Minecraft New Trailer - Tumblr Posts
Im so glad we all rightly clocked the Minecraft movie as probably going to suck and I'm not alone. I was so worried I was just being a pessimist but after seeing what other's have said and what moistcritickal posted (haven't watched it yet), I feel a bit safer sharing my opinion. So, as a mc fan and player for almost, if not exactly, 10 years, I'll give my opinion.
It wants to be the super Mario movie. It wants to be it SO BAD but it doesn't care to actually commit to it. So many awesome movies about gaming IP have come out over the last 5 years from the Mario movie and the fnaf movie to detective pikachu and sonic. All bangers. Idk what it is apparently about 2024 and letting the most sludgy shitty gaming movies being announced/coming out but this is... Not it. This and the borderlands movie (tbf I'm only repeating popular opinion as I haven't seen the movie and am not a fan of the franchise but mega and even casual fans plus it's horrific box office say it enough. ) are probably gonna end up the same.
It looks terrible. Period. Almost everything in it looks terrible and I garentee it's budget was 150 to 300 mil and it still looks like fucking garbage. It can't even commit to being a live action or animated movie. It wants to be both so bad and not lose the recognition of the 2 celebrities it dumped probably a quarter of the budget on. Everything from the mobs to the world design to the cgi already looks like fucking garbage. It looks so fucking bad y'all I'm not even exaggerating. Holy shit. Everything has that fuckin cursed style of realistic components but cartoonish attitude and shape. Everything in the trailer looks like jigglypuff or Mr. Mime from detective Pikachu bred with sonic before everyone bullied them into giving him justice.
Tell me this shit doesn't have the same fucking energy.
This isn't cute, it was never cute, it's fucking creepy to put hi-def details on an originally cartoonish characters. Its giving fleshball with hair. Side note, since tf when were creepers made of grass and leaves n shit? I feel like I'd puke if I touched one by accident.
I want to give credit where credit is due and say the piglins and the ghasts look great. I fuckin love the fact the ghasts are stitched at the seems. They look great. It's almost like cartoon proportions but realistic style can look good in its creepy nature when out on top of characters who are supposed to look creepy and not right. 🙄
I have no idea why they wouldn't just fully animate this movie. Why are there fully human live action actors in this bitch but literally everything else is CGI. These poor actors are just standing on green screens when they very literally could have just been live action segments of them popping in and out of the world of Minecraft while voicing their minecrafty looking selves while animated. Literally just give it the ready player one treatment. Also why is Steve, the titular Minecraft character, a live action human as well? Even if your weird fascination with Zionist autism-speaks devotee Jack black is what you paid ungodly money for, he's a good voice actor. He showed that in the Mario movie as Bowser. Why does he have to be not only an IRL human but also his beard nor skin tone match canonical Steve. Jason Momoa, the only moc on the cast of human characters, would match Steve's actual skin tone. The boy's got melanin, Jack does not.
Speaking of the human characters, I can smell the uninteresting cookie-cutter nerdy boy with a crush he needs to profess to protagonist a mile away, I'm sure the little girl character is tough on the outside but soft when she warms up and is quirky and joins the bad guys for a bit only to come back but never has any actual character, idk litterally anything about the adult woman character other than her outfit is giving Dora and she litterally says nothing during the trailer and jason Momoa? I'm alittle worried. First off, why you got this whole ass man in that shitty ass wig. That is party city shit. I could find better for $8 on Amazon. Second off, though I think he's trying to be like... 80s 90s pop star twisted sister style shit, im NGL... My first thought was " is this a transmysognistic caricature?" Because of notch and the fact he moves pretty femininely through the trailer. I won't judge it yet but like... My hackles were UP up. I'm stressed. Another thing of note? No Alex nor Villagers. The villages were there and actively plundered but no villagers.
Something interesting of note is that the villagers were originally made, by notch, to be antisemitic caricatures. That's why they have the big nose, the nasally voice, considered primitive, the specific obsession with emeralds of all gems, why their deals always suck and they come off greedy. Mojang did very little to change their original design and even though you couldn't tell nessesarily without knowing that context that the villagers were a caricature, that doesn't make them less of one and Mojang really should of made the choice to change them by now. I, like many other allies and obviously the Jewish community, always felt a little uncomfortable with them but are now especially nervous about their more realistic but still cartoony take. We've seen plenty of human/realistic but cartoonish takes on villagers fully lean into the caricature with hooked noses, pointed ears and other common ethnicly Jewish features. Some even Include Payots ( the curly pieces of hair worn on orthodox Jewish men), Yamakas and stars of davids. These are clearly antisemitic caricatures and I, and many other fans, are worried about their one screen translations. I can only hope they humanize them as some more realistic takes on villagers can be good.
