The trailer for the Minecraft movie adaptation starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black released a few days ago to a divided reception.
On the one hand, the hundreds of millions of Minecraft fans out there are happy to see the game come to the big screen. On the other, some of it looks weird, as in original Sonic The Hedgehog trailer and Detective Pikachu‘s Mr. Mime weird. You need not worry, though, as 3D animator Alumio seemingly pulled three all-nighters to deliver a shot by shot animated remake of the trailer, and it looks just absolutely stunning.
Adapting a video game to the big screen, especially one so heavily stylized, can be no easy task. The most successful example from recent times is the Mario movie. It just took the safest-possible route of using a Mario model that could easily have been in Super Mario Odyssey, and put him in a world heavily inspired by the game’s levels. It made over a billion coins in real money.
A similar, though not video game-related, adaptation was The Lego Movie. Filmmakers Lord and Miller decided to go with just animating actual Lego models instead of using weird make-up to make Chris Pratt look like a Lego figure, and the result was an astounding success.
Meanwhile, the Minecraft looks like (a very heavily shaded version of) Minecraft, sure, but the studio or director Jared Hess seemingly just kidnapped the most primordial version of Jack Black from his bed and put him in front of a green screen. The result is a trailer that looks just plain baffling in some parts, decent in others, but that never escapes feeling like a product that’s just using the star power of a few well-liked folk to sell more tickets.
The pink sheep we see in the original trailer was likely the non-star related shot that the people behind the movie would become really popular, but I can’t even conceive in my mind the idea of a person who liked that. Alumio’s version, however, is very cute.
It’s simple, but there’s a complete lack of grotesqueness that I can’t help but to enjoy.
It’s probably also interesting to note that, a mere six hours after the release of his version of the trailer, Alumio’s version had already garnered more likes on Twitter than the official one.
I don’t want to overwork Alumio, so this is not a challenge, but I’d love to see his remake of the whole movie – should it fail only because of its wacky looks. The official version of the Minecraft movie opens on April 4, 2025.
Published: Sep 9, 2024 03:00 pm