Minecraft is a beloved survival and sandbox game, which means that it is open and players can basically do whatever they want. It is a title that everyone knows about and most have played at least once. I see it as one of those endless games that will continue to have its players for many more years to come, but when I heard that they were making a movie out of it, I was a little bit perplexed.
There’s been a huge rise of movie adaptations of video games like Mario, Sonic, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Angry Birds (that keeps making a resurgence). I’m sure there are many more in the works as well, and some of them turned out to be not half bad. These types of movies aren’t necessarily my favorite, but the storytelling and visual animation and or CGI help make the viewing experience a lot more enjoyable.
However, some of these adaptations have faced a lot of challenges. A big example is Sonic, as the original design for the character was hated so badly by the public that the design was scrapped and changed. Now, many people are hoping that the same thing can be done for the upcoming Minecraft movie.
Being directed by Jared Hess, the Minecraft trailer received a lot of backlash and I agree with it. The CGI of the movie felt weird and everything just seemed off in a way that feels unnatural. The main issue that I have is that they tried to make a video game like Minecraft, where everything is cuboidal and simple shapes with pixelated textures, realistic.
Of course many people have speculated what the world, or more specifically the mobs (aka monsters) would look like in real life. The idea of doing that in the movie is not a bad idea. Yeah, make what you think a creeper would look like in real life, or a ghast, or the piglins. But instead, they kept the cuboidal shapes and tried to make them realistic without changing their shapes. It just looks strange and I think it would have been more fun to go and try to create genuinely realistic monsters instead of keeping the cube shape and just adding a lot more texture to them.
That brings me to another point, the Minecraft world is made up of cubes. There is not a single curved surface, it is all square pixels and blocks. In addition to their attempts at making the world realistic, they are pulling in a live-action aspect to it with actors like Jason Mamoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, and Sebastion Eugene Hansen. Putting realistic people in a world like that is jarringly weird, especially since they are actively interacting with their surroundings. I can definitely see what they were trying to go for, but from the fan recreations of the trailer made with animation and staying true to Minecraft, I can say with confidence that I would rather see the movie in a more Minecraft-related setting, cube characters and pixelated everything in all. I personally would rather watch a movie based off of the trailer the creator Alumio on Youtube made. The animation this person made looks similar to the promotional videos that are created for Minecraft; similar animation style and visual appearance and all. It looks like what I would assume a Minecraft movie would somewhat resemble, and honestly it just feels a lot more true to the game than having people actors.
On top of how the trailer just looks and what visually is promised to us from the movie, there really isn’t a story to Minecraft. The only real objective is to get to a dimension called The End and kill a dragon. Even getting to that end objective can be difficult and time consuming since there are so many steps to get there. Other than killing the dragon, the game is a giant ‘do whatever you want’. Genuinely, it is a game made for building things and being creative in whatever way you want. The game only ends when you kill the dragon, but even then it does not necessarily end, so if you don’t you can just stay in the same folder for however long you want doing whatever you want.
I can see what the creators were trying to do with creating a new storyline to be able to create for the movie, since there really is only one story line in Minecraft, but I think following that could still be interesting. Maybe the characters get stuck in the video game and the only way they can leave is if they team up with Steve, one of the very few characters that Minecraft has, and kill the dragon. I would watch that movie; I think that movie would be really fun.
The biggest issues I have with the up and coming Minecraft movie is the attempt to make it live-action and realistic as well as the story telling. I do not understand the decision behind making video game movies live-action or even realistic, but I honestly miss animated films. I also do not think that every movie adaptation from a game has to be live-action; there are so many phenomenal animators out in the world that could create an amazing movie. Instead they pull in actors and throw them into a CGI animated world that looks almost clunky when they move around in it.
The story also seems a bit lacking. It feels like they tried to make something with the world and the creatures that are in it, but it does not feel honest to the game. It just does not feel right and the decision to make it about saving the cube world from destruction makes it feel like it is not even about the original game.
I feel if they chose to make it animated instead, and followed a slightly different story, it would have gone over better with the movie’s target audience and lovers of the original game. The only thing that makes me curious to watch the movie is the fact that Jack Black is in it and playing Steve. He is the only reason why I would watch the movie.