Now those of you who know me well know that I am not a World of Warcraft player. And, in fact, have gone out of my way to stay away from the game. Why? Well, the reasons are many, but to pick the two primaries: Part of it is the money issue. I just don't feel the need to pay a ridiculous monthly fee to play a video game. The second is that I know myself all too well. When I get into a video game, I get into a video game. And reading all kinds of stories where people's lives would be consumed by the game and some to the point of marriages being ended is enough to keep me away. People play the game for hours and hours and it becomes their lives. They start thinking of their characters as real people. And that's scary. And the scary part is, like I said, I know this could fairly easily happen to me. So it's because of that that I have practically made a pact that I would never get into the game.
However, that does not mean I am opposed to the game. I mean, I've been a Warcraft fan since the old days of Peons saying: "Ready to work!" "Zug-zug," "Dabu!" etc. (what was that, Warcraft II? It's been so long it's hard for me to remember). And yes, I was among the many who could not resist the temptation of clicking on the animals so many times that they exploded into a gory mess... But we won't get into that.
Anyway, I actually really like and appreciate the Warcraft franchise. This is, of course, because, as an avid fan of The Lord of the Rings, I love almost all things Fantasy. If it's got knights, dragons, dwarves, elves, and dark lords, I'm hooked. In fact, even though I don't play World of Warcraft, I still get wallpaper from it for my PC desktop, plus actually right now I have a WoW calendar hanging up on my wall.
So, with that said, I am actually really looking forward to the World of Warcraft movie. The movie is still in early-early production stage as they are still trying to hammer out the story details, etc. In fact, G4 just posted a video of someone catching Sam Raimi (Director, Spider-man, Army of Darkness, et al), who is going to be directing the film (wooohooo!!), and asking him a couple questions about the film. You can view this video below:
Sam Raimi Interview WORLD OF WARCRAFT Movie Saturn Awards 2010 - More amazing videos are a click away
So, while I'm really looking forward to this movie... there are many questions that are raised.... or should I say fears. The top question on my mind is: How do you not make this a "Lord of the Rings" clone? This will present itself (in my opinion) as a very difficult task as the two franchises are so similar—beings that, pretty much with all things fantasy, Warcraft was inspired by Tolkien's works. So how can it be done successfully? Another fear/question that comes to mind: How do you make this not a "Dungeons & Dragons"/"Dragonlance", etc., failure? And by those, of course, I mean the Dungeons & Dragons movie of 2000, and the 2008 animated Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight straight-to-DVD film. Now, the funny thing is... I personally like both of these films. But, I know that they are awful movies and no where near as good as they could have and should have been. And I certainly don't want to see what happened to them happen to World of Warcraft. So how do you avoid that?
So, rather than having a blog where I give all the answers, I'm going to leave this one open to the floor. And in the meantime I will compile a list of my personal dos and don'ts.
What are the keys to A) Avoiding a Lord of the Rings rip-off, and B) Avoiding a D&D/Dragonlance movie bomb?
