Movie adaptation of video games don’t exactly have the best rep. Doom sucked. Street Fighter was horrendous. And who can forget the suckerpunch in the brain that was Hitman: Agent 47? We’ve still clutching onto the last pixels of hope for Warcraft, though. Not only because the trailer looks friggin’ awesome or that Duncan Jones (of Moon and Source Code) is directing, but because the fictional world – called Azeroth – is as rich as any Tolkien yarn. So what’re we hoping to see? Not just orcs and draenei, we’ll tell you that.
One-liners galore
We don’t know much of the story of the film so far, apart from orcs attempting to wrest control of Azeroth from the humans. But for those who played the games, most of the fun revolved around the witty dialogue and voice acting. Screenwriter Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond and In the Heart of the Sea) doesn’t have many comedies under his belt, though, so perhaps we’ll have to strike this one off.
A disco scene
Key in the word ‘disco’ while the game runs and players would be treated to a soundtrack of boogie and bass. It’d be perfect for a post-credits scene: we can already imagine Travis Fimmel, who stars as lead character Sir Anduin Lothar, shimmying with his knightly crew.
Leeeerooooooooy Jeeeenkins!
‘Time’s up, chumps. Let’s do this’ are now immortal words in pop culture. For those who actually had a life outside games, it started with a video of a battle in World of Warcraft. A band of heroes were meticulously planning – down to calculating a ‘32.33 percent (repeating, of course)’ chance of survival – their raid of a dungeon, when our champ Leeroy Jenkins returns from AFK mode. He goes ‘f*** it’, yells his battle cry and storms into the dark with reckless abandon. Everyone reluctantly follows. And obviously gets burnt to a crisp within seconds. By Ulduar, they had better not leave this out of the film.
Exploding sheep
Back in the original Warcraft strategy game, players would relentlessly click on roving critters (they posed no harm, which made this Easter egg even better) to see them explode in a blossom of blood and guts. It was beautiful stuff. So we’d be sorely disappointed if the movie didn’t at least give us one sheep turned inside-out.
Warcraft is in cinemas on June 9.