The first trailer for the official Minecraft movie (starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa) sparked a surprisingly negative reaction on social media, with fans baffled by the film’s visuals and tone. The trailer for the long-awaited feature film attracted strong criticism; one commentator wrote: “I do not understand the decision to have live action actors in the Minecraft world, when Minecraft translates so incredibly well to animation. The green screen here is horrendous.” Another disappointed commentator wrote: “While I wasn’t expecting amazing things from this… I was expecting MUCH better than what is embarrassingly show here. My goodness.”
Why is Everyone So Upset About the Minecraft Movie Trailer?
It's difficult to communicate the popularity and influence of Minecraft—the 13-year-old game is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, and has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. Every parent knows that kids today have an encyclopedic knowledge of Minecraft, down to the game’s flora, fauna and myriad of building materials. On YouTube alone, there are genres within genres of Minecraft videos, ranging from simple gameplay to complex narrative works, creative challenges and endless lore speculation; according to Mojang, the game’s content has surpassed one trillion views on YouTube. The game is, essentially, digital LEGO, and allows for an extraordinary range of creative expression, set to the tune of a beautiful, haunting soundtrack that one can listen to for hours on end. Gamers have pushed, prodded and modded the game beyond recognition, using it as a springboard to explore ideas and create hugely ambitious builds; Minecraft is an infinite sandbox, and its blocky objects and characters have become pop culture icons.
So why was the official Minecraft movie trailer viewed with such disappointment?
There have been countless animated and live-action works inspired by Minecraft, and many of them are extremely well-crafted. The pixelated world has been visualized by talented artists for several years, but the official movie trailer presented a disappointingly drab vision, which many compared to an AI-generated rendering. The unsettling blend of live-action and CGI prompted some commentators to make comparisons to shoddy greenscreen, and hyper-realistic mockups of videogame characters.
Many commentators compared the film to Jumanji, and some dismissed the appearance of Jack Black as Steve (the closest thing Minecraft has to a protagonist) as bad casting. Generally, The internet seems to have soured on Jack Black after he (temporarily) cut ties with his longtime Tenacious D creative partner Kyle Glass, after Glass made a tasteless joke about the assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump. Some even made memes comparing the visuals of the Minecraft movie to the disastrous “ugly Sonic” design that was unveiled in the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer, then replaced by a cuter, more faithful design.
The Minecraft trailer presented a generic vision of a video game adaptation, in line with the aforementioned Sonic film (and the Mario Bros. movie, if we’re being honest). However, there are so many unofficial stories within the Minecraft universe that have already been posted online; many of them are more compelling, and closer to the tone of the game than this trailer.
What's Next for the Minecraft Movie?
That being said, the Minecraft movie is absolutely going to be a billion dollar box office success—there’s no amount of bad reviews and snarky comments that could stop the tidal wave of children pulling fatigued parents into the cinema to see Minecraft on the big screen. One online commentator on X (Twitter) put it best, writing: “looks terrible we’ll be watching no matter what.”
So while the internet might be divided on the visual style and casting choices of the Minecraft movie, one thing is for sure: kids are going to love it. And that's all that really matters, right?
