Three movies

I had some movie tickets that were expiring in Sunday, so I went for it, watching in a row three recent movies in cinema. All of these were transmedia storytelling – two of these were movies based on digital games, one was based on a book. I have no time to write actual reviews but a couple of notes:

Angry Birds Movie: the starting point feels almost like the rumoured Tetris Movie Trilogy – not much narrative material exists in the game to start with, but what little there is, it will be liberally exploited and expanded upon. In this case, we will learn why the birds are angry. In the original games the different birds were colour coded game units that each enabled different slingshot trajectories or other abilities. The movie version does decent work in providing them with personality, and for developing (bit silly and comedy-oriented) backstory for the conflict between the birds and the pigs.

The BFG (Big Friendly Giant): this is probably the strongest of three, when evaluated in terms of its overall cinematic qualities. The combination of Roald Dahl’s innovative children’s book and Steven Spielberg’s skills in high production value adventure movies provides a balanced mixture of humour, sense of wonder and a touch of some darker themes. The most memorable element is the friendly, 24 feet (over 7 meter) giant himself, played by Mark Rylance, and translated into detailed digital version by advanced motion capture technologies and computer generated imagery. The eyes of this friedly figure are particularly lively, deep and expressive.

Warcraft: The Beginning: like the title says, this movie is set to the early stages in the history of Azeroth, the main world of Warcraft game series. Gul’dan, an orc warlock, uses fel magic (evil, vampiric style of magic) to open a portal from Draenor, homeworld of orcs (now destroyed by fel magic) to Azeroth, inhabited by humans, elves and dwarves, and a dramatic conflict ensues. The challenge in Warcraft movie appears to be the exact opposite from the Angry Birds one: here, an abundance of characters, plotlines, wars, races, mythical places etc. has to be reduced into something that resembles more or less coherent, classical movie storyline. The reviews have generally been negative, but I actually rather liked the movie – perhaps due to having spent considerable time in Ironforge, Stormwind etc. myself, as a player of Warcraft RTS and World of Warcraft games in the past. The movie does not get very far in itself: there is perhaps ten or more significant characters, some of them are killed, some plots unravelled and others set into motion, and in the end everything just stops, after this prologue having provided hints at important future developments. But landscapes are impressive, some characters relatable, and there is constant “epic tone” in all of it (that might feel ridiculous or appropriate, depending what one’s tastes in genre fantasy are).

All in all, this day of movies just pointed out how central fantasy as an element, impulse and setting has become for popular culture, and how various storyworld elements cross media boundaries with ever-increasing ease.

Angry Birds Movie © Columbia Pictures and Rovio.
The BFG © Disney.
Warcraft: The Beginning © NBCUniversal
Warcraft: The Beginning © NBCUniversal