Jared Hess’ new film “A Minecraft Movie” is an odd duck. It’s based on “Minecraft,” the single best-selling video game of all time (and one can surmise why a film studio would want to adapt such a valuable I.P.), but the game is an open-ended sandbox that allows players to mine and craft at their own pace. There are no quests or levels or mythology to the game, and there’s no plot to follow. Making a movie out of “Minecraft” seemed like a foolhardy affair, and the idea was roundly mocked online prior to the film’s release. Hess’ only recourse in adapting the material was to put real people into the “Minecraft” universe and make his movie into a slapstick comedy. It was enough to earn “A Minecraft Movie” $163 million in its opening weekend.
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The look of “A Minecraft Movie” is also a little odd. “Minecraft” was made to look deliberately low-fi, with players taking control of blocky, unrealistic characters, and pushing through a world that is, likewise, made of cubes. It was like a 3D rendering of an old 8-Bit NES game. For “A Minecraft Movie,” the fantasy Overworld is indeed as cubic and blocky as the game, but now possessed of more realistic textured. The natives of the Overworld have outsize block heads, but also skin, teeth, lips, and eyeballs. The animals in the Overworld have a square, symmetrical look, but are also disconcertingly biological.
It seems that there was an earlier version of the film — when it was still being developed in 2015 — that skewed a little more in a naturalistic direction. There was a time when Rob McElhenney was leading the project, and he cast Steve Carell in a notable role. He also commissioned some artwork for the film that made the “Minecraft” world look slightly less blocky (but still sporting enough right angles to be recognizable). Some of the art from that project were leaked on Twitter/X by the @MCMovieUpdates account. They look pretty cool.
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Endermen looked more like Slender Man
One of the more impressive 2015 designs was an Enderman with eerie human body shapes. The Endermen in the original “Minecraft” game were tall, lanky, all-black monsters with glowing purple eyes and a stiff gait. In Hess’ final movie, an Enderman is equally stiff, and block-like, only slightly more “rounded” than in the game. Some of the early art work, credited to Will Groebe, shows the Enderman lurking in the woods like, well, Slender Man. Disturbingly, its hands and forearms aren’t blocky in the least, but stretched out versions of realistic human arms. It seems that a physical, life-size Enderman prop was also built, and the blue-eyed monster looks truly terrifying. Could you imagine one of those coming at you in a dark alleyway?
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Another physical prop was a “Minecraft” kitten. Like the animals in Hess’ film, the kitten still had square features and eyes, but also more natural-growing fur and whiskers. McElhenney’s design ethos seemed to be to make the “Minecraft” world as real as possible. Indeed, some of the artwork on Twitter/X shows a vast cave, and the cubic shapes seem to look more like a natural geological phenomenon than in Hess’ movie. One might think of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, which is made of naturally occurring hexagonal stone growths.
Artist Vance Kovacs also worked on the 2015 version of “A Minecraft Movie,” and he actually designed an Ender Dragon, a creature not seen in the final film. The Ender Dragon was also vaguely cubic, but mostly because it was made of shale and minerals. Kovacs posted his designs for the Ender Dragon on his Cara account. Those same designs show human-shaped characters standing alongside a blocky version of Steve as he appears in the games. In Hess’ film, Steve was played by Jack Black in live-action, so it seems there was a large conceptual shift during development as well.
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The final film was still a hit, though. It made $163 million in its opening weekend.