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Talks of a movie based on Minecraft have been floating around for nearly a decade now, though only Wednesday morning did we see what the concept finally had to offer. Fans were met with realistic renders of sheeps, ghasts, and piglins from the best-selling game, while the humans introduced into the world didn’t look quite as blocky—rather, they looked just like regular humans green-screened into Minecraft. The reception to Warner Bros’ release of the teaser was almost universally mixed to negative, with criticism ranging from game inaccuracies to the lack of lighting and color matching on the green-screened actors. Why are non-zombified piglins in the overworld? Why does it look like a Verizon gaming commercial? The outcry was understandable, and yet it did nothing but aid the publicity of the teaser.

Let’s take the trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 into account. On August 27th, we reported its view count had skyrocketed immediately upon its release. The marketing of the film had been relatively nonexistent until recently, save for a few press releases along the way, which made the immediate success of the trailer a remarkable success story. The Minecraft film’s promotion has been off the grid in a similar way that almost feels even more lowkey than what Sonic the Hedgehog 3 had going for it. We had cast member confirmations and a few statements from crew members, but aside from that we didn’t even have a first look into what this movie’s visuals were like. And yet, now sitting at 21 million views on YouTube (more than double Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s at the moment of writing, which is at 10 million), the teaser for Warner Bros’ A Minecraft Movie has at once become the internet’s laughing stock and a magnet for viewers in two days.

While we’re talking numbers, against the teaser’s 21.2 million views at the time of writing, it has amassed approximately 537,000 likes. This is by no means a small amount of positive reception, but it’s important to note this is outnumbered by a dislike count of over 970,000 at the moment, close to double the amount of likes.

In the trailer’s fallout, memes and viral tweets about the movie are running rampant, none of which seem to be saying good things. For what it’s worth, I personally think the piglin species’ designs are adapted very well. This is to the movie’s benefit, as the trailer seems to display the species as playing a pivotal role in the film’s story, though aside from this there isn’t a whole lot left to compliment the movie on. The color grading in the film is in fact as flawed as people keep parroting, and the mobs BESIDES the piglins don’t inspire anything but dread about the final release of the film. The writing (at least, what was shown in this teaser) feels uninspired and corny, but with all these factors in consideration, it’s exactly what you think it’s going to be. It’s A Minecraft Movie. It’s going to sacrifice faithfulness in favor of what Hollywood thinks makes the franchise appealing, and everyone is going to line up to see it anyway regardless of whether they’re a kid, a betrayed fan, or someone who’s neither and just wants to see how bad this thing will really be.

Going back to Sonic for a second, the hedgehog appeared terrifying and unrecognizable in his first trailer as well. After extreme public outcry from fans and moviegoers alike, however, the team brought Tyson Hesse onboard and has since brought us one of the only stable video game movie trilogies out there. I don’t think this is possible in this case, since in Sonic’s case it was just his own design. With A Minecraft Movie, this is a whole visual nightmare that fundamentally doesn’t work. Putting actual humans in a blocky world like Minecraft’s defeats the purpose of that world and is something I don’t feel color grading would even fix. You can’t make THEM blockier, because I’m not sure the world is ready for a realistic Minecraft-skin proportioned Jack Black. You can’t make the world ITSELF entirely realistic, because that would defeat the purpose of the movie being about Minecraft. Something tells me that, despite the what-ifs from countless tweets, making this an animated film outright wouldn’t have helped it either. All we can do is hope Netflix’s animated Minecraft series will fare better.

A Minecraft Movie releases in theaters on April 4th, 2025.