Warcraft

In Warcraft, the world of orcs is dying. They need a new world to inhabit and rule. Their wizard opens a portal using the life energy of prisoners, and the orcs travel to a world of humans and set out to make it theirs. But the humans aren’t going to cave in without resisting to the best of their ability. (Doug Blackburn)

Special features include the featurettes: The World Of Warcraft On Film: Origin Story (HD 04:54), The World Of Talent (HD 05:35), The World Of VFX (HD 05:09), Outfitting A World (HD 06:16), The World Of MO-CAP (HD 06:50), and The World Of Stunts (HD 05:06); The Fandom Of Warcraft (HD 06:36); Bonds Of Brotherhood Motion Comic (HD 53:47); The Madame Tussauds Experience (HD 07:32); ILM: Behind The Magic Of Warcraft (HD 02:59); Warcraft Teaser—2013 (HD 02:23); six deleted scenes/extended scenes (HD 13:57); a gag reel (HD 03:25); upfront previews; and an UltraViolet digital copy. Also available as a 4K UltraHD release.

Digital images were captured at 3.4K and converted to 2K, to create the digital intermediate. Image quality is good but clearly not full UHD resolution. This movie has scenes that run the gamut, from no CGI to 100 percent CGI and everything in between. There are a lot of times where the attempt at realistic animation doesn’t look right—slightly “off” motion” in animated characters, slightly off perspective and textures in buildings and other structures, and landscapes that look a bit too drawn rather than appearing to be real. These aren’t fatal flaws, certainly. The story is served well enough, but this won’t be looked at as state-of-the-art animation by anybody. Nobody has ever actually seen an orc, but everybody can tell when the movement of an orc’s body or face isn’t quite right. While the images often have a good look to them, there’s also a fair bit of “unreality,” including human costumes that universally look like they were made yesterday… no age, no patina, no battle scars, no wear, little or no dirt, while orc costumes (animated) have plenty of patina from age, battles, dirt, oxidation, etc. (Doug Blackburn)

The sound from the seven ear-level channels is just okay. It works well enough to tell the story, but it’s not as detailed, thoughtful, or complex as the mixes that get top sound-quality ratings. I never found any places where the sound was bad, it just didn’t rise above adequate for the job. Immersive Sound starts out promising, then falls into the same pattern as every other movie… little or nothing going on in the height channels most of the time. The opening scene has ambient wind sound in the height channels, but just as the orc is about to land his first blow, the ambient sound stops… though, clearly, the wind is still blowing. Not sure why you would stop the wind ambience if you were already doing it unless nobody is actually “creating” these immersive soundtracks and are, instead, relying on an automated process to extract sounds and place them in the height channels. The orc wizard speaks in an echo-y, reverb-y voice that definitely appears appropriately in the height channels. But with thousands of orcs watching within a valley surrounded by vertical rock walls… there would be a huge amount of ambient “orc sounds” from a crowd that big, but none of that is in the height channels. You do hear some of the wails of the prisoner victims whose life-force is powering the orc wizard’s portal. Once on the new and thriving planet, again, there’s no ambience, when it is clear there are insects buzzing around, birds in trees and flying, but there’s no ambient sound from the new planet. And so it goes for the entire movie… lost opportunities, and another failure to achieve the immersive entertainment experience touted for the new sound formats with height channels. (Doug Blackburn)