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Warcraft: The Beginning | 2016 | PG-13 | - 2.6.1

An Orc shaman (voiced by Daniel Wu) uses black magic fueled by human souls to open a portal to the human world of Azeroth. He organizes Orc fighting clans into the massive Horde Army to subdue the human king (Dominic Cooper), his knight general (Travis Fimmel), and their wizard Guardian (Ben Foster). Many Orcs rebel and a multi-level war erupts. Also with Anna Galvin, Paula Patton, Toby Kebbell, Rob Kazinsky, Clancy Brown, Burkely Duffield and Ben Schnetzer. Directed by Duncan Jones. Several lines of dialogue are in Orc language with English subtitles or translations. [2:03]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A man and an alien woman kiss briefly. An Orc couple holds hands. An Orc woman says about a human man, "He wants to lie with me," and the man denies it.
 An Orc couple has a baby; we see the Orc woman with a huge belly before delivery and later on the ground while on her hands and knees with her head close to the camera; she grunts and grimaces in childbirth as a male Orc behind her says, "Push, push," and brings up a greenish skinned baby with pointed ears (we do not see gore, blood, or slime, but an inch or so of umbilical cord is present although not bleeding).
 Facing away from the camera, a small round humanoid is nude, with white skin and a red spike hairdo down its skull, neck and back (we see narrow buttocks, thighs, legs and feet). A greenish skinned woman wears a bra top and a long side-slit skirt that reveals one full bare leg as well as cleavage and bare abdomen. A woman's skirt rips off a few inches below the upper thigh and we see small tattoos and scarification on both shoulders. A few scenes include women wearing low-cut medieval gowns that reveal a little cleavage. Hundreds of giant humanoid Orc males with green skin wear fur and leather trousers and we see many bare chests. Humanoid Orc women wear fur and leather trousers with midriff-baring sleeveless tops.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Orcs are a race of giant humanoid warriors with large lower dental tusks, pointed ears, green, yellowish, or pinkish skin, and many have a few scars on faces and shoulders; they wear animal and human skeletons on their shoulders and human skulls on bones protruding from their backs, and they also wear animal and Orc teeth on necklaces; we hear that their planet is dying (an Orc planet is a desert with wind storms and we see a humanoid skeleton in the sand). A planet called Azeroth is home to humans, elves with long pointed ears, fat dwarves and other humanoid species that all maintain armies, but live peacefully.
 A knight inside a force field sees his soldier teen son outside and reaches through the field, but cannot grasp him as an Orc slashes the boy's chest and stomach armor and kills him and we see blood trickle from the boy's mouth. A man stabs a male Orc in a cage with a long sword and we see a little green blood. An Orc woman floats her baby down a river in a basket and afterward she and a male Orc stab each other and die (we see a little green blood on his stomach and her mouth and chin because she chewed the throat of the male when he attacked, but we did not see the wound). An Orc pounds a large war hammer into to a human lying below the screen, then stomps into the camera lens from the point of view of the victim and the screen goes black. An Orc shaman pulls energy waves from a thin human man three times and the man collapses, dead. A knight fistfights an Orc shaman with a horned bat briefly and the Orc picks up the man and squeezes him hard; the knight slides between the Orc's legs with a broadsword, slits the Orc through the groin to the stomach and we see some green blood; a man stabs an Orc in the back, killing him, then takes the body of a king back through a portal to the castle. A knight is forced to duel with a male Orc that was made four times normal size by the shaman.
 Three extended battle scenes with thousands of male Orcs, a few female Orcs, and humans include a lot of body-slamming and weapons like stone war hammers, long-bladed axes, regular axes, long broadswords, clubs, staves and spears; we see a lot of punching and kicking, throws, stomping on bodies, Orcs smashing humans out of view below the frame, and rocks flying in from off-screen to knock down Orcs and humans. Many Orcs and humans are stabbed in the stomach or back and die (we see a little blood flow and Orc blood is dark green): a few Orcs are shot and fall dead with no blood showing and many humans suffer small bloody cuts on faces and foreheads while a few horses fall down and end up below the frame, an Orc stabs a horse with a shield bearing three long horns and the horse falls (we see no blood), a large gryphon screeches and knocks down several Orcs until an Orc pulls it down by a leg (it is uninjured), and a few giant wolves fall and one wolf runs head-on into a tree and falls unconscious, as does a horse (no blood).
 Several aerial views of battles show thousands of combatants looking like ants, seeming to strike one another. A battle scene features Orcs piling up human bodies after a battle, but we see no blood or gore. In a battle scene, many humans fire pistols.
 An interdimensional portal is a huge rectangular door that emits green energy waves; an Orc shaman pulls wispy white energy waves from human prisoners and sends the energy into the door of the portal to activate it and form a wormhole to another planet. A wizard becomes the devil and screeches, as we see him covered in glittering scales waist-down, cloaked in fire, and wearing long curving double horns.
 A wizard collapses twice and he is once put into a pool where he revives and the second time the pool turns green and as he withers, his eyes glow yellow and then black and his skin withers and turns brown. A wizard pulls the soul from a male aide and throws it into a huge golem that comes to life as it glows and attacks a knight, who cuts its clay head off with a sword; the wizard levitates the knight, slams him on a wall and drops him.
