Why We're Worried About The Minecraft Movie

There were rumblings of a "Minecraft" movie shortly after the game's popularity first exploded. Of course, that happens with a lot of games, and nothing ever comes of it — so most fans took it with a grain of salt. However, plans for/rumors about/announcements concerning a "Minecraft" movie never fully went away over the years, and it seemed like it was actually going to happen one day. Finally, in September 2024, the world got its first official look at "A Minecraft Movie" via its first trailer. 

It was certainly — a trailer for a movie. And "Minecraft" fans were reacting to it, most of it not positive. Aspects of the trailer set off red flags left and right, as did various news and information that came attached to it. The overwhelming consensus seems to be that this isn't the "Minecraft" movie anybody wanted. 

So what went so wrong? How is everyone already convinced that "A Minecraft Movie" is going to be a flop and not willing to give it the benefit of the doubt of waiting until it comes out, or even to see more trailers? The reasons are many, both right there on the screen and when digging into its production and behind-the-scenes issues. 

As previously mentioned, there have been talks about making a "Minecraft" movie for almost as long as the game has existed. Well, technically, the first discussions of adapting the game to the screen came by way of a television project that was first mentioned in 2012 — only a year after the game was first released — that never came to pass. But by 2014, things had shifted towards movies, with the first attempt being plans for a crowdfunded fan film that was ultimately shut down by "Minecraft" creator Markus Persson. 

And so it went for the next eight years or so, with multiple attempts to make a legitimate "Minecraft" movie announced, only to eventually fizzle out for one reason or another. It was beginning to look like it just wasn't meant to be, with nobody quite being able to figure out how to translate the hugely popular game into a feature film. Finally, 2022 saw the announcement of the version that we finally got a trailer and release date for. 

It's impossible not to wonder if "A Minecraft Movie" became a rare example of a movie that escaped development hell because everything finally fell into place creatively, or if Warner Bros. was tired of having this property on its hands for all these years and wanted to just put something out to be rid of it once and for all. 

The "Lego" movies proved that you don't need to reinvent the wheel when bringing a brick-based property to life — they starred existing Lego figurines in environments made largely of Lego bricks, and it worked to the tune of over a billion dollars grossed worldwide across four films as well as an Oscar nomination. More specifically, the 2018 Netflix series "Minecraft: Story Mode" reworked the video game series of the same name into an interactive TV show. Sure, it was technically a game first, but it still worked just fine as a show that was made up entirely of "Minecraft" graphics.

All this is to say that the decision to have "A Minecraft Movie" be a hybrid of animation and live-action actors is a baffling one. Beyond how weird human actors look interacting with the blocky, pixelated environments and creatures from the game, it just smacks of a project that didn't have enough faith in its source material to directly translate it visually to the big screen. If "A Minecraft Movie" didn't think its audience would accept blocky human characters in the style of the game, does it actually know its audience in the first place? 

Minecraft first launched in 2011, finding an audience of both children and adults. It's always been an all-ages type of game, which is likely a huge part of why it has gone on to become the second best-selling video game of all time behind "Tetris" — which is all the more impressive given that "Tetris" had a 26-year head start. As time has gone on, the kids who played "Minecraft" when it first came out are now teenagers and adults, not to mention the existing adults who either still play it or at least have a lingering fondness for it.

Despite how much of the "Minecraft" fan base is made up of not-children, the first trailer for "A Minecraft Movie" feels like it's for a film aimed almost entirely at youngsters. From the kid-heavy cast to the humor to just the overall vibes, it seems like the people behind the film are aiming for children as the primary demo. And that is a major miscalculation.

Recent successful video game films based on legacy video game properties, like "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "The Super Mario. Bros Movie," leveraged being both kid-friendly but also still knowing the importance of containing things only adults notice. Hopefully "A Minecraft Movie" is wise enough to do that as well, but its marketing material thus far doesn't seem to be headed in that direction.

The premise of the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie was that Sonic was sucked into another dimension, and he needed to figure out how to get home. The premise of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" was that Mario and Luigi were sucked into another dimension, and they needed to figure out how to get home. While not based on a real video game, the premise of "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" was nonetheless that four kids got sucked into another dimension and — well, you get the idea. 

