11 years on from the Lego movie the ‘anticipated’ Minecraft movie is finally set for release and I can’t help but feel concerned, not really about the movie but about the impact it’s going to have on media adaptation.

Over the past month the marketing for the movie has been unavoidable with Jack Blacks face plastered over every brand of crisps in the UK including Doritos ‘square crisp’ campaign. Not to mention the extend of merchandise from clothing to toys even official Minecraft movie sets. I was sat in McDonalds today and as a turned around the packet of fries to again see something plastered in Minecraft marketing, I deserve that one though for deciding to eat at McDonalds.

This did make me come to the realisation that this isn’t really a movie, it’s just an advertisement campaign. The movie doesn’t need to be good, and I don’t anticipate it will be any good at all. It just exists to mindlessly sprout Minecraft jargon to help the push for making Minecraft a household name much like LEGO, but does it need to be this way?
The LEGO movie which released in 2014 while guilty of product placement was a competent film with a genuine message and quality. The Minecraft movie, which is clearly inspired by the success of the first LEGO movie looks to recuperate its popularity but without any of the quality and meaning that made the LEGO movie successful in the first place.

From all the trailers and promotional material, the movie seems to play on some of the ideas of the LEGO movie’s message about creativity and individualism although the plot seems more akin to the awful Playmobil movie I tried to erase from my mind. The concerning aspect from the trailers and something I’m happy the internet has picked up upon is the unnecessary need for Jack Black to just, say everything for verbatim. This further reinforces my suspicious this is just one long, expensive advertisement for the Minecraft brand.

This would be like if in the Lego movie rather than Emmet and Co travel from world to world running from Liam Neeson’s Bad Cop, they simply enter every world and just point at things “woah, it’s LEGO Western set 6769 Fort Legoredo”.

While I’m yet to watch the Minecraft movie, I highly anticipate it’s going to be nothing but abrupt Minecraft terminology for 90 minutes while the characters follow a plot Chat GPT could have generated.

The bigger picture here is how, especially with material aimed at children, the need to actually create a quality piece of art is fading. Something just needs to have a bit of action and maybe a funny CGI animal or other wacky character while we shout out nouns for products we can sell at the toy shop across from the Cinema.

With all the said I’m still going to watch it which in some sense makes me a hypocrite for contributing to the revenue of this ‘movie’ but the optimist inside me is hoping I’m wrong and there is a spec of quality hidden away in this movie.

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This was much more opinionated than my other writings but felt it was relevant. While the movie industry isn’t part of my scope, digital content and video games are so I think it’s ok to contribute to this conversation.

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