 A man slams a mage down onto a desk and we see a glowing tattoo on the mage's arm; the mage rises and sticks his fingers into the mouth of a gray-looking human corpse, looking for magic stones that are not there. A wizard in a tall castle creates bubbles of blue circulating energy to use for travel to other places quickly several times and on the top floor is a large pool of energy; the wizard builds an extremely large golem of clay as a mage sees a shadow walk through a wall. A wizard uses power waves to slam a mage against a tall bookshelf. A wizard throws fireballs to burn up a mage's research papers, igniting the last one in the mage's hand; it burns quickly and goes out before the yelping mage is burned.
 An Orc man sticks his hand in a large fire, burning off the hand and we see glowing charred skin as another Orc cuts the arm off with a sword below the screen. An Orc shaman grapples with a handless Orc, draining the victim's life force and leaving him withered and dead on the ground. A male Orc pulls a tusk out of a corpse to save for the dead man's infant son to wear on a necklace one day. A hybrid Orc-human woman slave is chained to a male Orc master, who ends up dead and another Orc cuts her chain with a sword; the woman is captured by humans and joins their army.
 A morgue has two long rows of human corpses under sheets on cots. A man in a field finds a large humanoid corpse that seems to be covered in brown decay and a few tiny insects. A large humanoid skeleton is seen in a valley on the ground. A knight, a mage, and a king track residue of Fel magic to a valley and are briefly ambushed by Orcs, who retreat as a wizard sends lightning and a thunder storm to defeat the Orcs; some green blood splashes onto the screen. A human-Orc battle includes using weapons and fistfights, with additions of necks breaking loudly, many large war hammers pound on humans, and a force field protecting some other humans.
 A knight loses his temper in a war room meeting and shouts before the king jails him and says he will remain in a cell until he calms down; the knight tells the guard to open the cell door, but a mage turns the guard into a sheep, and frees the knight, saying, "You have a demon to kill." Orcs argue loudly. A wizard and a mage speak about the power to pull out souls as "The Fel," a form of black magic. Several Orcs say the power is evil, is death, and the shaman must be destroyed. A female Orc-human says that broken bones are strong, so she is very strong. A woman tells a man that her mother died in childbirth. He tells her that his wife died in childbirth. A dark portal opens and a young mage walks inside, confronting an old woman covered in a blurry cloak and hood; the mage learns that the wizard on the human planet helped the Orcs to attack through a portal, because the wizard is possessed by a demon and the old woman vanishes. A knight says to a giant golem, "Don't kill your king. Don't kill your friend." A mage shouts and turns into bright energy that travels for miles around as a golem falls on a wizard and looking human, the wizard cries, chants an incantation and dies with his eyes open. A king orders a hybrid human-Orc woman to kill him so that she can take over the Orc government and bring peace; she cries, stabs him in the back of the neck, his eyes roll, and he falls to his knees, and then to the ground with his eyes open. A human soldier finds an Orc baby in a basket floating in a river; the baby laughs and snarls into the camera. Orcs accept a woman as their leader and she berates the shaman and dismisses him.
 We see the human war room that is filled with shields and long spears and see many soldiers wearing armor on and off battle fields; some of the soldiers are women and teenage boys and girls. An Orc shaman organizes clans into the Horde Army to fight humans and capture their planet; we see Orcs riding on giant wolves that have tusks as humans ride horses and large screeching gryphons; the humans forge metal weapons in a foundry, resulting in broadswords, long knives, and short daggers. A dwarf invents a large golden pistol that shoots with a loud bang. A mage builds blue force fields on battle fields and in castles to protect humans against attack. A king gives a man a magic blue-stoned ring.
 An Orc couple has a baby; we see the Orc woman as she grunts and grimaces in childbirth and a male Orc brings up a greenish-skinned baby with pointed ears (we do not see gore, blood, or slime, but an inch or so of umbilical cord is present although not bleeding). A shaman holds an Orc baby, pulls the soul out of a deer and blows the soul energy into the baby to bring it life; the baby laughs and snarls.
 Stone buildings are seen crumbling and wooden huts burning in a long shot. In a floating city of old mages, we see purple energy waves projected onto a glowing curtain as we see the glowing eyes of the old men. We see a human king's short funeral at an outdoor cathedral and a knight raises a sword and declares an alliance with Orcs as a crowd cheers loudly.

LANGUAGE 1 - Name-calling (fathead, fat, half-breed, monsters, weakness, ridiculous, pathetic, bookworm, unstable, thing, demon, Little Chieftain, Clay Face), exclamations (I swear, shut-up), 1 religious exclamation (Oh God).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man drinks a glass of red liquid, a woman drinks a metal mug of unknown beverage, men and women have silver goblets of unknown contents on a table (no one drinks), barrels of ale are stacked on one wall in a pub, and a man lies on a table with a mug in one hand and when he gets up he looks a bit glassy-eyed.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Diversity, tolerance, online video games, fantasy, violence, magic, addiction, stealing souls, building golems, dying planets, war, death, murder, alien takeovers, people obsessed with power, mixed-race outcasts, belonging, compromise, families, love, courage, protection, sacrifice, friendship, leadership.

MESSAGE - Racial bigotry, greed, and addiction to power can be overcome to maintain peace.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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