Despite having become an overused trope in recent years, particularly for video game movies, "A Minecraft Movie" seems to follow the trend of being about a group of people who are sucked into another dimension and need to figure out how to get home. The "Minecraft" game actually has a legitimate story and deep lore, more than enough to have built not only one but multiple movies around, without having to resort to a tired gimmick. Even when your inspirations are some of the highest-grossing video game movies of all time, an overdone trope is still an overdone trope. 

It might have been a little more forgivable that "A Minecraft Movie" is a hybrid of live-action actors and computer-animated characters and environments if the blend worked seamlessly and was of a high quality. But, at least from the trailer, that does not seem to be the case. The actors stick out like sore thumbs on top of the environments, even when all they are doing is walking through a field or just standing still.

The fact that we saw very little interaction between the actors and the animated creatures shown in the trailer is both telling and worrisome. That will be the real test — how convincing it will be to see the actors talk to animated characters, touch animated animals, battle animated creatures, etc. But so far, all we've seen is cuts between an animated creature and a completely separate shot of a human actor reacting to it, or animated characters only in the background of shots with human actors. Until it's proven that they can — or even do — directly interact, it'll remain a major source of skepticism that the filmmakers were able to pull off the blend effectively. 

It's still a relatively rare occurrence that music by the Beatles is officially licensed for a movie. Whether it's because it's more expensive than most other bands' music, harder to get approval, or a mixture of both, Beatles songs just aren't as prevalent in film and television as you'd expect for how ubiquitous their music has been and for how long. 

So the fact that even just the trailer for "A Minecraft Movie" uses a Beatles song seems to be a big deal, and speaks to a willingness to at least spend money on the marketing for the movie — even if perhaps more of that money should have gone to the movie's visual effects budget instead. 

There's just one problem — the song in question is "Magical Mystery Tour," which happens to be the theme song for the worst movie the Beatles ever made. Not only is it lacking in quality, but "Magical Mystery Tour" was a legendarily chaotic production that saw little in the way of plans, had no script to really speak of, and instead was just a random collection of scenes and moments that were thought up on the fly. It wasn't long before people started making the obvious joke that "A Minecraft Movie" using the song from the worst Beatles film — not to mention that the song itself isn't in the running to be anyone's favorite Beatles track — feels like a statement on its quality. 

Remember that first trailer for the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie? Of course you do — it featured an absolutely dreadful design for the titular blue speedster, striving for a more realistic look that just came across as creepy. From the dead eyes to the nightmare fuel that was his mouth full of human teeth, what we now call "Ugly Sonic" was thankfully nixed in favor of a more cartoony look. Not only did it end up being one of the strangest reasons why a movie's production was halted, but the new look worked just fine when interacting with the human actors and real-world sets of the movie. 

Somehow, despite the lessons learned from the Ugly Sonic debacle and ensuing fan backlash, the character designs for "A Minecraft Movie" seem to be going that same route. The sheep and the llama shown in the trailer both have wool textures that look fine, but they both have what are far too reminiscent of the terrifying human teeth of Ugly Sonic. 

Worse are the Piglins, who have a grotesque skin texture that just feels unsettling and out of place, not only for the source material but even within the virtual landscape that the movie seems to be trying to create. We seriously doubt we'll see them go back to the drawing board to fix these things like they did with Ugly Sonic, but they should certainly consider it. 

It needs to be pointed out right off the bat that Jack Black has more than proven his gamer bona fides. He not only starred in the cult classic game "Brutal Legend" — both voicing the main character and also filming a live-action intro for the game — but he even appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to promote the game while dressed as his character. He also had a YouTube channel called Jablinski Games for which he created various types of game-related content seemingly just for the fun of it. The list goes on.

Of course, that list also includes his scene-stealing performance as Bowser in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," where he not only nailed the role of Mario's longtime antagonist but performed and co-wrote a viral hit song as the character. For a time, Black being connected to something game-related felt like a sign of quality. That is, until 2024's "Borderlands" movie adaptation, which only managed a 10% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and became one of the year's biggest flops. 

That, coupled with his reputation taking a hit over what many perceived as him throwing longtime friend and creative partner Kyle Gass under the bus over a Donald Trump joke, put Black in a different light than he was in even six months ago. It just isn't particularly great timing to reveal a movie — and a video game movie, no less — with Black at its center. 

