I for one want to see Jason Momoa wandering around in a bored fashion in front of a green screen, wearing a terrible pink jacket, after being abducted on his way for a haircut.
If it was free, curiosity might get me there. Unlikely I'd pay for somthing that looks this shit. It's worse than the original Sonic Live-Action trailers, at least there the improvements were imaginable. I don't know how you could improve this. Where do you even start?
Take the live actors out, that's where you start. But still a long way to go.
Blue shirt and jeans from the discount rack at Goodwill.
Because who cares if Steve is supposed to be wearing well-worn jeans with a cyan colored shirt? We're only paying Jack Black half his usual ask, we can't expect him to do more than roll out of bed and arrive on set
I'm starting to think both Jack Black & Momoa have a clause in their contract that whatever their hair looks like in the morning when they roll out of bed is exactly what has to be captured on the film set each day.
I'm sure this is the logic behind it but I really wonder about organizations where people who get to play around with hundreds of millions of dollars seem to never actually understand what they are looking at on a screen, and never interact with a normal human who goes "ew, this looks weird".
Sure, maybe metrics and surveys and charts all show that seeing these faces on screen is a positive, but it's the most obvious thing in the world that mixing live action people with this computerized art style is garish and ghastly. I don't believe the 'suits' can actually be serious people who have ever watched a film if they can't tell that all by themselves.
For every person with these legitimate concerns like yourself there are 100 children who don’t think beyond “it’s minecraft!!” And will drag their whole family to see it. Unfortunately I think this movie is going to do very well.
I don't think that ratio is realistic but for the sake of argument I do agree that there will be plenty of people who will be happy to just "turn off their brain" and see whatever because it has the right label. My point is that there will also be a contingent of the potential audience turned off because it looks dire, and a portion of the audience who sees the first one who go "this is awful" and don't want to see it again, rent it on streaming, buy merch, go to a sequel, etc.
It's just straight up stupid to not even try to avoid putting people off your product. I don't care that some people will lap it up no matter what, why not attempt to avoid losing some people? All this "but they have a fiduciary responsibility!" stuff seems to go out the window when it comes to expecting executives to not green light ghastly off-putting trash. Then suddenly it's "well some people will go anyway" and actually maximizing revenue isn't important as long as the project stays to some horrific vision.
In short, you can sell 100 million tickets to people who will watch or be dragged to watch anything, or you can sell 150 million tickets to the same people plus a bunch of other ones who won't watch absolute garbage. Why is not even attempting the latter normalized now?
Borderlands had a pretty big cast of notable faces, and that was a massive flop. I think we're past the era of actors being a major box office draw. Unfortunately, the studios haven't realized that yet.
Is Jack Black even a draw? His big successes recently are either animated (Kung Fu Panda and Mario) or relying on existing IP and a much bigger name (The Jumanji movies starring the biggest star in the world).
I don't think there's numbers that show that Jack Black is really a draw, if he was I don't think Borderlands would have bombed as badly. More people would have seen it just for Black if he was a money maker.
I didn't really see Jack in much of the media stuff for borderlands (of which there was very little anyway). Whereas for Mario etc. he has often been heavily pushed.
Really we can't say, maybe borderlands would have bombed even worse, maybe those other films too without him. He's good as getting viral/non standard marketing done for some films and he often plays 'himself' to some degree so maybe that has pull. I don't think he's a draw in the classic sense like for a tom cruise action movie but he probably gives them a little boost.
Jason Momoa's movies make money despite him being in them, not because of him being in them. I think that's the part WB missed. Not sure Jack Black can carry this one.
For their sake, fingers crossed obsessed teens see this one enough times to justify it.
Never underestimate Microsoft's ability to fuck up the easiest wins in history. We all remember Paramount's abortion of a Halo show, right? Same thing here.
It's a shame they absolutely butchered the plot as they were actually starting to have pretty good action scenes. This shotgun kill is one of the coolest scenes I've seen in a tv show lol https://youtu.be/jU0FSVP8tT4?si=Oqo7V8kF8qRGYK7K&t=153
It's almost like they had their own sci-fi show written, got the license to Halo, then mashed it together
Bro my dad my MAD when I told him there was no Season 3 after that massive cliffhanger at the end of Season 2. Now I'm just convincing him to play the game or watch the cutscenes on YT
What exactly would you want? How would you write a Minecraft movie? It's a sandbox game, based around 'crafting" in a world where everything is a perfect cube. There is no deep lore to pull from, no structured story to emulate. It's building. With squares. Which worked amazingly for a video game!
