WARCRAFT: SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

So much mythology, so little explanation. That’s the way most people, unfamiliar with World Of Warcraft, are going to be feeling when they leave the cinema. It’s a film that has been copping a lot of sh*t from critics and although there are a lot of good moving parts to this film, there’s a good reason it has been copping said sh*t. 

So look, you've got Orcs (not the ones from Lord Of The Rings) and they have travelled from their world to the world of Azeroth (not a place in Lord Of The Rings), a world filled with Knights, dwarves, giant birds you can ride like horses, wizards and magic and I swear this is not Lord Of The Rings I'm just struggling to try and convince you otherwise. 

Now I actually like a lot of this film, but I can see where the critics are coming from when they are bashing it, and it's such a pity because everything is there for a great film. You have amazing state of the art special effects that bring the Orcs to life so that they appear just as real as their human co-stars. You have these large expansive locations filled with wonderfully designed creatures and characters. You have large scale battles that fill every single inch of the screen and they are brutal but still PG-13 friendly. You have an extensive mythology to immerse yourself in and build upon, but there in lies the films biggest problem: the mythology.

The main issue is that there is no explanation for what is going on from one scene to the next, there are important characters introduced with no backstory, the audience are thrown straight into the deep-end of the Orc swimming pool with no floaties to help keep them afloat during the next two hours they’re in the cinema. Now director Duncan Jones, who has given us some great films such as Moon and Source Code, is a massive World Of Warcraft fan and he's clearly poured his love of the game into the film, but he hasn't stopped to think about the audience who are not familiar with the series. 

Just like any other movie that has an extensive mythology, the important thing to do is to explain the rules of the world and important backstory elements so that the audience has an understanding of what's going on. Most films like these start with prologues to help establish the ground rules. Lord Of The Rings did it, Pacific Rim made sure to do it, even the Thor movies use Anthony Hopkins narration at the start of each film as a framing device. Warcraft just jumps straight into the story and that is where the film falls apart. We're spending too long trying to figure out what's going on that we don't feel any investment in the characters when anything big happens. 

Ultimately the film has a lot of potential. It may not be very user friendly for people going in cold to the series and with the film so confident that it's going to get a sequel, we are left with almost every element of the story unresolved which really, doesn't make this a complete film.

Warcraft gets 2 1/2 very confusing head scratches. 

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS: SPOILER-FREE REVIEW:

It’s the return of the roided-up green cancer patients who wear bandanas and a bunch of other random accessories because the marketing department said this would make them more down with the kids of today. Yes it’s the sequel to the film that I’m surprised was able to garner enough interest and box office takings to warrant a sequel. The film is filled with talking warthogs, talking brains and a recast Shredder whilst Megan Fox reads screen directions just to the side of camera. The film itself is really really dumb, but what’s more insulting, is the fact that the filmmakers think that you the audience are even dumber. 

When the Turtles arch nemesis Shredder escapes from jail we find ourselves kind of searching for Maguffins, kind of dealing with the Turtles trying to find their place in the world, kind of introducing a bunch of fan-favourite characters, kind of looking at our watch every few minutes. The plot is often side-lined for interactions between the Turtles or new character’s Bebop and Rocksteady that can be funny, but also can start to become a little annoying after a while. 

We have Megan Fox back again but this time acting in a slightly darker yellow jacket, and she gives the kind of performance you’d expect from Megan Fox, in a slightly darker yellow jacket. Her performance is somewhere between bored and reading her lines for the first time before the director yells “action”. This time she is joined by Arrow’s Stephen Amell who is playing the hockey stick wielding Casey Jones in name only. It seems throughout the film these two are competing for who can talk out loud about what they are doing even when no one else is around to hear them. 

The film does have some inventive action sequences which includes an airplane/tank sequence that looks great but is short-lived and easily the highlight of the film, which is kind of a pity considering this happens before the third act. The big problem is that a lot of these bombastic sequences are thinly threaded together with plot points that the filmmakers take no time to flesh out. Things are brought up and then forgotten about, the Turtles are angry with one another and then they move on in hopes that the audience don’t notice, and then the conflict between the Turtles build to breaking point and then seem to be resolved off camera. 

On top of the weak storyline, the film is littered with shameless references to Transformers along with other Michael Bay movies. There are references to minor American celebrities that will only make sense if you’re an American, plus the fan-servicing simply becomes nothing more than a box-ticking exercise that doesn’t really provide any genuine pay-offs. We have Casey Jones wearing his hockey mask, for about three seconds; we have the newly recast Shredder, played by Brian Tee wearing his iconic mask, for about the same amount of time; and we have Krang, voiced by Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett who feels wedged into the film as clumsily as a Hodor doorstop, especially when he appears randomly early in the film simply to explain that he will be returning for the third act. The film is trying to give you everything you wanted, but in the same breath, makes you realise you should never have asked for it in the first place.       

Overall, the film isn’t as smart as it think it is and doesn’t really think that you are that smart either. With giant blinking neon signs providing script directions for the audience that may as well have been originally scripted phonetically in crayons complete with IKEA-level instructions and diagrams, the film will only appeal to really hardcore fans and really young children. Bebop and Rocksteady may bring the occasional smile, but probably a smile that can wait until tight-ass Tuesday or at least the bargain bin of your local shopping centre. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out Of The Shadows gets One and three Quarter hours ripped from your very soul….