Warcraft film reviews round up - here's a list of early scores

Critics either aren't impressed with the Warcraft movie or they find it a middle of the road affair. See the scores for yourself below.

Warcraft film reviews round up - here's a list of early scores

Video game movies never seem to be a hit with critics. Or gamers for that matter. There's always hope when a video-game based film comes out, but the majority of fans are let down. Since this film hasn't been released to the general public, it remains to be seen whether the latter will walk away pleased or disappointed.

Anyway, some early reviews of the film have come out and are posted below. Obviously more will be published closer to release. Film reviews usually go by stars instead of scores, so that's how we interpreted them. The ones we are unsure of won't have a score posted.

We also included a few excerpts from the reviews.

Warcraft opens in cinemas May 30 in the UK, and June 10 in the US.

The Hollywood Reporter - "For non-aficionados, the two-hour experience could be more concise, but it’s no ordeal. Neither, though, is it consistently involving. If you haven’t already invested in the self-serious mythology, it can feel borderline camp, if not downright dull. But the movie is character-driven every step of the way. That’s why, even if the world created by Jones and his talented design collaborators, both old-school physical and cutting-edge digital, isn’t seamlessly believable so much as staggeringly crafted, it casts a spell."

The Telegraph - Two Stars - "It’s easy to predict whether Duncan Jones’s take on the world-conquering online role-playing game World Of Warcraft is for you. If you take delight in names like "Orgrim Doomhammer" and have a high tolerance for randomly scattered apostrophes and superfluous "h"’s, it could be your film of the summer. If not, you should avoid it at all costs. While there’s something admirable in Jones’s steadfast adherence to naff fantasy tropes, it makes no concession to fans of realism."

The Guardian - Two Stars - "There’s a lot going on and yet we’re never quite engaged with it. In The Lord of the Rings, we had the Shire, the Hobbits’ idyllic pastoral realm, as an image of what everyone was fighting for. Here, we barely see Azeroth outside the royal castles and wizards’ towers and epic battlegrounds. The heavy use of CGI, and its occasionally awkward interactions with the live-action elements, only serves to distance us even more. Much processing power has been put in the service of spectacular, bludgeoning combat, but the images are somehow insubstantial, and we rarely feel the heat of the battle."

Variety - "With its meticulously detailed realms built out primarily on soundstages and enhanced via CGI during extensive post-production, it aims for fresh and eye-popping and yet ends up shopworn and rather tacky. Boasting more than 2,000 visual effects shots, it’s dispiriting to think about the time, energy, planning and precision that went into Warcraft when the final product brings to mind those animated advertisements for iPhone app games. So good at making the most outlandish elements of his first two films seem completely credible, Jones can’t find a way to get this cartoony spectacle to soar. His heartfelt approach to the material only underlines the silliness."

Screen Daily  - "The CG and motion capture work that goes into the orc characters and most of the sets is impressive but it doesn’t always meld easily with the live action.The film ends up feeling unconvincing and generic, with nothing to compare to either the dramatic heft of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy or the raunch and gore of Game of Thrones."

The Wrap - One Star - "Imagine Battlefield Earth without the verve and you get this sludgy, tedious fantasy adventure, a fun-starved dud that’s not even unintentionally hilarious."

As usual, read the full review instead of the conclusions at the end which we posted above to be made aware of all qualities: redeeming or otherwise. In the end, it is always a matter of personal preference anyway. For example: I thought Nacho Libre was hilarious and that Event Horizon was entirely underrated. Most critics didn't agree. So there ya go.

Over on IMDB, the user score at present is 8.8/10 compared to the 31 on Metacritic.