The Warcraft trailer has been released, and it bodes poorly for the movie. See it for yourself below.

Who is the audience for this thing? Is this a general release movie or the most expensive piece of fan fiction ever created? Unless you are a Warcraft lore junkie or have been playing Blizzard games for the past two decades, you will not have the foggiest clue who any of the characters are. You’re expected to get excited about a bunch of humans and generic CGI orcs in a generic CGI fantasy setting.

Which is another big problem. There’s WAY too much CGI in this thing. And the juxtaposition of human actors and CGI orcs simply looks bizarre. You can get away with combining actors and animation in movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but it only works if the animation is clearly animation. Warcraft immediately charges headlong into the Uncanny Valley and gleefully builds a homestead.

And can we really muster excitement for more orcs? The movie is based on the real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, but even in 1994 when the game was released, orcs were a generic fantasy staple and almost a self-parody. Since then, the general public has been deluged with orcs and orc-like creatures, and not just from Lord of the Rings. As for the fan base, World of Warcraft players have had two orc-driven expansions in a row – yes, I know the Pandas were supposed to be the focus of the Pandaland expansion, but the orcs drove the story – and have had to put up with a particularly infuriating orc named Thrall who spent the last three expansions saving the world, stealing kills from players, generally being possibly the biggest Mary Sue in the gaming world, and in the process earning the derisive nickname “Green Jesus”. And yep, in the trailer that’s baby Thrall floating down the river in a basket.

There is one twist, though. The orcs are being portrayed sympathetically. Poor, sad refugees fleeing their devastated world and just looking for a new place to live. Then there’s the mean racist humans who want to kill them. Yes, I know. In the original game there were murderous orcs and less violent orcs. The humans were divided over whether to live with the orcs or kill them. And, in any case, the story was just a thin veneer slapped onto a game whose objective was to annihilate the opposing side. But the trailer sure made the orcs look like the good guys of the movie, or at least the unfortunate victims.

So, to return to my original question, who is the audience for this thing? I’m guessing a small (by big budget movie standards) cadre of fanboys and that’s about it.