We need to talk about the Minecraft movie

On September 04 2024 the first official teaser for the Minecraft movie dropped, and judging by the reactions on social media, it was not received very well by anyone, with many of the complaints referring to the movies strangely realistic visuals, and the direction for the plot
Personally, I’m fine with the visuals. They’re not great, and certainly resemble realistic Minecraft images that circulated in the past as what I assume were jokes, but they weren’t so ugly that I couldn’t stand looking at them for more than the average movie length. My biggest gripe was with the movies story, and how I believe it to be contradictory to Minecraft’s core design philosophy
In a Minecraft game design booklet written by Mojang's chief creative officer Jens Bergensten, better known as Jeb by the community, Jeb outlined a variety of aspects to help guide Minerafts game design, emphasizing that Minecraft is a game with unlimited potential and the players greatest tool will be their minds and their creativity. Throughout the booklet, he would emphasize that Minecraft was a game that the player had full control over, a true sandbox game that the player could enjoy to their leisure. They could do anything they wanted within the games systems, build magnificent castles, go on fantastic adventures, live in a dirt house forever, the possibilities were endless
This can easily be seen with the various YouTube content surrounding the game. The recent boom of collaborative Minecraft content, better known as SMP's, have the content creators involved creating their own worlds, making their own lore about both their characters, and the world itself. Minecraft build competitions are always abundant with incredibly looking structures, made even more impressive considering they are built by single players in a set amount of time. Minecraft was, and still is a timeless experience, thanks to how truly limitless the game is
And this was why it was so disappointing when the trailer revealed that the plot, at least from what we can see from the trailer itself, seemed to be an isekai plotline, where the main characters are from our "real" world, and are brought into the new, fantastical "Minecraft" world. This by itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as several other notable video game franchises such as Mario, Sonic, and even other properties such as Barbie and Harold and the Purple Crayon using this premise as a base for their film adaptations, but for Minecraft, a game designed for limitless possibilities, it comes off as uninspired
Now to be fair to the movie, it’s only a trailer, and it's not uncommon for a trailer to not be indicative of the final product. The movie itself could easily redeem the generic premise. The other examples listed earlier were able to after all (except Harold, I never saw that one). And to my knowledge Jeb himself was, and still is involved with the film's production creatively to some extent, and even visited the set himself to personally assess the visuals of the film. So I don’t think the Minecraft movie is necessarily doomed, but just like a creeper annihilating the player, it did not leave a good first impression
Sources: Minecraft co-creator explains Mojang’s involvement in movie Adapation. Dexerto. (2024, July 1). https://www.dexerto.com/minecraft/minecraft-co-creator-explains-mojangs-involvement-in-movie-adapation-2802841/
Minecraft game design (2019) : Jens Bergensten : Free download, Borrow, and streaming. Internet Archive. (1970, January 1). https://archive.org/details/minecraft-game-design/page/n19/mode/2up?view=theater

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