Minecraft Movie Trailer: Is This What We Get After All These Years?

A Minecraft Movie won't actually be out until 2025, but the misery has already begun.

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The first trailer for the Jason Momoa-starring Minecraft movie is here, and my immediate reaction is bafflement—absolute wonderment, really—that 2025 could potentially give us an even bigger videogame movie catastrophe than 2024's Borderlands film—and that both of them feature Jack Black.

Black plays Steve in the film, the Minecraft main guy in the teal shirt who was previously rumored to be portrayed by Pedro Pascal. How a casting department gets from Pedro Pascal to Jack Black is completely beyond me, but I am not a highly-paid Warner Bros executive so I will comment no further except to say it makes me think about Schwarzenegger and Stallone "competing" for the lead role in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. I bet Pedro's having a good laugh this morning.

As for the trailer itself: Look, folks, I'm not a big Minecraft guy so I'm not going to pick out any hidden-away details or surprise Easter eggs for you. And even if I was in a position to do so, I would not, because my attention is thoroughly focused on other things—specifically, what the hell is going on with Jason Momoa here?

Props to the man for doing his thing, even if I can't put my finger on what exactly that thing is. He's sure come a long way from Ronon Dex.

Anyway, the rest of the trailer is a pastiche of bemused looks, dismissive asides, CGI, and Jack Black being Jack Black, and if that—minus the gunfire, of course—sounds to you at least a little bit like the Borderlands film and all that entails, you're not alone. I thought my reaction to the Minecraft movie teaser might have been driven by a lack of knowledge, or maybe because I just don't like things as a general rule, but the reaction in the YouTube comments isn't what you'd call overwhelmingly positive either:

It goes on like that for a while. It's not all bad but, yeah, it mostly is. The bulk of specific complaints focus on the live-action aspect of the film, the general consensus being that it would fare much better as a fully-animated project, but the broader feeling is simply that the whole thing does not look great no matter how you squint at it. This is only a teaser, mind, not a trailer, so it's possible that a more comprehensive look at the film, which is no doubt on the way, will boost the mood. But maybe not, too.

Courtesy of the YouTube description, here's the quick rundown of what we can look forward to on the narrative side:

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Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative…the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.

And yes, there are a few references to Jumanji in the comments too. Which, in case you'd forgotten, also featured Jack Black.

A Minecraft Movie, which is apparently the official title for it (And why "A Minecraft Movie?" Why not "The Minecraft Movie?" How many of these things are they planning to make?) is set to come out sometime in 2025. We all look forward to making Joshua Wolens watch it.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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As four misfits explore a pixelated paradise in the new A Minecraft Movie teaser trailer, they stumble into the video game’s protagonist, played by Jack Black, who belches the words “I am Steve.” The misfits look unamused. Jason Momoa‘s character scoffs at his introduction, and Emma Myers’ character calls him “such a toolbag.”

The misfits — Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks) — find themselves battling everyday problems when they’re launched into a portal into the Overworld, a blocky wonderland filled with cube-shaped sheep, armored clans of pigs, and explosive creepers. To return home, they must master the world and fend off deadly threats with the help of craftsman Steve (Black). Jared Hess, known for Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, directs. The cast of the Warner Bros. film also includes Jennifer Coolidge.

In the video game Minecraft, created by Swedish video game developer Markus “Notch” Persson, players have free rein to explore the infinite Lego-style world, collecting resources, digging tunnels, foraging for food, and building shelter all while fending off zombie attacks and arrow-shooting skeletons.

In the game’s first year, Minecraft reached about 20,000 downloads and has since become one of the best-selling video games with more than 300 million copies sold, as of October 2023. Peter Molyneux, the developer behind Dungeon Keeper, talked to Rolling Stone in 2014 about the accidental success of Minecraft.

“There are game-design rules that are carved in stone — about teaching people to play, having objectives, a character, an adversary,” Molyneux told Rolling Stone. “Minecraft threw all that away.”

A Minecraft Movie will arrive on April 4.

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Warner Bros have released the first trailer for Vertigo and Legendary's Minecraft movie, the long-awaited or possibly, long-dreaded adaptation of Mojang's industry-straddling block-builder. Quick disclosure: I worked with Mojang and Microsoft on a book about Minecraft's first 15 years, shortly before joining Rock Paper Shotgun. As such, I am now obliged by the eternal laws of journalistic accountability to state that anything Minecraft-related is rubbish. But even if that weren't the case, I would describe this as pretty dismal.

It's partly Hollywood-trailer-itis - they're doing that condescending thing where they slap a bass drop or local equivalent on every punchline - but it's mostly that they've monstered Minecraft's matchless visual direction, with a photorealistic spin on the original block aesthetic which makes me think of those fan mods that insist on forcing ray-tracing and hair physics into a game that is famously low-tech and simple.

I'm sure the film's visual direction represents many hours of skilled labour, and I empathise for the artists who are now reading the Youtube comments, but it all just seems so unnecessary. The original Minecraft didn't make waves because you could see your reflection in every Piglin's eyeball. I'm not sure it'll be "more appealing to a mainstream audience", either - if you've never played Minecraft, I suspect this will seem very disposable, another matinee CGI fest among many, but with a strange emphasis on right angles. Imagine if they'd taken a few cues from the LEGO movies or even the Spider-Verse films, and folded in different aesthetics from all across Minecraft's evolution in the hands of developers and players.

The cast includes Emma Myers from Addams Family spin-off Wednesday, Danielle Brooks from The Colour Purple, Jason Momoa playing Jason Momoa But Comically Non-Macho, and Jack Black playing Steve, Minecraft's OG default character. I don't have any particular strong feelings about how Steve should be portrayed, but I am quite tired of Jack Black being Jack Black. They should have cast him as a Creeper. Anyway, here's some blurb:

Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn't just help you craft, it's essential to one's survival! Four misfits--Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Brooks)--find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they'll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative...the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world."

The Minecraft movie was announced in 2014, and has been through several rewrites and changes of project leadership. Like many Hollywood productions, it also saw delays during the pandemic lockdowns. It'll hit cinemas next year. I'm morbidly interested to hear about how they worked out the visual direction, but I don't think I'll be buying a ticket.

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