If Warner Bros wanted to inspire confidence in the Minecraft movie, then its first clip that looks more like a Super Bowl ad wasn't the way to go

The first clip for A Minecraft Movie is here, and much like the first trailer it has me questioning what they were thinking with the lighting.

Look, I get it, lighting a movie is hard, particularly when you're trying to make that lighting feel real. It gets even harder when you put CGI or greenscreens in the mix, as you need to make sure the real elements, like sets or people, look right when mixed in with the unreal. Unfortunately for the Minecraft movie, it seems like something went wrong, as the lighting in the first trailer is so horrifically bright and unnatural it looks more like an expensive ad than an actual film. And yesterday, the first clip from the film was shared, and I'd say that seeing the film as it's meant to be without all the trailer music and cuts, that feeling is even worse.

Minecraft Live 2024

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You can check out the clip above, which aired during this year's Minecraft Live stream, which features Jason Momoa, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, and Steve himself, Jack Black. The clip shows off the fundamentals of Minecraft, i.e. using a crafting table, with Black forming a sword that very much does not look like actual metal, no matter what the sound effects might be trying to tell you, with Momoa's character than attempting to look cool by also making a sword, but instead making two buckets. That's not really how it works, but I also simply don't care because it's a movie and movies have to make the audience laugh sometimes (even if this didn't make me laugh).

The whole thing has this air of being a Super Bowl commercial, you know the ones, that are lit brighter than the sun with faces more famous than you'd expect for something like Junior Mints, except this is a movie with a presumably nine figure budget, which doesn't bode well. Oh well! You can see for yourself how it is when it releases April 4, next year.