Who thought that the best-selling video game EVER, would get a movie that the fans hated? The Minecraft Movie has been something many Minecraft fans have been looking forward to, for over 10 years in fact. So why is it that all fans immediately lost hope as soon as the trailer dropped? Well first, I think we need to look into the main components of the game, the unusually long wait time for the movie, and the strange choices made by the director.
Minecraft is a sandbox game originally created by Markus “Notch” Persson, (later Mojang) and released in 2011, it quickly gained popularity and in 2014 was bought by Microsoft. The game consists of a continuously generating world of blocks, in which you can make tools, fight mobs, build massive structures, visit other dimensions, and ultimately defeat the Ender Dragon. The two main game modes are Survival and Creative. Creative is a game mode where you have infinite resources, can’t die, and can fly. In Survival, you’ll need to gather materials, make better and better tools, and possibly die.
The characters in The Minecraft Movie seem to be in survival mode, so we’ll focus on that. Minecraft is a game that doesn’t have a true “End,” but there is a way to make the credits roll, which many people consider to be the conclusion. To sum it up, you need to gather enough resources to build a portal to the fiery “Nether” dimension, where you need to beat stronger enemies to get items that let you find the “End Portal” beyond the portal is the “End”, a dimension of empty space and floating rocks. Empty, except for the “Ender Dragon.” After defeating this final boss, it opens another portal back to the overworld, in between which the credits roll.
To understand the hype behind this movie, you also need to understand the many delays that occurred. In February 2014, the original creator of Minecraft, Notch, leaked that there was a “Minecraft Movie” in the making, produced by Roy Lee and Jill Messick. In October, Warner Bros hired director Shawn Levy, who later left in December alongside a few other writers. In July 2015, Rob McElhenny was hired to be the new director. Production started in 2016 and the movie was predicted to be released May 24th 2019. Though due to scheduling problems, McElhenny left in August 2018. This caused more delays and Adam and Aaron Nee were brought in to rewrite the script from scratch. In January 2019, Peter Sollet was announced as the new director and writer, with a completely different story from the original. This time, the movie was planned to release on March 4th 2022. But as we all know, COVID-19 struck and delayed the movie yet again. In April 2022 it was announced that Sollet and his co-director Allison Schroeder left the project, and were replaced with director Jared Hess. Hess has stuck with the project to this day, and The Minecraft Movie is set to be released April 2025, the trailer released early this September.
Many strange choices have been made by the creators of the Minecraft movie. Worst of which is live action. For a game as stylized as Minecraft, it is a main criticism of the movie. Detective Pikachu and the Sonic movies prove that some games can be adapted to live action fairly smoothly. Unlike Minecraft, these games are supposed to take place in a fairly believable world with many aspects of real life. Minecraft is a game where everything is made of blocks, things can float with no support, and you can break a tree with your bare hand, these elements make it near impossible to make a good live action adaptation. Also, Mojang already has a very well liked animated style they use for their trailers and animations, so why didn’t they just use that? A youtuber by the name of Alumio, remade the trailer in an animation style very similar to the Minecraft style, it was very well received by fans, many of which said it was better than the original. Another decision that frustrated fans was the lazy and strange character design. The character you play as, Steve, is played by Jack Black, a very well liked actor, but not a convincing Steve. At all. In the trailer, Jack Black appears, looking like his regular self, (wearing a blue shirt) and says, “I… Am Steve.” “No you’re not, you’re Jack Black in a blue shirt” 10th-grade LHS student, Aidan McMahon says. Jason Momoa also appears in the trailer with a strange haircut, fingerless gloves, and a bright pink jacket? It’s unclear who Momoa is supposed to be, but he doesn’t resemble any character in Minecraft.
When shown the movie trailer, (with little/no prior knowledge of Minecraft) LHS teacher, Leo Olson said this: “the people being humans in this box world seemed really off.” The last design choice that many fans dislike is how the plot of the movie seems to be very similar to the movie Jumanji, both movies have a cast of humans that somehow gets trapped in a game, where in both, they have to beat the game to escape.
While hopes may be low for the Minecraft movie, there is still a glimmer of hope many fans cling onto. When the trailer for the Sonic movie originally came out, fans of the game were outraged by Sonic’s… interesting appearance, the director of the movie heard the outrage and made the choice to delay the movie and change Sonic’s look to something far more cartoony and appealing. This seems to have been the right decision, as the movie was a hit with fans when it came out, and is now planning to release a third movie. This is to say that if fans could change a movie like Sonic, it could happen with A Minecraft Movie.
Even though many fans have lost all hope in the movie, I can’t say the movie will flop. Minecraft is such a popular game with so many fans of so many ages, there’ll still be thousands of people that’ll watch it no matter how bad it is. We can hope the backlash might get to the director’s and cause them to change the movie, but it is very unlikely to happen.
