2023’s Dungeons & Dragons movie made a lot of clever references to Dungeons & Dragons the game, like one character being told to hold important quest items because (as we eventually realize) he has a bag of holding, or the moment an NPC walks mindlessly off in a completely straight line once his quest was completed and he had nothing further to do in the story.
A Minecraft Movie is going about things a bit differently. It’s not making sly references to Minecraft. Instead, it’s whipping out items from the game, holding them up to camera, and yelling their names at full volume. Take a look at the final trailer and count how many times that happens:
I think it’s a great strategy, actually. This is a movie for little itty bitty Minecraft fans (some might call them children) so there’s no point in being subtle. In the final trailer we see Jack Black use a water bucket to land safely from a fall, use flint and steel to ignite a nether portal, and give his companions elytra wingsuits to fly, which are all items directly ripped from the game. These items aren’t just shown or nodded to, they’re named. Loudly. Black literally shouts “Flint and steel!” while using flint and steel.
My prediction based on this trailer is that A Minecraft Movie will be the first film to make a trillion dollars. There are a lot of little kids who love Minecraft, and I bet those kids will like watching a movie filled with things they recognize from Minecraft, and they’ll like yelling out the names of those things when they see those things, just like Jack Black does.
Like in the trailer, when a Chicken Jockey appears and Jack Black yells “Chicken Jockey!” Kids will dig that, though I think Warner Bros could have saved a lot of budget by just having Jack Black stream himself playing Minecraft and yelling item names.
Children will also like seeing other stuff directly pulled from the game. It’s not like the kid in the movie uses a forge and anvil to make a sword the way we’ve seen in so many fantasy movies. She uses a 6×6 grid to lay down one little stick and two little diamonds in a column, and that makes a sword, just like in the game. The sword hasn’t been adapted for a live-action film, either: it looks exactly like a pixelated diamond sword from the game.
That’s why the movie is gonna be big. It’s just like the game, and that should make Minecraft fans happy. A Minecraft Movie opens in theaters April 4.
