The director and producer of the upcoming Minecraft movie have responded to the backlash from fans following the film’s first trailer. Within the past day, a new trailer for A Minecraft Movie was released, and in part, seemed to turn around some of the negative reception that emerged following its initial teaser back in September. Now, those in charge of the Minecraft adaptation have opened up about this initial negativity, and in short, it wasn’t something that they found surprising.
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Speaking to IGN, A Minecraft Movie director Jared Hess talked about some of the negativity that has been aimed at the project to this point. Hess acknowledged that Minecraft is a video game that means a lot to millions of players around the globe, and as a result, fans were always going to be pretty critical of how it would be translated to the big screen. As a result, this blowback wasn’t something that Hess was shocked by.
“I mean, look, we knew this game represents so many different things to so many different people,” Hess said. “We knew that whatever we led out with, there was going to be strong opinions across the spectrum of what people were expecting, what they wanted it to be. Everybody brings their own special personal connection to the game. So we were ready for everything.”
Perhaps the biggest point of contention with A Minecraft Movie from many fans has been the decision to be live-action rather than animated. For Minecraft’s senior director of original content Torfi Frans Olafsson, though, this approach is one that was always part of the movie adaptation from its earliest stages. Animated Minecraft content is something that has been plentiful over the years, so those attached to A Minecraft Movie wanted to try something else that hasn’t necessarily been attempted.
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“We made animated content before, and there’s a lot of it out there. But that was also one of the reasons why the filmmakers wanted to go with live action rather than animate it, rather than do something that’s been done before,” Olafsson explained. “And this movie’s been in development for a very, very long time. A lot of the people who will see it were not born when the first contracts and the first discussions were had, and there was always going to be live action. […] We felt that this is something we can do… kind of try to explore this wish fulfillment or risk fantasy of what it is like to yourself, be in a physical, tangible, Minecraft universe, a Minecraft world.”
For now, it remains to be seen what the general verdict on A Minecraft Movie will be when it hits theaters on April 4, 2025. While the final product might also end up being divisive, it seems that its newest trailer is doing a better job of conveying to potential viewers why the live-action approach might have been the best option.
