Warcraft director Duncan Jones immediately became one of our directors whose name alone would get us in the theater with his first feature, Moon. Then, he teamed up with Jake Gyllenhaal and gave us another mess with your mind gem, Source Code. For his third feature, Jones could not have taken on a bigger challenge. The longtime fan of World of Warcraft took the lead in bringing to the big screen a movie version of the iconic video game and Warcraft hits theaters this Friday.
He could not be prouder of his work and the accomplishment he achieved. If for no other reason, than Jones made sure he crafted a film that would be appealing to gamers and non-gamers alike.
“We went right back to the very beginning of those games — the first story of the Orcs and humans — that first meeting of the two cultures. In the storytelling of the games, there are characters that we use in our film, but they were probably painted in broad brushstrokes as far as who those characters were. It was my job and absolutely the actors’ job to find a way to add the detail put in the nuance and add the humanity and the depth to these characters,” Jones said at a recent press day for the epic film.
“With the way the script was structured, the relationships made sense. You understood who was affected by who and what their relationships were. We tried to put in as many family ties and things that sort that really grounded and gave it a reality as we could.”
Where Moon was a sci-fi/psychological thriller and Source Code was a psychological thriller masked as a sci-fi film, Warcraft is unlike anything he has done prior.
“When I made Moon, from writing it to finishing it, it was 12 months. That was it. Everything, done. This film was three-and-a-half years of my life. So it was really all like a marathon than any kind of traditional film,” he admitted.
“We are striving to make something which is amazing in all qualities whether it’s the wardrobe, the set design, working with the amazing cast of actors — all the time we are trying to push everyone to do the best work they can. I am grateful everyone sort of stuck with me. We were able to believe and have the same ambition.”
Jones remarked that there is a lesson learned through the making of Warcraft that can apply to all walks of life.
“When you make a movie like this, it’s all about collaboration of bringing in people together with different skills. When I started out doing really bad cheap music videos and commercials a long time ago, one of the reasons I was able to move on and make better things is I got to work with people who all had their independent skills and learn from them,” Jones said.
“I would say, if you’re young and if you want to have whatever creative art you are interested in, learn from other people who may not have the same skills as you — especially in film. Try and work together, [and] bring together people who have complementary skills. I think there if there is a group of you — you are going to have way more momentum than try to fight the world all on your own.”
One of the things that makes Warcraft unique is that normally in a fantasy movie (like The Lord of the Rings), creatures like Orcs would be the villains. It’s not so black and white in Warcraft.
“That was very interesting, certainly for a fantasy movie, where normally monsters are the bad guys and humans are the good guys. To have the opportunity to show a little bit of family life, to show what it’s like to the Orcs… The fact that they have wives. They have children. They want to protect their families. They want to protect the people where the come from. We got to do all these quieter scenes that normally that would just be for the humans, but we got to do it on both sides,” Jones said. “You as an audience, you might actually prefer their (the Orcs) relationship to anyone else’s. It really is a human one.”
Oh, and lastly… as one could tell by even that first Warcraft trailer, Jones is trying to give The Lord of the Rings a run for their (piles of) money!
“I think science fiction in particular, and a number of sub-genres over the years — whether you have a gritty film like Blade Runner or 2001 or AI or Adjustment Bureau — there is a big spectrum of what science fiction can be. In fantasy, the kind of gorilla in the room is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the original ones by Peter Jackson,” Jones said.
“It kind of feels like the spectrum of what is fantasy is much smaller than science fiction, so I love the opportunity to maybe try and do a film that will hopefully be the same bar as Lord of the Rings, but give fantasy a bit of a new voice, a new feel, and that’s what we tried do to with Warcraft. We wanted to find a way to do it differently, and give you guys a bit of a rival. It would be nice if there was a bit of a rival for fantasy films. We just wanted to create a spectacle, and give it an energy that is a bit different but hopefully achieve the same level of success.”