Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for the Minecraft movie, which is filled with stars like Jack Black and Jason Momoa. And the minute-long spot for the adaptation of one of the most popular games ever made is…utterly horrifying in almost every conceivable way.
You can watch it below for yourself to see what I mean:
The first and most noticeable thing is Jason Momoa’s haircut which…speaks for itself. But the second most noticeable thing is the extreme green screen CGI which I mean, of course, if you throw live-action people in a Minecraft world, you’re going to need that, but the question is why did you put live-action people in a Minecraft world?
I definitely assumed that when they made a Minecraft movie it would be in a similar medium to the game. Instead, everything is just weird-looking non-game CGI cubes and it’s not just actors voicing Minecraft-shaped characters, it’s just…people. Jack Black shows up like he just got filming one of his TikTok videos with no shave or haircut just looking like…Jack Black. But he’s Steve. You know, Steve. At least Jason Momoa agreed to look like an idiot in that wig.
I fully understand I am not the target market for this, and this does not need to be a good movie to make a billion dollars at the box office, which I fully expect it to. But I think there are ways to do popular kid's games right using live-action, Five Nights at Freddy’s for instance, or ways to do specific styles right, such as the LEGO movies being made in…LEGO. They should have made a Minecraft movie in Minecraft, or at least something that looks a lot more like Minecraft than this.
The aesthetics here are just terrible. The quasi-adaptation of animals and enemies, the live-action actors stamped on the flat backgrounds. Just awful stuff. I can only hope that when this movie is out in April 2025 that it will look more polished, as this trailer is making the Borderlands movie look good. But again, no matter what, it is going to make an utterly insane amount of money, so it doesn’t really matter, I suppose.
It’s just a shame because there have been so many great young-skewing gaming movies from Sonic to Mario, but if this is as bad as it looks, it’s going to snap that streak like a blocky tree branch.