Orcs are a gruff, warlike species of humanoid popularized in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. In Warcraft, a new movie based on a computer game franchise, orcs are gigantic, walking pairs of pectoral muscles attached to improbably large shoulders and tiny heads, from which spring enormous tusks, often chipped or with piercings in them.

The fingers of an orc are each about the size of a human femur, which must make it very difficult to do things, like, oh, floss between those back molars, or, say, screw the top back onto a toothpaste tube. Despite these orthodontic challenges, however, orcs are very good at smashing things.

In Warcraft, orcs are depicted as not evil, exactly, but easily manipulated by a mean orc wizard into doing evil-ish things—namely, traveling through a gigantic green door to the land of Azeroth, where they deplete its natural resources and suck the life force out of its denizens. The humans of Azeroth are dismayed by this, so they enlist the help of their own wizard, and they have swords and daggers and armor to fight the orcs.

There is also an orc lady who is part human, somehow, and therefore has a human-lady shaped body, sexily tiny tusks, and, one assumes, sparkling clean breath. And there's a human warrior who I think is the main character, and a wizard-in-training, and a flying gryphon, and Glenn Close inside a secret cube, all of which figure into an overly elaborate plot.

Warcraft, a distinctly terrible movie from director Duncan Jones—who made a great movie once (Moon) and will likely do so again—is way less joyous and far more serious than it should be. Moreover, it leaves far too many important questions unanswered, like how orcs squeeze those gigantic shoulders in and out of their tents, or how they manage to eat soup around those tusks.