- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Teenagers are probably going to be a bit too old to be interested, but I would have said the same thing about the Mario movie too. Even those who grew up with these games are likely not going to want to sit through a generic kids' movie version. Like I said, the audience is kids and fanboys, and by fanboys I mean middle-aged consoomers like Bob.I dunno. I have one Minecraft fan in my life, a 15 year old who should be squarely in the demographic (he literally grew up on this game), but who has already scornfully described even the teaser trailer as "complete shit." He hates Jack Black like poison, doesn't think the jokes so far are funny, and wants to know why it isn't just in the Minecraft world, which is what he wants to see.
I'm not saying Bob is right -- Bob is so broken he can't lay aside his pighead biases even for children's movies -- but I don't think this thing's success is assured. The bar for nostalgia bait/kidflicks is really low, so I won't be shocked if it is a hit, but I wouldn't make any bets.
But that does raise one point of difference between them: the plot. Even if it's barebones, the Mario games have a very simple plot structure that the movie could easily copy and paste: Bowser's up to some kind of bad guy shenanigans and it's up to Mario to beat him. As a sandbox game, Minecraft has effectively zero plot and no real goals set out for the player; sure, you can go kill the dragon and get the pseudo-philosophical wall of text "ending," but you can also ignore that entirely without consequence. How do you adapt a game with no story? I guess just have Jack Black show up and be Jack Black for an hour and a half.
It might not crest a billion like Mario did, but as you said, the bar is low enough that I can see it being successful. It probably would have been a lot more successful if they hadn't done this bizarre live-action/CGI hybrid abomination, but what do I know?