Feature | Crave Visits the Set of ‘Warcraft’ – Part 2

Click here to read the first half of Crave’s Warcraft set visit, focusing on the Orcs of The Horde.

On the other side of the coin is the Alliance, and Dominic Cooper’s King Llane Wrynn of Azeroth.

“He’s a good, solid, nice king,” Cooper told us. “I’m always playing horrible people. This is my challenge to actually play somebody who does properly care about his people and care about resolving this situation that he finds himself in. He’s a good man, but he trusts possibly too much to people around him rather than going with his instincts. It’s finding a balance between someone who is very likable and doing what’s right for his people, but also maintains a strength and a power even though who he has around him, his right hand men, are more powerful in many ways.”

“One’s a better warrior, and one’s a magician.  So, he has to delegate between them both and find reason within that group who have been together for a long time and been through a lot together. Within this story, what’s exciting about it is that there’s a confrontation that takes place.  And I try and resolve that as best I can, possibly not in the correct way.”

Dominic Cooper Warcraft Movie

Related: Horde Meets Alliance in the first ‘Warcraft’ Trailer

Travis Fimmell plays Lothar, although whether or not he’s “Of The Hill People” remains to be seen. “He’s the commander of the Azeroth military,” Fimmell explained. “He grew up with the king, is best friends with the king, and had a childhood with Medivh (Ben Foster), who’s a mage. We reunite with Medivh, and there’s a lot of conflict between us, and you don’t know if Medivh is on my side, the king’s side, or you don’t know who’s going to end up still being friends at the end of it.” 

“We’ve had peace for a long time in Azeroth, and then very early on, you find out that we’re being attacked,” Fimmell revealed, and that will make things very difficult for Lothar’s budding relationship. “There’s the orc called Garona, and they have a lot of similarities and a lot of pain issues they both share. They build a relationship together, but they never fully trust each other, you know, which cause a lot of conflict between them.”

Paula Patton gave us the lowdown on her character, Garona. “So, you have this woman who begins as a slave to Gul’dan but has had to basically fight/beat her way into having any respect from the orcs because she’s half-orc, half-human.  And that’s what makes her really fascinating to play. She finds herself in the human world, and suddenly, they warm her heart. Things change, and she changes. But, the thing about Garona, she never quite fits in, in either world, and she’s vulnerable. She has feelings. She can feel love, pain, all of it, but she can’t show it that much. She has learned that respect is gained through fear.And so, I think the interesting thing that you’ll see as you watch the movie is how she transforms within that world and what ends up happening to her and how she finds her place, if at all.”

Paula Patton Warcraft Movie

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“Everything about Garona is about survival,” she continued. “She’s not as big as the orcs, but she’s outwitted them. She’s faster. She might not have what the humans have, guns and such. But, she has something else. She’s just a scrappy person, you know what I mean? It’s like being the short kid on the campus. You’re going to be the scrappiest and make them fear you. And so, she’s gained her respect through fighting, kicking, killing, whatever it takes, because she was alone essentially in this world. She doesn’t have family. To find her way in the orc world, she had to find respect. And in that, she had to be able to beat other orcs. So, yes, they may be bigger or stronger, but she’s faster, smarter, quicker, knows where to hit.”

This may start sounding like the standard ‘people good, orcs evil’ divide, but everyone insisted that both sides have equal moral footing in this world.  “Orcs are not bad. Humans are not bad. Maybe they are, but, one is not more or less than the other,” Patton explained. “These worlds intersect… at some point, something intersected obviously for Garona to be born. What I think is fascinating and interesting is, for the first time, is that you won’t see orcs as only the villain. They’re given equal understanding as if they are humans. So, you will connect to them in that way.”

If anyone’s still concerned about how this adaptation is going to work, rest assured that the track record of video game movies is definitely something the creators are aware of. 

Warcraft Alliance

Previously: Crave Visits the Set of ‘Warcraft’ – Part 1

“Do you know why I think computer game movies have generally sucked?” Kazinsky opined. “It’s because you put hundreds of hours into playing them and finding a storyline. And it’s impossible to put hundreds of hours of story and play time into a two-hour movie. It’s actually impossible. How can you elicit sympathy? With a game, you sympathize with the character because you spend so much time with them and their development. And you learn their story. And you can take your time with that. It’s much easier on a TV show to elicit sympathy. Take Breaking Bad for example. Cranston played a son of a bitch character, but over five seasons, you really got to know the guy. 

“I wish we could make this film a hundred hours long. And that’s true because there’s so much that we can’t tell. There’s so many little details like Nerízhul and Mannoroth and Kilíjaeden that we kind of have to skip over to kind of expedite this story. I really wish that we could do 100 hours of it and really go into detail.  But, the practicality of the movie industry says, ‘Don’t do that.’ And I don’t think even I would be able to watch that.”

“There’s a whole universe that you could go into here. If people can kind of look beyond the fact, ‘Oh, idiots playing computer games,’ and go, ‘Hold on, why are those idiots still playing those computer games after nine years?’ It’s because there’s a story there actually that’s engaging and worth telling. If people can see that and we can show people that there is this story, I think people might find themselves turning into big geeks. I hope.”

If you’re reading this, though, you’re probably already a big geek, and you can start spreading the Word of Warcraft whenever you like. Duncan Jones’s film opens on June 10, 2016.

Photos: Legendary/Universal Pictures