Which World of Warcraft story would make the best movie?

Video game movies have always been pretty hit or miss, with most of them falling short in either viewer expectations or box office bucks. The 2016 Warcraft film was no exception, with shaky storytelling and cinematography that never quite hit right unless there was a CGI character involved. (Don’t get me wrong — I loved seeing Durotan and Draka brought to life that way, but I was never really sold on Khadgar.) Perhaps a bigger budget could have attracted some triple-A actors to draw an audience, or helped the script see a couple more revisions before production, or maybe the end result would have been the same.

While a few big-name properties like Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog have managed to turn a profit in the box office recently, the most successful video game adaptations of late have been longer-running series, such as Arcane: League of Legends, Halo, and this year’s Fallout. I have no doubt that if a Warcraft story were allowed to breathe instead of being crammed into a 2-hour box office … er, box (and given a big enough budget that it wouldn’t become a parody of itself), that it could be just as successful. Could you imagine World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, for example, as a 10-part series following Horde and Alliance adventurers simultaneously? I get chills just thinking about it.

Such a sprawling story would of course come with great financial risk, which is probably why the powers that be chose a smaller, more intimate story as the subject of the Warcraft film. In fact, I would argue that they could go even smaller — tell the story through fewer characters and get more time with each. They don’t even have to feature characters we know; my personal favorite video game adaptation is Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, in which we don’t meet the game’s protagonist until more than halfway through the story.

So what do you think would be the most film-size story of the Warcraft universe? Arthas’s fall told from Jaina’s POV? Thrall’s ascension to warchief of the new Horde? Personally I’d pay good money to see a standalone piece about the Scourge, seen through the eyes of the Forsaken. How about you?