Recently, the movie "Warcraft" was released in theaters, and has grossed over 145 million dollars in China alone. The odd part of this story is that critics gave "Warcraft" terrible reviews, some even saying it's the worst movie they've seen. I'm not a movie critic, but I rather enjoyed the film, and so have many others. So, I'll go through all the things I found good and bad about the movie.

First of all, the effects were great. They were able to bring Azeroth's beautiful landscapes, and iconic characters to the big screen. Its true that the effects were not perfect, but this is the first movie Blizzard has made. One place where the effects shine is in the architecture; some of the buildings look so amazing that they pull you right into that world. Another thing I liked was how they made an effort to make the Orcs relatable, instead of just saying they were evil, with no definable reason as to why. While some moments didn't connect well with audiences, the amount of time and dialogue spent on the ideals held on both sides gave people more reason to care.

Now on to the story. The story was great if you have any knowledge of the "Warcraft" universe beforehand, but for those who go in without any previous knowledge may find themselves confused on some key points. My thoughts on this are that they had a lot to set up. There was a whole game worth of story and characters to introduce. They also had a massive amount of world building to do. So, yes, the movie feels a little jarring at times, but that is more attributed to them trying to cram a whole world spanning over 20 years of development and retconning into a two-hour-long movie.

Due to the jumping around, we don't really get to grow attached to our human characters, the way we do with the Orcs. We care about them, but we're not given enough time to grow a real attachment, which leaves some scenes that should be very emotional just awkward and unwanted. I believe that in later installments to come, they will have more breathing room, now that they have established the world these films will take place. It suffered from the "Batman V Superman" effect, in which it had too much stuff going on, and didn't really slow down to let us grow attached.

To conclude, I agree that this movie is not perfect, but to me it isn't as bad as the critics say. The fact that it leaves you with stuff you don't completely understand, I say is actually good. It makes you want to go read through the lore and play the games it's based on, to learn why some of the things happen the way they do, and to understand the world that this story takes place. Again, not a great movie, but it does deserve a chance.