No.
It is not.
This mindset is what has caused the downfall of Disney, this idea that “it doesn’t need to be good, it just has to make money”. This is a movie with more budget than your average Minecraft Youtuber could ever dream of, and they can’t even make it LOOK good. Because for some reason it has to have people in it, which the more I think about it, this decision is worse than I thought. More on that in a bit.
Oh, something I want to be clear on: I’m not trying to predict the plot as some sort of advance criticism, like “I bet it’ll be bad because of XYZ”. I just threw my predictions out there for the fun of it, to see how much I can accurately guess.
Counterargument: Kids are going to be turned away from this because it doesn’t look like Minecraft, it isn’t the game they know and love. “That’s not Steve, that’s Jack Black in a blue shirt.” “These aren’t minecraft people, they’re just people.” “Why does the sheep look so creepy?”
As you’ve pointed out:
So WHY in Karzahni did they decide to make it live-action? There isn’t just no reason for this decision, there are so many reasons to NOT do that. Children love cartoons, minecraft is already animated in a unique style, and it flat out doesn’t work when you try to make it “realistic” to fit with human actors.
I’m not saying “I expect it to be bad” as a way of pre-judging it. I’m saying “I expect it to be bad” because they’ve already made a critical error and the movie is already suffering for it.
I can imagine plenty of kids flocking to it. I can imagine plenty more flocking to it if they had made it look good. I guarantee you, this movie would have done better if it was animated, in a more “Minecraft” style. More kids would be drawn to it, and frewer adults would be repulsed by it.
There’s a very big difference between a movie being fun, being successful, and being good, and none of them are mutually exclusive.
There have been movies that are both good and fun, but do poorly at the box office (an example would be Rise of the Guardians). Likewise, there have been movies that did extremely well financially that were very bad, or not fun (like Captain Marvel).
There’s plenty of in-betweens too. The Force Awakens is generally considered a bad film, but considering the circumstances around its release, it was unimaginably successful, and I still recall watching it being a very fun experience. Others might disagree nowadays.
It’s important to note that a movie being “fun” to watch isn’t always a product of the actual film or its content. Plenty of movies are classified as “so bad it’s good,” meaning they’re fun to watch precisely because they are bad (like maybe The Room). Other times, the culture surrounding a film affects the experience of watching it; I think that the FNaF movie is, objectively speaking, a pretty poorly made film, but subjectively I really enjoyed just seeing aspects of the games come to life in a new medium, so I enjoyed watching it despite the flaws. Similarly, the first Sonic movie isn’t anything special either, but it was massively successful and fun to watch because people reacted well to the redesign. People were more willing to put up with the sub-par plot because of something divorced from the actual movie.
All of this is very, very different from “it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to make money.” What that line of thinking creates are films that are both bad and not fun, but do well financially. That’s how we get soulless adaptations like The Lion King that still do amazing regardless of their quality because it’s The Lion King, because it’s Disney.
I’m not at all saying that Warner Bros. didn’t lead with this approach for the Minecraft movie- it’s plainly obvious they did. But the movie could still be fun to watch for a number of reasons. It could be genuinely funny due to its director, it could have some wholesome moments that remind us of the games, it could just be exciting to see Minecraft things happen in a movie. And what I said is that if it winds up being fun to watch for any of those reasons, then it doesn’t really matter that it looks a little weird or its humor is a little goofy, because the movie will still be fun to watch.
I agree that it never should have been what it is in the first place, but the reality is that it is what it is and there can still be enjoyment derived from that.
Some kids, maybe.
But while it’s true that kid’s aren’t dumb, intelligence is completely different from not having developed tastes or experiences.
Many kids, especially the predominantly under-10 audience of Minecraft, haven’t ever seen enough films to know what a bad one looks like, let alone from one trailer. They don’t know the difference between a live-action film and an animated one other than one has real people in it and the other doesn’t. They don’t know the pros and cons of each medium, and they don’t know for which purposes each are best suited for.
I bet most of them don’t know who Jack Black even is, outside of Kung-Fu Panda if they’re old enough, let alone enough to know he isn’t really playing a character but just being himself.
Many other kids will also look at the sheep or the llama and laugh. That’s entirely subjective.
What most kids will see is “Minecraft” in the title, and while it doesn’t look exactly like the game, I don’t really believe any kid would expect it to look exactly like the game. The movie is certainly more realistic, but I don’t think anyone can claim it isn’t recognizably Minecraft. Kids can tell that it is in a heartbeat, and all they really care about is that it is recognizable as Minecraft.
Kids don’t shy away from the LEGO sets or the plushies because they don’t look exactly like the games. They like them because they know it’s Minecraft. The movie designs are uncanny, yes, but as I said before, you can’t generalize how a kid will react to that, or an adult even. I’ve seen almost as many adults say they find the sheep and llama funny as they do ugly.
