It almost feels unnecessarily mean to snark on A Minecraft Movie—a project that’s very clearly aiming for a specific audience group that includes small children who love Minecraft, small children who’ve never played Minecraft but whose parents want to take them to a kid-friendly movie, and… maybe some Jason Momoa superfans. The final trailer is here before it hits theaters, and it contains some confusing thematic elements along with a lot of bright colors, blocky visuals, and Jack Black hamming it the hell up.
Oh, and a glimpse of Jennifer Coolidge at the end there! Hope she got a big square bag of money for her participation. Probably the most intriguing part of this trailer is how it implies the main conflict of A Minecraft Movie involves invaders devoted to stifling joy and creativity. “If we want to save this world,” Black’s character says, “Creativity is key to survival!”
That’s a cause we can get behind, and it may be true if you’re actually playing Minecraft. But the fact that it’s couched within the garish borders of A Minecraft Movie, a project calibrated to rake in even more dollars from what Warner Bros. and Legendary will happily trumpet as “the best-selling video game of all time,” is either ironic or hilarious or soul-gutting, and maybe a little bit of each.
“This place makes no sense,” another character mutters as the chaos begins to multiply, and we have to disagree. It makes perfect sense. Box-office sense. All involved might as well be block-printing their own money. Aside from Momoa, Black, and Coolidge, the cast includes Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks (an Oscar nominee), and Sebastian Hansen. Here’s the official synopsis:
“Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits—Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative…the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.”
Jared Hess (also an Oscar nominee) directs from a screenplay that credits no less than five writers. A Minecraft Movie hits theaters April 4.
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