The Remarkable Life of Ibelin isn't the first Warcraft film, but it is definitely the best one. Duncan Jones's big-budget Warcraft from 2016 focused on the "main" characters of developer Blizzard's long-running sword-and-sorcery universe. This new Netflix documentary from director Benjamin Ree, released a month prior to World of Warcraft's 20th anniversary, instead puts its focus on WoW's actual protagonists: the players who call Azeroth home. Specifically, it tells the story of Mats "Ibelin" Steen, and in the process paints an incredible portrait of a digital life, one that drives home a core message of how online friends and relationships built in virtual worlds have the power to be every bit as meaningful as ones made in the real world. While that thesis is hardly a revelation for anyone who has spent a significant amount of time playing WoW or online games in general over the past two decades, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin still manages to make a profound impact.
For about the first 20 minutes of the film's 100-minute runtime, one might think they have an understanding of how The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is going to go. Old home movies show Steen as a baby and young boy in Norway, crawling, walking, and playing as young boys do. Soon, however, it's discovered Steen has Duchenne's disease, a rare form of muscular dystrophy that gets progressively worse over time. He is eventually restricted to using a wheelchair as his muscles grow weaker, and his ability to explore and interact with the outside world soon becomes more limited. He seeks solace in video games, as his parents grow concerned about the amount of time he is spending online.
Steen's parents and family talk in interviews about his worsening condition, and their sorrow over how he is unable to live a normal life filled with love and friendship. They talk about how, before passing away at the age of 25 in 2014, Steen gave his parents the password to his computer. There they discover he had been writing and publishing a blog online about his life. After his parents publish one final entry to let Steen's followers know he has passed away, they are flooded with emails from his online friends from all across Europe, people who largely knew him in Blizzard's MMORPG by the name of Ibelin. Each email talks about how much of an impact Ibelin had on their lives and how much he will be missed, shocking Steen's parents. They knew he played online with others but didn't know the extent of their son's digital life. One of Steen's friends, the leader of a roleplaying guild called Starlight, reveals that much of Ibelin's in-game encounters and conversations had been saved and transcribed on the guild's online forums, where Steen was an active member and contributor.
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