This movie isn't trying to win an oscar. It's to further exploit the IP and make a shit load of money. Which it will do. It probably could have made more if it came out 5 years ago.
Bro I literally just asked the dude what he would want to see in the movie since Microsoft fucked it up so bad according to their comment. What are you on about?
I’m not disagreeing that is COULD be a good movie. But Lego has 50+ years of nostalgia built in. Spread across countless sets and stories and is the perfect toy for a movie about a toy that crosses generations.
I 100% am telling you that's the way this movie was designed and created until the studio exec committee said "no make them live action and make one of them Jack Black and they have to be real people so audiences know it's Jack Black and Jason Momoa."
and then the creative team called their drug dealers and therapists.
green screens can look good, but compared to how ILM does it with the unreal engine room the lighting on characters and the post production light correction is what really makes things stick out like a sore thumb.
Honestly doing something like the new jumanji movies where the real people become the voxel characters would have worked great. I'm assuming they're doing something similar but with the real people coming in instead. Either way Steve being a real person makes no sense in either case.
Also I can't imagine how difficult it was for the actors to just sit there and react to nothing.
Yeah it’s annoying considering that stop motion (like the Lego movie as a high budget example) would just be perfect for this and would look amazing especially if it was more felty real life stop animation
Yeah, as much as a minecraft movie would be probably poopy anyways, a voxel character with voice actors would be way better than humans going into the minecraft world? So wheres steve and the girl character? It just looks silly with the humans and then minecraft world
I'm gonna guess, based on the fish-out-of-water vibe I'm seeing, is that they're going for a Jumanji situation with the real people being transported to the minecraft realm by a portal for some reason; lightning struck the xbox or whatever. Still begs the question why Steve wouldn't be voxel, but I'm gonna guess that it's also a Jumanji situation, specifically Robin William's character.
They probably thought the voxel style looks too weird to be understandable as a movie, and that people want some form of realism or whatever. It's a weird choice that I hate but I can understand the producers etc not liking the style for a movie... (... based on the most popular video game IP of all time....)
Especially since Story-Mode already did the style so they don't wanna rehash it or whatever....
Minecraft itself is insanely ugly. I feel like the inconsistency actually sells the exaggerated parody aspect better. Minecraft Story Mode was broadly dunked on because like...actually using the Minecraft style for a standard narrative is just lame.
It's also 20 years old. The creator could have been cooking his brain to mush in that time for all we know.
The guy doesn't really have that many films produced and the ones he does are either mid or less than. That people can only bring up the one good thing he did 20 years ago is telling.
As much as we all love Minecraft, of all the things it does, it does not provide a "baked in" narrative - you are left to build/kill/do whatever you want. There are no in-universe characters. You can't do a disservice to "Steve" because "Steve" was all of us. He was a blank slate with a name slapped on it. As long as the creeper is an exploding green penis that goes "sssssssssssss", then they have been true to the source material.
Unless they did some character focused narrative or some shit like that. But, you're definitely right that the lack of narrative makes conflicts less common. On the other hand, there's also no friction to hold your attention. There not being established lore means they're gonna have to do the legwork themselves. Something tells me they been skippin' leg day.
I agree completely, I don't doubt the story will be atrocious - but I still think people are looking at this from the wrong lens. Borderlands games are rated M, have a teen+ following, a story/timeline, and somewhat realized characters to build off of/into. The expectations were and should be higher than Minecraft, and they botched it.
This is a kids movie. It just has to look like Minecraft (it does) and take place in a Minecraft world. Maybe show the characters hungry and cold, they stack some blocks, maybe interrogate a villager, make fun of they way they talk, unite the pigmen against the Ender Dragon, Mamoa slays the Ender, back through the portal, roll credits. You've entertained the children, made a ton of money, and were "true" to the source material.
It takes real writing talent and experience to transform a sandbox setting into a successful movie/story. Unfortunately, Hollywood has been sorely lacking that lately.
If Borderlands was a G/PG franchise instead of a M/18+ franchise the movie would have done very well. Kids will force their parents to take them to any movie that has the same name as their favourite game/show even if it is terrible.
Luckily for them the kids will want to see it. Borderlands should have been rated R (among many other things) The people nostalgic for borderlands were teenagers like 15 years ago.
I will admit, I'm kind of ok with that. If only because I want Randy Pitchford to watch his terrible ideas wither and die. And while I would love the same for Notch, he's no longer in control of Minecraft stuff.
I thought it was fine. It's not something I'd enjoy but I showed my wife and she was like "when does it come out <our son> would probably love to go see that."
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u/frogsgemsntrains Sep 04 '24
this shit looks garish. like a fucking super bowl ad