Minecraft. Everyone knows the game, in fact most people have played it. Minecraft has been a staple of the sandbox genre; a genre of games with a focus on more boundless and creative gameplay opposed to structured and game led gameplay, but Minecraft has left a mark on almost every genre. Since its full release in 2011, very few games come close to the impact and popularity of Minecraft has had on gaming culture.
Naturally when media is as popular as Minecraft, it is bound to branch out, which they have with spin off games such as: Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends.With this success a movie would have been the expected outcome but the only forms of a movie fans got were fan made youtube videos; with the quality one would expect from the early 2010’s. About 4 year’s later people were ecstatic to hear talks of a Minecraft movie between Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of Minecraft, and Warner Brothers; however, news of the movie went relatively silent.
That was until September 4th, 2024, when Minecraft: The Movie’s trailer was released. Now in concept, one would think this is a good thing, but the movie’s CGI looks like they asked ChatGPT to generate blocky fantastical backgrounds. They just slapped a blue shirt on Jack Black and told him to say “I… Am Steve” because you would not know any other way, and the worst part, they managed to make Jason Momoa unattractive with an ugly pink jacket that would make even the most loving mother cry in disappointment.
Insults aside, the movie is supposed to star Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Sabastian Eugene Hansen, Danielle Brooks, and Jack Black. The main problem with it is the fact they’re using live action actors, in a world of CGI, for a game that has a cartoon aesthetic. Nothing matches, it’s an amalgamation of two aesthetics that just don’t work together. The quality of the CGI should also be mentioned, it looks about the same as the “Minecraft in real life!!!” videos from the early 2010’s with bad video effects, the only difference? One had a budget of $150 million, and the other had a budget of less than $100.
The big issue with this movie is it’s graphics, Minecraft wasn’t meant to be perceived realistically, plenty of animators such as, Parroter, Squared Media, and Blue Monkey, even Microsoft themselves create game update trailers, use the Minecraft art style as a medium for their animations so it is not impossible to animate a movie as such too. Lot’s of creators, like Alumio who is well-known for his blocky art style, have already released an idea as to what the trailer would look like in a Minecraft animation style, and it looks a whole lot better than Warner Bros’ attempt.
Ironically, the role play and story streamers created on servers somehow have more interesting concepts than expected for this movie. Some people in the comments of the trailer have joked it would be more entertaining to just have the cast of the movie play Minecraft on a live stream instead of making this movie.
Minecraft, as old as its player base gets, is still meant for younger children, especially after being bought by Microsoft. It appears that Warner Bros is mostly just aiming for the younger audience they probably assume Minecraft has.
However, this itself defies the entire point of Minecraft since it is meant for everyone. There is no minimum or maximum age, if you have an imagination, you can play Minecraft. That’s how it has survived and thrived for nearly a decade, among other reasons like mods and unique world generation. There’s also the fact that the game was made a decade and a half ago, most of the kids it was made for are now adults who still enjoy and play the game. It’s unfair to them that a franchise they enjoy is being dragged into the mud as a movie that acts as more of a checklist of tropes and oversaturated content than an actual film with substance.
Older Fans weren’t looking for something on par with critically acclaimed movies like The Matrix or The Godfather, but they wanted something they could enjoy, not whatever this Youtube Shorts looking waste of money this is, but given they already seem to have a chunk of their movie done, it’s doubtful they will be redesigning anything.
