5 Reasons Why the World of Warcraft Movie will Suck

Despite yesterday’s major geek­gasm news that Sam Raimi will be tak­ing up reigns as direc­tor of the highly-anticipated movie World of War­craft, I remain pessimistic.

The World of War­craft movie will suck, and here’s why:

1. First, let’s get the obvi­ous out of the way.  As a gen­eral rule, movies based on video games suck.

   Need proof?
   – Super Mario Bros. sucked
   – Res­i­dent Evil (all of them) sucked
   – House of the Dead sucked
   – Silent Hill sucked
   – Laura Croft: Tomb Raider 1 & 2 sucked
   – Dou­ble Dragon sucked
   – Mor­tal Kom­bat 1 & 2 sucked
   – Street Fighter (both of ‘em) sucked

   …I could go on, but this post would get very long very quick.

2. The actual World of War­craft sucks nowa­days.  And things are only going to get worse as Bliz­zard scram­bles to main­tain its revolv­ing door player base.  Bliz­zard may claim to have some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 11 mil­lion sub­scribers, but for all the new peo­ple sign­ing up, there’s a whole lot of vet­er­ans and hard­core gamers leav­ing Aze­roth, who are dis­en­chanted with many of Blizzard’s recent “fuck you” deci­sions that tend to favor its own pock­ets over those of pay­ing cus­tomers.  With the new Star Wars MMO loom­ing on the hori­zon, Bliz­zard knows it must milk the WoW cash cow for all its worth–in the form of paid fac­tion trans­fers and over­hyped expansions.
3. I like Sam Raimi, I really do.   But just watch Spider-Man 3, and var­i­ous other films Raimi has fucked up.  When it comes to direct­ing, he’s kind of a hack who’s for­tu­nate enough to have cult status/geek cred with the Evil Dead fran­chise.  Sure he makes some damn enter­tain­ing pop­corn hor­ror movies, but is he capa­ble of pulling off an epic fan­tasy film?  I hope his work on Leg­end of the Seeker isn’t an indi­ca­tion…  Check out Raimi’s over-saturated IMDB page, where he’s cur­rently listed to have over 20 projects in pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Spi­der­man 4.
4. It will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive.  Snore.  I guess even out­side the game the Horde gets no love.  That aside, there are a zil­lion pos­si­ble sto­ry­lines in the World of War­craft upon which to base a movie.  Why choose lamestream Alliance?  I guess two mil­lion Night Elves can’t be wrong.
5. Last year, I included the long-rumored World of War­craft movie on my list of Top 5 Most Antic­i­pated Fan­tasy Films of 2009, which up until recently, Bliz­zard has main­tained would be the film’s year of release.  (I hope they didn’t really expect us to believe that! ) So it wasn’t at all supris­ing to hear that World of War­craft: The Movie is now slated for release in 2012.  TWENTY TWELVE!  Will WoW still be as pop­u­lar three years from now as it is today?

Hope I’m wrong!

Temple of Storms + Levitate = Awesome

One of the best things about Lev­i­tate?  Jump­ing from extremely high ele­va­tions.  Tonight while quest­ing in The Storm Peaks, I found a new win­ner: The Tem­ple of Storms.  This place is so high up you can’t see the ground from the top.  Perfect.

It’s lonely at the top.

Con­tem­plat­ing death.

Tak­ing the plunge.

Free fallin’.

It’s a loooooooong way down…

Bonus points if you can land in Engine of the Makers.

Know of any other awe­some places to jump?

The murloc suit: possibly the best quest ever.

“Mrglr­glr­glr­glrgl!”

Yep, that’s me dressed up as a murloc.

I know at level 75 I’m unfash­ion­ably late to be report­ing how cool this level 71 quest is, but that’s what I get for play­ing WoW on one of the most heav­ily pop­u­lated servers.  Now that the shiny new­ness of Wrath of the Lich King has had a few weeks to wear off, I can actu­ally get the Borean Tun­dra quests done with­out them being camped as hell.

To pick up this quest, head to Win­terfin Retreat in Borean Tun­dra and talk to King Mrgl-Mrgl.  He’ll start you on a chain quest begin­ning with Oh Noes, the Tad­poles! and end­ing with the actual suit part Surrender…Not!.  Trag­i­cally, the suit is only wear­able in this part of the zone.

Oh, and in case you were won­der­ing, here’s the back:

“Blarghrghrghrgh!”

Gotta love the heart print under­pants.  Not that I was looking…

Top 5 Most Anticipated Fantasy Flicks for 2009

#5 –The Elf­s­tones of Shannara

The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara is the story of two inter­twined destinies–that of Wil Ohms­ford, grand­son of leg­endary Shea Ohms­ford, and Amberle Elessedil, who must go on a quest together to save the Ell­crys, the dying Elvish tree.  Ell­crys remains the last strong­hold of magic pro­tect­ing The Four Lands from the onslaught of the Demon World, and only Amberle, last dis­ci­ple of the Druid Allanon, has the power to save it.

