The first official trailer for the live-action Minecraft movie—which is annoyingly titled A Minecraft Movie—has finally been released. On September 4, Warner Bros. posted what it called a teaser for the movie to social media and the film distributor’s YouTube channel. Starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, the film is set to bring the best-selling video game of all time to the big screen, but this first look has made fans less than excited about what’s in store.
The trailer, set to the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” introduces audiences to the film’s cast and the blocky world in which their adventure will take place. Fans of the game will catch a lot of familiar items and creatures, such as the iconic green creeper, a tree floating with a block of wood missing from its trunk, and many weird looking animals.
One of the biggest initial reactions to the teaser trailer from fans is dissatisfaction over the film’s look, which brings a strange CGI aesthetic to the iconic blocky textures of Minecraft. Many have taken to social media to voice their concerns over the visual style of the movie, with one poster on X (formerly Twitter) saying that, “we gotta give the Minecraft movie the sonic treatment bc it’s looking buns rn,” referring to the debacle surrounding Sonic’s original trailer design for his 2020 film, a look that would be completely redone before the movie’s release. Other criticisms of the movie’s aesthetic call it worse than AI, or just as bad as crappy renderings of what “realistic Minecraft” would be like.
To make matters worse, audiences are also bringing up Minecraft: Story Mode, the 2015 game from Telltale that took a more narrative approach to the sandbox title. While it had its problems, Story Mode retained the iconic style of the original game, with blocky textures and characters throughout that made it feel like it was set in true Minecraft. Almost a decade since its release, and with the trailer for the movie not satisfying a lot of fans, some are seeing Story Mode in a new light.
Yet, beyond all the hate on how the Minecraft Movie looks, there are some acknowledging what the film actually is: a fun, if silly, movie aimed towards kids. Kotaku’s own John Walker said as much in his post on the internet backlash to the movie, succinctly telling adults complaining on the internet that the movie just isn’t for them. He’s not wrong! This movie is absolutely trying to be just fun enough to make kids happy.
I think there’s a world in which a Minecraft movie could have served old and young fans, without being what looks to me like the most boring drivel imaginable. But clearly, this version of the film is doing exactly what it aims to, whether we like it or not.
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