It also seems that the movie is leaning into the weirdness. The first thing the one character says in reaction to the sheep is “what the hll?” which is basically everyone’s reaction. I think they’re intentionally going for it being a bit off-putting.
Objectively true.
And likewise, I’m not saying “I expect it to be good,” but I just like presenting a more positive outlook in this instance.
And I know you’re not pre-judging it. You’re right that basically every mishandling that could’ve happened on this movie did. And I lament alongside everyone else for the fantastic animated homage we all wanted to see but didn’t get.
But if I go into this movie and I smile even just once, I’ll feel okay, I think. In the end, I just love Minecraft, and a bad movie won’t ever make me stop loving Minecraft. I don’t think it will make anyone stop loving Minecraft.
My opinion on the movie trailer isn’t the most positive, but hey, there’s still some hope.
The terrain looked amazing at a distance, and I’ll even give Warner Bros credit for the Piglins - I thought they were creepy in a way that benefitted them as antagonists. The few buildings that were visible also looked great! The workshop where Jason Momoa does his little hammer time thing was generally pretty neat and I didn’t notice anything obviously bad about it.
That being said, the creatures were sub-par. With Piglins, the funky proportions and squarish design language work well because they’re completely fictional, i.e. they’re completely alien designs to the real world. With the sheep, being square makes it look like an AI generated image that was created by confusing sheep with bales of hay, not to mention they adapted the eyes in the worst way imaginable. The wolf looks like a poorly-shaved poodle pushed into a meat packaging machine. The llama is atrocious. In-game, llamas actually look really good for a collection of rectangular prisms. They fit the Minecraft style well. The movie version looks like they took the model for in-game llamas, slapped some fur on it, warped the centers of the eyes outwards, and added British dental care just in case it didn’t look bad enough. Side note: I’d actually be willing to forgive the llama looking a little bit goofy and/or stupid if Warner Bros really needed a comedy relief mob, but the design we got is just unforgiveable.
Now, I was going to bash on the creeper a bit here, but I’ve got some interesting news: I don’t think the creeper is as bad as it looks in the trailer. From what I can tell, they just chose a really bad shot of the creeper and maybe had some of their effects turned up too much.
According to the Minecraft Wiki, Notch himself said that creepers are “made out of leaves or similar,” and are “crunchy, like dry leaves,” in texture. The shot in the trailer doesn’t give us an amazing look at the creeper, but a promotional poster does:
Would you look at that, it’s made of leaves or something similar! Who knows, maybe they put in a bit more effort than the evidence suggests… Still, I do have to criticize even the creeper. The stringy roots are overused. Roots are a natural part of plants so it would make sense for them to be there, but I think they should be used sparingly. Additionally, there’s a pretty wide variety of colors on the creeper texture in-game. It’s mostly green, yes, but there’s multiple shades of green dotted all over its body. I even read somewhere that the design was more or less made to camouflage it better with forests in Minecraft, so I think the design needs to be more of a tree monster instead of the moss monster we have now.
The final bit I want to bring up is that the mouth and eyes are not just hollow voids on the in-game texture. Perhaps they look soulless, but there’s some shading that indicates they’re just sunken into the skull of the creeper. I don’t think we need the creeper to have pupils but maybe something that indicates there’s more than just an empty shell with a cubic frown on it.
There’s a lot more I could criticize, especially about the ridiculous decision to make it another live-action-with-greenscreen-world film, but this criticism is already long enough and I’m sure everyone who has seen the trailer has heard the exact same criticisms. Therefore, I’ll call it here and sign out.
TL;DR
Overall, the trailer did not get me hyped for the movie. I see potential, but either no serious creative vision or no real passion for the project. Minecraft already has a story built into it, hidden in the structures we find and the bosses we fight. I think I would have preferred a fully-animated movie explaining the lore behind Minecraft over this live-action thing.
The stylistic choices were questionable at best. A YouTuber I follow concisely said that furry textures were too overused, whether it be the disgusting animals or the furry trees. Some more care would go a long way.
I agree with your opinion on the models and CGI usage. It’s pretty disappointing to see how poor the textures are that were used on characters. (Especially with how all the designs for Steve that I’ve seen make him look like a Minecraft-style Muppet. Skin should not be fuzzy). The fact that it’s purely live-action on CGI is also disappointing, as there are not many times I can remember where that actually worked well.
In general it’s kind of sad how little props are used now, sometimes props can even look better than cgi. (For example the original The Thing compared to its prequel.) I think it being so much cgi is another reason people criticize it for being live action at all.
I hadn’t thought about that, and that makes sense for a lot of movies and shows that I’ve seen. Having physical props definitely improves the quality of acting, as everyone has tangible cues to interact with.