Direc­tor Mike Newell (Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire) will bring The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara, the sec­ond book of The Orig­i­nal Sha­narra Tril­ogy by Terry Brooks, to the big screen in 2009, release date to be announced.

#4 — The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel

The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel is a cont

empo­rary fan­tasy that mixes ancient phi­los­o­phy and renais­sance his­tory with a modern-day set­ting. Twin teens Josh and Sophie New­man work at a San Fran­cisco bookstore/café for a book­keeper whom they soon dis­cover is actu­ally Nicholas Flemel, the leg­endary ancient alchemist and keeper of The Codex. Nicholas and his wife Perenelle have been liv­ing eter­nally by drink­ing the Elixir of Life. When necro­mancer Dr. John Dee steals The Codex, Josh and Sophie are unex­pect­edly drawn into a world of magic and mys­tery to help Nicholas recover The Codex or face the world’s destruc­tion at Dee’s hand.

The first book of the six-part The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel series by Irish author Michael Scott, The Alche­myst will be a major motion pic­ture by New Line Cin­ema in 2009. The film is cur­rently in pre-production, with no offi­cial release date yet.

#3 — Inkheart

Ink­heart is the story of a book­ish young girl named Meg­gie and her father Mo, who has an extra­or­di­nary abil­ity: when he reads books aloud, he brings them to life. The first book of the widely suc­cess­ful Inkworld tril­ogy, Ink­heart is a charm­ing tale by beloved children’s author Cor­nelia Funke. Sim­i­lar to 2008’s The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles, Ink­heart is geared toward a younger audi­ence set, and a def­i­nite fam­ily film.

Although not one of my favorite books (sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing how much I adored The Thief Lord also by Cor­nelia Funke), the film’s trailer looks promis­ing enough, and full of action, which is some­thing I felt the book sorely lacked. Ink­heart stars Bren­dan Frasier as Mo and child star Eliza Ben­nett as Meg­gie, and is set for a Jan­u­ary 2009 release.

#2 — Warcraft

What we know: War­craft will be a live-action movie by Leg­endary Pic­tures based on Blizzard’s hugely pop­u­lar War­craft series of PC games and World of War­craft, the mas­sively suc­cess­ful MMO. The PG-13 rated movie will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive, and its sto­ry­line will be set one year before the events that unfold in World of Warcraft.

What we don’t know: Any­thing else. There’s still no images, no trail­ers. Not even an offi­cial web site. Yet Bliz­zard has con­firmed, through a series of cryp­tic winks and nudges, that this movie is still very much in pro­duc­tion. It’s hard to believe this movie will be a real­ity in 2009, con­sid­er­ing how shrouded in mys­tery it seems to be. Not a word was breathed about the film at Bliz­zCon 2008, a huge dis­ap­point­ment for thou­sands of fans anx­ious for any kind of update they can get.

Update 1/23/2009: Quote from Bliz­zard:

“We are in fact work­ing on a movie with Leg­endary Pic­tures, but we don’t have any new infor­ma­tion to share with every­one just yet. At the 2007 Bliz­zCon, we even had a spe­cial panel with a lit­tle bit about the plans for the film. I’m sure you can find video on it or reports on it.

Just as an addi­tional infor­ma­tional bit, it will be Live Action.

I’m quite sure there will be plenty of action, but there’s a story to be told too. I couldn’t tell you more though.”

Update 7/22/2009:  Sam Raimi con­firmed as director!!

#1 — Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince

Imag­ine look­ing for­ward to a movie you’re really excited about. Not just any movie, but the sixth and most cru­cial film adap­ta­tion of the best­selling book series of all time. The release date draws near. You start see­ing posters, pro­mo­tions, pro­duc­tion stills. Your excite­ment builds. You watch the trailer, and it looks amaz­ing. You can­not wait to pre-order your tick­ets. And then you find out it’s get­ting delayed. By eight months.

That’s exactly what Warner Bros. did to mil­lions of excited Pot­ter fans eagerly await­ing the release of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince. Just two months before the film’s originally-scheduled Novem­ber 2008 release date, Warner Bros. announced it would be mov­ing the release date to July 2009. The back­lash was imme­di­ate. There were peti­tions, boy­cotts, and a flood of strongly-worded emails to Warner Bros. stu­dio execs. Their reasoning—some vague excuse about the writ­ers’ strike impact­ing their bot­tom line—was hard to swal­low, espe­cially after watch­ing them rake in hun­dreds of mil­lions from last summer’s box office megahit The Dark Knight. Yet despite our out­rage, we all know that come next July we’ll still be pre-ordering our tick­ets and lin­ing up in droves at the even­tual mid­night release.

(I’m still bit­ter, can’t you tell?)