These days, when a movie — or anything, really — is announced, one of the first things that people do is make videos of themselves reacting to said announcement. Naturally, when it comes to something like "Minecraft" that is such a cherished thing among the YouTube generation, there was bound to be plenty of people having plenty to say about "A Minecraft Movie" on YouTube. And, not surprisingly, most of it wasn't good.

Then something odd happened. Several YouTubers claimed that their reaction videos for the "A Minecraft Movie" trailer had received copyright strikes and were forced to be taken down. Immediately, the conspiracy gears started turning, with people wondering if Warner Bros. was doing that as a way to try and quiet down some of the massive backlash to the trailer as much as it could. 

Of course, there remain plenty of videos on YouTube bashing the "Minecraft" movie, and those few instances where one disappeared seemed to be isolated incidents that may have been a mistake or technical glitch of some sort. But once the internet starts circulating a theory like that, it's hard to stop it. And the damage was already done if people even suspected that such censorship shenanigans were going on even if they weren't. 

When it was first revealed that there was going to be a female-led "Ghostbusters" reboot, a lot of toxicity reared its ugly head online and many were quick to dismiss it as an attempt to ruin a classic franchise by going "woke." While such an outcry might seem like it was relegated to a vocal but irrelevant minority, it's hard not to look at the eventual box office failure of 2016's "Ghostbusters" as being at least partially the result of that very loud backlash gaining enough traction to actually hurt the movie's chances. Director Paul Feig even spoke out on the sexist responses to the movie. 

Unfortunately, that type of thing immediately sprung up around "A Minecraft Movie." In particular, some people online took issue with the appearance of Danielle Brooks, a woman of color, showing up in the trailer. Never mind that she isn't playing a Black female version of Steve or anything like that, but an entirely original character. Also never mind that she's an Oscar nominee, the only one in the cast — people saw a Black person in the trailer and instantly started racist chants of forced diversity casting and the like. 

Again, it would be easy to just ignore such things and not worry about it, but history has proven that such people are capable of being loud enough and amassing enough support that they can actually hurt a movie's chances of success in spite of its actual quality. 

Barely two weeks after the first full trailer for "A Minecraft Movie" dropped, something besides people's negative reaction to it began making headlines that don't bode well for the film. A YouTuber named Valkyrae, who has a cameo in the movie, said in an interview with fellow YouTuber JasonTheWeen that her worst-ever celebrity interaction was with Jason Momoa while filming her cameo. 

Valkyrae claimed that even during her short time on set, she witnessed Momoa yelling at and getting excessively angry with members of the crew, saying that it didn't seem like a good environment to work in. It's worth noting that neither Momoa nor his reps have addressed the accusations as of this writing. There have been varying stories over the years about the kind of co-star he is — Amber Heard claimed to have had a bad experience with him on "Aquaman 2," while Emilia Clarke had nothing but kind words about working with him on "Game of Thrones," saying he advocated for her and was protective of her on set. 

Unfortunately, even if Valkyrae's claims aren't true — or if they are, but it ended up being an isolated incident and wasn't indicative of Momoa's behavior for the bulk of the "Minecraft" production — such accusations are hard to shake and have pushed "A Minecraft Movie" further into a negative light. 

Typically credited as the creator of "Minecraft," game developer Markus "Notch" Persson eventually sold the rights to the game to Microsoft, making him a billionaire. He also left "Minecraft" developer Mojang, and hasn't been directly involved with the game nor the developer since 2015. Still, people were obviously curious to know what Persson thought of the trailer for "A Minecraft Movie," and he ended up giving one of the few positive-leaning reactions to it when he tweeted "Ok i'm in" in response to the trailer. 

Persson's stamp of approval isn't quite so simple, though. Persson has been a controversial figure in the years since selling "Minecraft," having made negative statements about the LGBTQ+ community as well as feminism — so much so that he wasn't invited to the game's 10th anniversary festivities, with Microsoft issuing a statement (via Variety) saying that Persson's "comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft.'"

With his relationship to his creation being so contentious, and Persson generally being unapologetic about the things that he's said, it's tough not to wonder if he's glad "A Minecraft Movie" looks bad and is partaking in schadenfreude over its perceived eventual failure — rather than actually thinking it looks good.