Warcraft: The Beginning

"Even when you set aside the curse of the video game adaptation, Warcraft: The Beginning's status as the first really ambitious big screen fantasy since Jackson met Tolkien means the odds were always stacked against it."

"So good at making the most outlandish elements of his first two films seem completely credible, Jones can’t find a way to get this cartoony spectacle to soar."

"Jones embraces Warcraft’s world with laudable commitment: but when it comes to charging it with life, sheer bulk gets the better of him."

"With a tighter plot, a touch of humour and some peppier, less slab-fisted action scenes this might actually have worked..."

"The pristine setting never meshes with Jones’s efforts to give emotional reality to his army of characters, who cannot escape their tropes: leader, hero, warrior woman, mystic."

"Jones ... against the odds, has mined a watchable movie out of an entertainment franchise that started with a video game and now includes novels, comics and assorted schlock (toys, costumes, a mah-jongg set)."

"Director Duncan Jones, a self-professed Warcraft fan, has clearly put a lot of love and care into fleshing out a story, but it’s questionable whether it was ever really merited..."

"What matters is the execution. And Jones executes bloody well."

"Despite the silly names and cheesy nerdism there's plenty of fun to be had in Duncan Jones' video game adaptation."

"The movie is character-driven every step of the way. That’s why... it casts a spell."

"The ambition is laudible, but it's to little end. At once empty and impenetrable..."