'Warcraft' Honest Trailer Digs Into "The World's Most Expensive Unskippable Cutscene"

In a summer full of big-budget flops, one of the most interesting misfires was Warcraft. Here was a film bursting with wild ambition and earnest affection for the source material, that tried to expand the fantasy film genre beyond lazy Lord of the Rings retreads. Unfortunately, despite director Duncan Jones' best efforts — and Jones and his team clearly poured themselves into this project — Warcraft as a whole didn't really work.

So naturally, Screen Junkies is here to unleash their Emmy-nominated brand of snark. The Warcraft Honest Trailer takes the film to task for delivering, essentially, "the world's most expensive unskippable cutscene"... but hey, at least they're willing to concede it's a "gorgeous-looking" mess instead of a "crappy-looking" one.

Screen Junkies isn't pulling its punches, but Warcraft has weathered much harsher pummelings from critics. One of the film's biggest problems was that it simply wanted to do too much — as the Honest Trailer puts it, it's "like a season of Game of Thrones crammed into two hours." And while we'll take an overabundance of ambition over a shortage of same, it all led to a film that struggled to explain its intricate mythology, or flesh out its giant cast of characters, or explore its grand, universal themes with any real depth. Even the narrator can't seem to sort it all out, calling upon MatPat for an assist late in the video.

Still, Warcraft had its share of fans and if you're among them, don't lose hope. While the film tanked hard domestically, it was a massive success in China, which accounted for a whopping 50% of its $433 million worldwide gross, and which is becoming a more and more important market for Hollywood. (For comparison, the U.S. contributed a little over 10% of that total.) Hey, it worked for Pacific Rim, right?

Warcraft is now available on Blu-ray.