Warcraft Review – 4 Ups And 6 Downs

2. The Motion-Capture Is Solid

Warcraft Orc
Universal Pictures

A key part of making that duality work, and on a bigger scale giving an emotional throughline to the story, is that the motion-capture of the orcs is so on-point. You rarely think that the human characters are just flapping around a greenscreen play acting, and while that€™s in part down to solid effects, the main reason is in the actors breathing life into their sparring partners.

Despite being so caricaturish, the amount of full-body expression on all the orcs is phenomenal. It helps that they€™re all led by Toby Kebbell €“ he€™s basically next-in-line to the mo-cap crown at this point and excels at making Durotan, the main turncoat orc, emotive and nuanced.

Now there are some other issues with the orcs and how they€™re portrayed, but I€™ll get to that in the downs.

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Contributor
Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.