Warcraft: The Beginning Theatrical Trailer (2016)

Theatrical trailer for Warcraft: The Beginning, starring Travis Fimmel, Paula Batton, Ben Foster and Dominic Cooper.

Attempting to flee their home world, Orcs from Draenor use a Dark Portal to arrive to a world also struggling, but filled with humans instead.

In terms of development, Warcraft: The Beginning, or what is now just being called Warcraft here in the States, has had a long process. With fans of the video games pleading for an adaptation, Blizzard finally announced the project back in... 2006. Under the title of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The rising popularity of World of Warcraft however soon overtook that of the original RTS games, so the project immediately had to shift gears a bit and re-imagine what it eventually wanted to be.

Uwe Boll offered himself up to direct, and Blizzard [smartly] said "no effing way." Well, not exactly those words, but it sums up their sentiment for the director. A smart gamble, as the production later landed Sam Raimi only to see him get replaced by Duncan Jones. If you haven't seen Moon, do so, as it's a testament to what this director can do.

Almost eight years later, Warcraft began principal photography on January 13th, 2014, taking four months to shoot. The post-production, however, would go on for almost two years. As expected, ILM stepped in to handle the visual effects, and the verdict is still out on whether they performed up to par. From the grumbling over the trailers, the early feedback is that they have not.

Considering that I was a huge fan of the real-time strategy Warcraft games, I really did have high hopes for the film. Like many other gamers, I'm losing faith. I don't know if it's the graphics, the cinematography or just the material, but this Warcraft trailer makes the film look more like a -- you guessed it -- video game rather than a movie. Now, I've heard some lame excuses from some online explaining that the reason the footage looks more video game than real is because encoding video for online use causes the graphics to degrade, but I'm not buying it.

But maybe there is hope. At least this trailer had the balls to actually introduce more than two characters -- the sorcerer gets a lot of love and we actually get to see some movement from Paula Patton -- and showcase some new visual effects. If it was more of the same, then we can pull the panic alarm, but we're not there just yet.

And while I hate to put too much weight on the theatrical release for Warcraft, the film was pushed out of December to avoid Star Wars: The Force Awakens into March, 2016, a month that typically serves as a metaphoric graveyard for many a film. But, then Universal tightened their drawers and decided that June 10th, right smack dab in the most competitive time of the year at the box office, was where the film belonged.

Is Warcraft up for the challenge, or is it more of a mercy kill? Feel free to post your RottenTomatoes predictions below...