Warners Bros. finally dropped the long-awaited trailer for A Minecraft Movie, launching on 2 April, 2025, and audience response has been mixed, at best. You would have thought an animated movie about one of the biggest games ever made would essentially write itself, but WB has made the interesting decision to make the movie a mix of live-action and 3D animation.
To say this isn’t what we expected from the movie would be an understatement, especially when the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie is right there to copy, but okay.
Check out the trailer below:
What the Hell Did I Just Watch?
Great question! A Minecraft Movie brings Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emmer Myers, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, and Jennifer Coolidge into the ‘Overworld’, aka the world of Minecraft, a “bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination”.
We don’t get a lot of information about what is actually happening in the movie from the trailer, but WB has given out a bit more information: essentially, the characters have been suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal to the Overworld, where they’ll need to survive, craft, and create in order to get back home.
Black is Steve, the default main character of the Minecraft game, and appears to be playing a similar role to Robin Williams did in the original Jumanji: he seems to be a human that’s been trapped in the Overworld for a long time, and understands how the world works. The others will most likely need to learn from him in order to make it back to the real world.
The trailer had plenty of references to the game, obviously, but seeing Jason Momoa standing next to a 3D animated Creeper just looks off. Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who think so.
Reddit’s r/Minecraft, a 7.6 million person subreddit filled with the most dedicated Minecraft fans out there, are almost entirely baffled by the movie’s presentation.
“I have to know how the execs thought a live-action cast in an uncanny-valley world made of cubes would look appealing to anyone,” one commenter said.
“I’m low-key impressed they managed to make something so ugly”, commented another.
Over on X, things aren’t looking much better.
To be fair, we shouldn’t judge an entire 90+ minute film based on one trailer, but it certainly isn’t the best first impression and doesn’t make me all that excited to see more, personally. Here’s hoping WB can pull the same trick Paramount did with the first Sonic trailer back in 2019 and make some major changes ahead of the film’s release.
The movie has faced significant challenges during its nearly decade-long development. After going through a handful of directors, the film is now under the direction of Jared Hess, known for directing Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. Moreover, the screenplay underwent revisions by Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer, who have reworked a previously approved script that was slated for production.
Confirmed Cast
While much of the movie will be animated, the main cast we know of are as follows:
- Jack Black as Steve
- Jason Momoa as Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison
- Danielle Brooks as Dawn
- Sebastian Eugene Hansen as Henry
- Emma Myers as Natalie
- Jennifer Coolidge
When is ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Coming Out?
A Minecraft Movie will be launching worldwide on 2 April, 2025.