Take a moment to look at the photo at the top of this post.

The expression on the faces of this motley crew of colorful characters is the exactly expression that everyone who watches the trailer makes. Disgust, confusion, disbelief. Even those of us who aren’t big Minecraft Players can see that this movie is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

Sometimes all it takes is one trailer to show you how bad a movie is. That’s all it took to change our ratings for the Border areas movie, or the new Crow reboot. Now we have this blindingly awful trailer for a Minecraft movie that no one in the fandom asked for, made by people who apparently never asked themselves “Who is this movie for?” because this movie looks nothing like a real movie Minecraft fans would like to see.

Now, this may, as some have noted, appeal to younger children and teens. Perhaps older people like your humble narrator simply aren’t the target audience. But I’m not that far removed from my inner child, and I believe – as someone who loves things made for children – that I have a relatively good idea of ​​what would work in a Minecraft film. This, I am sorry to report, is not it:

I like Jason Momoa and Jack Black, but actors I like in a movie isn’t enough. I’m not even bothered by Momoa’s bizarre look – his weird wig and pink jacket might be all this trailer has to offer.

But if you’re going the live-action route, it makes a lot more sense to have a group of kids and teens than whatever this is. I know adults play too Minecraftbut this is still a franchise primarily aimed at children. Jumanji had a group of adult protagonists, but it worked because it was actually a group of teenagers playing adults in the video game, and they still acted very much like people their age.

What I can’t understand is why someone would make such an unforced error. An animated Minecraft movie that was actually more like the game (although perhaps more beautiful) with blocky main characters just makes so much more sense than this soulless, effortless horror. I’m astounded.

The only people excited about this trailer are the creators of the Border areas movie that now, to their great relief, have a new contender for worst video game movie of the year. It’s funny, we finally broke the curse of the video game adaptation with a bunch of different great movies and TV shows from the Super Mario Bros movie to The Last of Us, Arcane And Rainfall. But it seems the curse is only largely broken.

I’m afraid we’re going to need more than just Miracle Max to fix this.