We thought that the first trailer for A Minecraft Movie looked so bad that it made the Borderlands film seem half-decent, so it’s safe to say that our expectations for this film aren’t very high. But this negative reception is apparently not a massive surprise to director Jared Hess or producer and senior Minecraft director Torfi Frans Olafsson.
“Look, we knew this game represents so many different things to so many different people,” Hess says (via IGN). “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.”
They are certainly spoilt for choice when it comes to getting creative inspiration from Minecraft, and I can sympathise with the problem of having too much choice. “We’ve taken an approach to ground it very firmly in what we all refer to as ‘vanilla Minecraft,’ like the unmodified Minecraft,” Olafsson says. “The young character Henry enters the world and is kind of a creator and maker in the real world. And his character then represents the maker or the modder or the builder coming into this world. And as a result, we’re going to see some really classic stuff, stuff that we want to see, some Beast Creepers, Endermen, and that kind of stuff. And then we’re going to see some new stuff that Henry made.”
At this point, I think that it’s important to remember that those of us who grew up playing Minecraft during its initial boom are not necessarily the target audience of this film. Olafsson even says that some of the viewers “were not born when the first contracts and the first discussions [for this film] were had.” So, I’m not expecting a mature, funny, and thoughtful interpretation of Minecraft, and I understand that it’s probably just going to be a mid family-friendly film.
But it would be nice if A Minecraft Movie proved me wrong and turned out to be an alright watch. Apparently, the test screenings went really well, so that does give me a small glimmer of hope. “People are like, ‘This is nothing like the trailer, this movie is awesome,'” Olafsson says. “I know people may go like, ‘Wait, that’s not in the game.’ But anybody who’s played Minecraft for a while has usually installed some sort of resource pack or mod or changed it in some way for themselves. And that’s what this character is doing.”