My second to last note is the setting, holy fuck is it UGLY ugly. Like I dont watch any Minecraft YouTubers or streamers so I'm not accustomed to tracing rays 1,000 mods realistic lighting, realistic resources, needs huge processors to run without the computer becoming the same temp as the surface of the sun to be happy with the way it looks but like... Ew. I play raw mc, no mods on console (and PC at one point but that was awhile ago and also with no mods) and I, through buildings or natural landscapes and locations, etc have seen prettier lighting and locations than what they chose. Like, one of the many joys of Minecraft is the simplistic but natural and real and relaxing atmosphere the world of Minecraft can be. Even when it's raining or snowing. Minecraft sunsets and sunrises after you spent the last real world 56,000 hours on this big building complex and finally resting and watching the sunrise over your work and the mountains or ocean or forest or even desert around you become pink then yellow then bright as the start of a new day is a healing experience. It can be emotional even. That landscape looked like garbage. Incredibly monotonous and boring and plain. Just nothing. How you squeeze the very easy thing of a beautiful atmosphere out of Minecraft is beyond me.
Speaking of emotions, let's talk about the story and the humor/dialogue. I'll start with the later and end my thoughts with the former. The humor, the little we did see, seemed at least a little bit on brand for Minecraft. The animals especially. I'll give it that, I just hope it's not unending poop or fart or pee jokes. Finally, I, like many others, are very worried this is a modern isekai ass Jumanji style shit take of minecraft. We are very worried this is just modern people shoved into minecraft to solve a problem, save the world and leave. This isn't what Minecraft's about, it's not it's messaging nor ever been a " hero/band of heros story" about saving the world, I don't even think it will honor the final poem of the game.
Minecraft has always always ALWAYS been about community, belonging, making a place for yourself in a world that won't accept you, working together and coexisting. It's about peace. It's about sharing. These messages are very near and very dear to the 6 yr old gen alphas who've been playing it since they were 2 or 3 yrs old and beat it 60 times to the elder Gen z and millennials like me who grew up with the game and have a special place in our hearts for the world's we've built and lost to the 89 yr old grandma who played it over covid and built a home for her whole family to visit and live in with all the accommodations they could want. Minecraft is for all ages and everyone has either played it or heard of it, it is the most successful singular game in the world ffs. It has sold more copies than ANY single game in existence, over the most common production of solitaire and Tetris and Space invaders AND any super Mario or Pokemon game. Minecraft rakes in over billions of dollars and millions of players every single year. Those who start playing it struggle to stop. It's a cultural icon, a seriously beloved and wholesome one. One the fans truly took, made it their own for everyone's benefit and spawned so much spin off media and love that it's done better than most games could ever dream to do. Minecraft's success and communal love, despite the unsavory trend of pedo and bigoted YouTubers centered on the game, is its soul. It's driving force. Its succession literally cannot be understated and cannot not be attributed to its fans.
I fear this movie is a slap in the face money grab disrespectful turd in a doggy bag left on the community's porch. I fear this movie will have none of the game's and community's values and lessons and love. I fear this movie will do what Mario, sonic and fnaf did not, hurt it's audience. I, like many other fans, already have an unsavory taste left in our mouth's from this trailer pie and we can only hope it didn't come from American pie or the help. The movie looks fucking soulless. It looks corporate. Like it only exists to make money off the already successful IP that is Minecraft. Like they saw the box office explosive success of sonic and Mario and fnaf and decided to shit something else explosive out as quick as possible to jump on the trend. I fear because it's fucking Hollywood, the messages it holds will be watered down and tasteless like a fucking LaCroix where someone ate a cubic millimeter of an orange peel and shat in my can and called it flavor. It'll be the same old schmut that every kid friendly movie has. It will have no nods to and for its existing fans to comb through and point out and smile that they are seen.
It may not even have a fucking ender dragon or a wither. Will it even have the nether? People already pointed out that most movie trailers include some of the big cool (expensive) parts of the movie and if they eventually fight the ender dragon, they would of probably included that in the trailers due to how cool (expensive) that scene would be. It's not there. All we see is piglins, a relatively small enemy in the game, pillaging villages (why no , ya know, actual pillagers pillaging. Why piglins... Who are barely present in the over world....who dont attack unless provoked... and only attack the player not suddenly aggro with every AI in sight... Why are they attacking villagers suddenly....) which.... Isn't super interesting. That and the irl actors walking around and discovering how to fucking play the basic shit in Minecraft like getting wood.. and making crafting tables.... And talking to Steve. Like this has bad shitty written all fucking over it... I'm so worried.
We, the fans who work and love this game tirelessly, deserve better than isekai diet Jumanji live action meets shitty animated garbage.... I can only hope and pray that my take on this ages poorly. I hope it ages poorly and I'm horribly wrong and it's the next fnaf movie and shows huge amounts of respect for the fans. I want to be wrong. I want us to be respected. However you can't ignore the blood in the handkerchief concerning movies with a highly popular IP, too many a-list celebrities, high costs and piss poor CGI. It rarely doesn't lead to disaster. Please let me be wrong.