The Dark Portal (cinematic)

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

Cinematic

Transcript

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

Imprisoned for 10,000 years. Banished from my own homeland. And now you dare enter MY realm. You are not prepared.

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:

YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!

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^[1]
Animation Surpervisor: James McCoy^[1]
Animated by Ronny Kim^[1]
Cinematic concept artists: Brian Huang, Bernie Kang

Notes and trivia

This cinematic was unofficially remastered 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.