The Dark Portal (cinematic)

The Dark Portal is the cinematic intro for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

Transcript
It begins the camera moving through the Blasted Lands and approaching the Dark Portal while Illidan Stormrage narrates:

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The Dark Portal reactivates, fading from blue to green. It then cuts to a draenei paladin, Vindicator Maraad, flipping through a libram and blessing himself, followed by a blood elf priestess carressing and draining the mana from a mana wyrm. This is followed by scenes depicting several of the game's playable races and classes: an orc warrior cutting down a pair of naga, a troll riding a raptor, Maraad fighting fel orcs, the orc warrior being slain by arrows and resurrected by the priestess, a human mage casting Polymorph on a tauren, a Forsaken warlock killing a swarm of murlocs with Hellfire, and finally the priestess casting Holy Nova.

Illidan is then shown kneeling on a ruined battlefield, contemplating the Skull of Gul'dan. He drops the skull and leaps into the air, brandishing the Twin Blades of Azzinoth and concluding his narration:

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Music
The song "The Dark Portal" was featured as the fourth track on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Soundtrack, and was composed by Jason Hayes.

Credits

 * Directed by Jeff Chamberlain
 * Animation Surpervisor: James McCoy
 * Animated by Ronny Kim
 * Cinematic concept artists: Brian Huang, Bernie Kang

Notes and trivia

 * This cinematic was unofficially on December 6, 2019, by Upscale, using Machine Learning AI.
 * The orc warrior, human mage, tauren and undead warlock previously appeared in the World of Warcraft cinematic intro.
 * The Burning Crusade Behind-the-Scenes DVD has content about how different parts of the cinematic were created.
 * WowCraft's episode 25 is a parody of this trailer.