by Jordan Costolo ‘25 and Justin Lakso ‘25

No one likes the Minecraft movie. This is no exaggeration. There are thousands of videos on multiple social media platforms of people tearing apart the trailers, hating on the cast, making fun of the special effects, and insulting anything else they possibly can about the upcoming film, scheduled for release April 4. General audiences and critics alike are anticipating that the new Minecraft movie is going to be the worst video game adaptation to ever be put on screen. While this is a bold claim, saying that a movie is the “worst video game movie” isn’t really a new thing. Video game movies time and time again have earned a reputation of disappointing fans and general audiences alike.

Since the early 90s, countless franchises that have been adapted for the big screen, some notable ones being Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Mortal Kombat. These movies got terrible ratings from fans and casual movie-goers alike. They were seen as cheap cash grabs that cared little about what they were actually making, and more about drawing in audiences of these popular game franchises. This brings up the main reason why movies based on video games aren’t always done well: little respect for the source material. As video games are a newer medium than film, when these early adaptations were made, video games were viewed as a lesser artistic medium which were made for children and fast entertainment.The pioneers of video game movies had little interest in the actual games and no appreciation for them, their creators, or their fans.

Directors also rely on A-list actors to attract a broader audience rather than catering to the fans of the game. Fans want faithful interpretations of their favorite characters that aren’t reduced to flat, generic movie protagonists by a studio which prioritizes a box office gain over accuracy. Actors like Chris Pratt in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Ryan Reynolds in Detective Pikachu, and Jack Black in the upcoming Minecraft movie have caught backlash for being bland and having no actual character, partly because of the writing, but also because of their lackluster performance.

One movie series that has been an outlier to bad video game movies has been the Sonic The Hedgehog movies, the first one garnering enough love to spawn two separate sequels, two and four years after the original came out in 2020. The reason for its success was because the directors actually listened to fans and respected its source material. When the first trailer came out in 2019, Sonic’s original movie design left fans disgusted, and many criticized Marza Animation for their mismanagement of the character. Thankfully, Marza listened to fans’ criticism and redesigned Sonic from the ground up to look much more like he does in his in-game appearances. The story was also mostly original but incorporated just enough of Sonic’s source material to result in a great family movie which anybody can enjoy, lifelong fan or not.

The Minecraft movie seems to be going in the opposite direction. Instead of hearing public criticism and fixing its most important problems, this movie seems to make people angry. While this outrage does have more people than ever talking about the movie, the publicity they are getting isn’t necessarily a good thing. People will be watching this movie, to make fun of it.