The first trailer for the upcoming Minecraft film, titled A Minecraft Movie, arrived last week, giving us a first look at Jason Momoa in a wig chewing lots of scenery. The reactions have been quite mixed—it truly is a baffling creation, and you can't really tell if this movie is going to be a light entertainment classic or a Borderlands-scale disaster.
One man watching on from the sidelines with amusement and interest is Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft. Notch first released Minecraft in 2009, and oversaw its early years of development before, in 2014, selling the game and Mojang Studios to Microsoft in a deal worth $2.5 billion.
"Ok I'm in," says Notch of the trailer. "Wow this is a weird feeling." The programmer went on to call it "pretty surreal" seeing his old project becoming a Hollywood movie, and thinks it's "very cool they got Jack Black."
As for the trailer itself: "For a movie about a game with literally zero plot, it looks surprisingly fun," says Notch. "I laughed... I think twice. Yes, the sheep got me." One user opines that it just looks like an advert for the game starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa. "Well duh," replies Notch.
"I'm all for the spectacle" says Notch, discussing his feelings on Minecraft becoming a movie. "I probably would've even agreed to Uwe Boll making it. I don't have the same relationship to the game as the players do, for me it's more about seeing new weird takes on ideas that sometimes were just spur-of-the-moment things (like the creeper!)"
Speaking of the creeper, the furry style of it in the movie has not gone down well with some. But Notch says he's "Sort of used to it because of the plushies, so it works. In my original headcanon, they have more like a pile-of-leaf-like texture. Rustling, you know. But like I said, the plushies kinda rewired my brain, so furry's fine."
Reactions to the trailer have not been universally positive, shall we say, and Minecraft fan Kieran tells Notch "it looks absolutely horrible and nothing like the game you created." Notch says "that's kinda why I'm into it. But I get it's probably different for people who played the game instead of making it."
There are a few complaints about how the trailer and Jack Black represent Steve. "That just makes it funnier to me," says Notch, "but I have a different perspective than the people who actually played Minecraft instead of just worked on it." Oddly enough, someone asks if Jack Black was any kind of inspiration for Steve: "No, it was mostly inspired by a Quake 1 skin," says Notch. "No idea why."
The internet being the internet, soon enough someone stomps in to decry the characters as some "serious woke bullshit." Notch says he doesn't care what direction new characters go in: "Save that for when they're pushing it on existing lore. Who cares what the makeup is in a new story." Elsewhere he adds "I'm hoping for a lot of Jack Black over-acting. The plot can be whatever really, since I never really got to have that personal experience of playing the game."
Finally, Joey asks the question all Minecrafters want answered: "Okay, but do you think Herobrine's gonna show up in the post credits scene to kick off the MCU??"
"Haha," says Notch, "oh wow." Someone else speculates in the replies that the ultimate Easter egg would be a Notch cameo as Herobrine. Alas: "no guest appearance," says the man himself.
"Other than it being based on work I did ten years ago, I'm not connected to [the film] in any way," says Notch. "And, to me personally, that's fun, in a sort of trippy nostalgia way. Also I was expecting way worse."
Words to live by. Notch is currently working on a game called Levers and Chests, which doesn't have a release date. "I'll try to get something out as it's fun (or at least interesting) to play," says Notch. The Minecraft movie is due to release on 4 April, 2025.
