By Nell Geraets
Few things have managed to maintain as strong a chokehold on today’s kids, tweens and teens (and, let’s face it, a good number of adults) as Minecraft.
Since 2009, gamers have spent countless hours building, exploring, and surviving in this endless sandbox world – a realm where narrative takes a back seat and building blocks reign supreme. As of October 2023, more than 300 million copies had been sold globally, making it the best-selling video game in the world.
The trailer for A Minecraft Movie has fans of the video game in raptures. Credit: Warner Bros.
Now, with the release of the A Minecraft Movie trailer, passion around the game is levelling up even further.
Following mixed reactions to the teaser in September, the trailer seems to have brought fans back on side. It sees four misfits, including one played by Jason Momoa, who are pulled through a mysterious portal into the “Overworld”, a strange, cubic landscape. They eventually join forces with an expert crafter named Steve (Jack Black) to battle blocky zombies and find their way home.
Since the trailer dropped on Wednesday, Reddit and other social platforms have been aglow with discussion of the various “Easter eggs” (or “Easter blocks”?) as well as speculation over whether its storyline is inspired by a meme. It’s difficult to imagine this record-breaking game becoming more popular than it already is. But if the fervent reaction to these four elements of the trailer is any indication, it already has.
A Minecraft Movie is scheduled to be released in 2025.Credit: Warner Bros/Mojang
The children yearn for the mines
It only took one line to hook fans.
“I am Steve. As a child, I yearned for the mines,” Black narrates at the beginning of the trailer, as a young boy with a pickaxe stares longingly at the entrance of a mine.
Those in the know immediately recognised this as a reference to a viral tweet from 2022, which jokingly stated that “Minecraft proves that abolishing child labour was a mistake. The children yearn for the mines.”
The phrase, which satirises the debate in some US states over whether to repeal child labour laws, has since become a go-to meme within the Minecraft community. Its inclusion in the trailer had fans in hysterics, as many applauded the creators for doing their homework.
A new portal
True Minecrafters know their portals, as well as how to build or activate them. In the game world, there are two main types: Nether portals and the End Portal. They each have distinct colours, Nether being purple and End portals being a bluish-green.
However, the movie trailer seems to introduce an entirely new type, one that is bright blue and transports people into the Minecraft world. This intrigued some gamers so much that one actually studied the words on it, which seemingly transcribed to “Iron Gold Stone Gate Head Home”. Many on Reddit believe this is some kind of recipe for creating a portal to the blocky world.
Cooked chooks
If Minecraft had a mission statement, it would probably be “if you can imagine it, you can build it”. This has resulted in all kinds of incredible and bizarre in-game creations, such as giant ships in bottles, a blocky Acropolis, and even a decked-out IKEA.
The trailer winks at this creativity in one particular sequence, which shows a crude roasting device made with two pistons, blocks and some lava. Once the pistons move, the lava is released onto a small chicken below, quickly transforming it into a perfectly cooked chook.
Ender pearls, levers and night-time
Once the general storyline is established, the trailer becomes a series of references aimed to send gamers into raptures. This includes an “ender pearl”, an item that’s used to teleport, which Mamoa’s character accidentally uses for just a few metres with the same room, causing it to disappear forever. This scene made many Minecrafters wince given how difficult it is to obtain the item. They’re also incredibly important since they help players craft the “eye of ender”, which is needed to complete the game.
Another scene shows Black’s character pulling a wooden lever, which reminded hard-core fans of when the game’s creator, Markus Persson (known as “Notch”), pulled a lever to launch the game at Minecon 1.0 in 2011.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a Minecraft movie without some reference to night-time, the period of the game when evil creatures hunt you down. The sandbox game is known for its unique 20-tick day and night cycles (one full day in the game lasts about 20 minutes). This is incredibly fast compared to other games, something the movie’s creators poke fun at by having one of the characters (played by Danielle Brooks) question why it became dark so suddenly.
By that point, all the fans needed to see were the iconic block zombies, skeletons and creepers, and it was game over.
A Minecraft Movie lands in cinemas on April 3, 2025.
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