegwynn scene was also a weak one. Again, nobody but those with knowledge of Medivh's story would guess that this is Aegwynn, his mother. And, instead of telling us why Medivh is possessed by the prime demonlord, she spouts that "light from darkness" bullshit. What was that all about? She could have at least given Khadgar a magic formula, which he would try to decode, THEN realizing "light from darkness" is the answer, whatever it is supposed to mean.
But, overall, Khadgar is one of the better characters, despite his lackluster introduction. He's more or less a complete underdog for the whole movie, despite being right and figuring out how to handle Medivh.
[1/4]