9. But Not TOO Self-Aware
While a healthy wink and a nudge to viewers will be perfect, it's important not to go too far the way of parody, because you'll risk upsetting the fans or making a film that just misses the whole point of a WoW film. Brilliant though the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" is, it is perfectly-pitched as a 21-minute satire of WoW, but if Duncan Jones attempted to distend this out into a 2-hour mockery, it would grate on the viewer and very quickly become one-note. Though it should be self-aware, it also should aim to replicate the feel and tone of the game, rather than be a reflexive, exhaustive parody of every stereotype about the game. Amusing though in theory it would be to have our protagonist travel to a deep pit to take on an epic boss, only to find someone else has beaten it and he has to wait half an hour for a respawn, there's a time and place for things like that, and within a big-budget epic blockbuster? Probably not. By all means include inside jokes, but do it in a way that allows a genuinely tense, exciting narrative to build alongside it.