On September 4, 2024, the Warner Bros Youtube channel uploaded a 1 minute 19 second long teaser for the Minecraft movie with a threatening message in the description: “Be there or be square.”
The trailer itself was met with immensely harsh reviews: even after 7 months and 42 million views later, the video never surpassed 1 million likes. Ever since YouTube removed the number of dislikes from videos, “likes” haven’t been a great way to measure the popularity of things, but even then with 42 million views it’s abnormal such a popular format was met with such harsh backlash.
Many people were upset that they weren’t adapting the popular “Minecraft: Story Mode,” a game set in the Minecraft world that follows Jesse and his friends’ adventure to stop a mutation of a monster. Many people enjoyed the game and the story itself wasn’t even that bad, scoring a 7.3/10 on IGN
Minecraft fans pointed out that the movie should’ve just been animated instead of being live-action, due to the game being animated, but most people enjoyed the cheesy one-liners, especially the famous, “I…am Steve” line from actor Jack Black. In my opinion, the trailer was fine for introducing the game in a movie format: it established who was in it, the overall tone, and the method of animation.
Another trailer came out 3 months later, and the reaction was a bit different to this one. This trailer featured some better CGI than the first, and showed off many other notable items from the game. Sure people still made fun of the cheesy one-liners, but through all of that, it seemed the notable actors of the film (Jack Black, Jason Mamoa, and Jennifer Coolidge) all seemed to have a genuine desire to produce a piece of art. This was also reflected in the many enthusiastic interviews Black and Mamoa had about the movie.
I first went to see an early screening of the movie on April 3rd and, overall, the experience was nice; the theater had some minor applause at the end. The movie itself in my opinion was fine. It gives off the same impression as movies like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “The Garfield Movie.” The animation looks a little cheap, it has a pretty simple good vs. evil plot, and a cast full of celebrities. It wasn’t a complete cash grab, though–the movie was still good, funny, and had a pretty impressive soundtrack.
The next day I saw a regular screening with a few friends and it was extremely different. People were talking, being loud, and cheered for some of the scenes in the trailers. Overall the movie itself is just good. There isn’t really anything remarkable about it, the humor is strong, but other than that the movie is a 7/10; and unfortunately, the sun is setting on the funniness of the memes.
