11 Ways The New ‘Warcraft’ Trailer Looks Like Every Other Fantasy Movie

The second trailer for Warcraft has emerged from the depths of Facebook, and it doesn’t look good, and it doesn’t look bad. It looks like the sort of generic fantasy romp you would find on the SyFy Channel but with a budget of $100 million instead of a budget of $1 million.

And nothing could be more disappointing, because we have every reason to want this movie to be great. Let’s start with the simple fact that, after decades of video game movies, the best this genre has to show for itself is still Mortal Kombat and maybe Silent Hill. That’s pathetic. If the best comic book adaptation in history was the first Blade, that would be a travesty too.

What’s more, we like everybody involved in Warcraft‘s production. Duncan Jones directed Moon and Source Code and has earned his reputation as an intelligent genre director with exciting new ideas. The cast is solid: Dominic Cooper (Preacher), Travis Fimmel (Vikings), Paula Patton (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), Ben Foster (The Messenger), Toby Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), the list goes on and on. WETA Workshop even did the effects, and they have a pretty good idea of how to bring fantasy stories to life on the big screen.

Also: Crave Visits The Set of ‘Warcraft’ and Talks to the Cast

We haven’t seen the actual Warcraft movie yet, and we’re still looking forward to it because it can’t possibly be as generic as this trailer makes it look. We counted at least eleven tiresome fantasy movie clichés in less than two minutes. How is that even possible? Were the people cutting together this trailer instructed be as non-threatening as possible? Were they told to promise audiences that this movie, this adaptation of the most dominant video game on the planet, had absolutely nothing new to offer them?

If so, good job, but what the heck was the point? Warcraft has an uphill battle at the box office this summer. As a new intellectual property (as a film franchise, if nothing else) it has to compete with established and successful franchises like X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Conjuring and Alice in Wonderland when it arrives in theaters this June. How does assuring audiences that they will see nothing special seem like a good marketing strategy?

Watch the trailer above, and keep the following checklist handy. These are…

11 Ways the New ‘Warcraft’ Trailer Looks Like Every Other Fantasy Movie

Top Photo: Universal Pictures

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.