Will’s Unpopular Opinion – Wowwy Wow Wow Wow! – 6-8-16

2016 will be known for a great many things: one of the most historic Presidential races is one of them, and the year an over abundance of superhero and action flicks came out will be another. It’ll also be remembered as the year Leo won an Oscar, and Yeezy overcharged for designer potato sacks. And it’s still only June. We still have 6 more months of the “crazy town choo-choo” to go. One thing however 2016 will not be remembered for in any way, shape, or form, is the year that one of the most famous, overexposed, overplayed, and overhyped video games of all time, would get it’s silver screen debut. 2016 will not be remembered at all for ‘Warcraft’ the movie. Unless of course it grows some type of cult following, but most likely it will fall by the wayside with flicks like ‘Prince of Persia’ (remember that one!?) or ‘Final Fantasy: Spirits Within’. (That was a movie too!!) Why won’t it be remembered for such? Because people who don’t play ‘World of Warcraft’, don’t give a shit about ‘World of Warcraft’.

Now, this is not a review. I have no personal stakes in this. I have no interest in seeing the movie. I never played the game or cosplayed as an ork-guy…., but I can tell you that due to this being a massively niche title, no one except gamers cares about “WoW: The Movie”. I suspect it’s because there was little to no marketing for it. I’ve seen about six big budget popcorn flicks this summer, and not once did I see a trailer for Warcraft. It’s not a huge leap to assume the movie will underperform domestically; only possibly breaking even with international numbers to help slosh it along. Rotten Tomatoes has it tracking at 29% rotten, and IGN gave it a 7. That’s like your mom saying “That’s a nice haircut you gave yourself, now go outside.” This speaks slightly to the quality of the film, but ratings aren’t the reason this movie will bomb; although it doesn’t help it much either. The movie is being toted online as the “The prequel to a trilogy you’ll never see.”, and that’s worth taking note of because movies like this are only made for one reason, and that’s to make more movies like this.

But was failure imminent? Blizzard currently has it’s hands full. ‘Overwatch’ was a massive success for the world’s biggest MMO publisher pusher. But they needed a new hit… In November of last year, Blizzard officially stopped posting the number of WoW subscribers due to subscription drop-offs. How many? 5.5 million to be exact. The number of players had reached it’s lowest community representation since 2005. So with players shrinking in numbers, instead of worrying about it on a public front, Blizzard did away with it all together. Was this a sign of things to come? Possibly. It’s always difficult to put your head inside the big machine at some marketing firm or corporation and assume what they’re thinking, but if WoW was leaving players in the lobby, perhaps it made more sense to let the movie die slowly and fall under the radar, rather than have a big to-do for a movie that would have bombed regardless. The main issue seems to be that no one outside of the gaming community or fans of the series were aware the movie existed, and if they were, there was nothing in the trailer that felt like something worth watching. So a bunch of green trolls have a baby? Sorry, don’t care.

If this movie had been released during literally any other summer ever, it may have stood a chance. It was toted at BlizzCon and E3, and that’s nice, but ComicCon has only been about Marvel and DC for the past 2 years, and deservingly so. Although, ‘Warcraft’ is currently performing well in China by boasting the largest midnight opening ever recorded. (So a sequel seems propitious.) But American audiences are experiencing a bit of overkill with the one-two punch combo hit of blockbusters reining down upon them as the summer sequel madness continues to march on. The studios have the crowds against the ropes, and ANOTHER hit to the face isn’t going to hurt any more or less at this point. It’s like that SNL sketch, ‘The Continental’,  where Christopher Walken keeps trying to seduce you and all you want to do is leave. Most people have theater fatigue and just want the whole thing to be over already. I’ve had enough man! Get your pizza bagels out of my face!

In 2000, I interned at Hasbro. I was in the Batman department drawing designs all day, and the department lead wanted to show me the “next big thing”. It was a line of action figures for ‘Titan: AE’. (For those of you who don’t know, ‘Titan: AE’ was like ‘Heavy Metal’ without the music and tits.) He went on and on about how excited they were, and how the toys were built in conjunction with the film and it was going to be this huge release, and blah blah blah. I snarkily suggested that at the very least they’d all end up in the “3-for-$10” bin at KB Toys. He asked why I thought that, and I told him quite bluntly: “because I’ve never even heard of this movie, and it comes out this summer?” We had a laugh, but later that Christmas, after ‘Titan: AE’ slinked out earlier that summer, and was immediately forgotten before it even left theaters, -the discount bin now had something new in it to keep all the ‘Lost in Space’ toys company. Again, this had nothing to do with the critical reception of the film, but it does point to a larger issue; that would be the non-existent marketing of the wanna-be franchise. If a studio doesn’t care enough to make the effort to tell us about it’s new properties, than why should we care to spend our money to see it?

Unfortunately this is nothing new. This happens all the time. Movies are either misrepresented or misinterpreted by their own marketing teams prior to their release, primarily due to largely unknown sects of specific genres. Knowing your audience is key. If you’re making a movie that caters to a group of people who would possibly rather stay at home and play the game of the very movie you’re trying to sell, instead of seeing the movie, then you need to broaden your market to encompass people who don’t play the game. Alongside that, timing is everything. If ‘The Matrix’ wasn’t released in March against literally nothing in 99′, would it have gotten two sequels? Probably not. Releasing a movie the weekend after 7 consecutive action blockbusters have littered the playing field, could be argued as possibly the absolute worst time to release a CG heavy sword and sorcery epic, ever. Especially one that depends heavily on the viewer’s prior knowledge/nostalgia of the series to carry it, and does little in the attempt to appeal to anyone who doesn’t know the name, Leeroy Jenkins.

-Will Valle