"I just love 'em, man," director Jared Hess replied when asked why the film chose piglins as the main antagonists of "A Minecraft Movie" instead of something more obvious. In-game, piglins only attack in retaliation, but the movie positions them as Lord of the Rings-style orcs -- a relentless horde of angry halfwits.
"You have an infinite number of biomes to choose from, but a finite amount of time to make a film," Hess said at a recent press event, "and you've got so many amazing mobs. Like the creepers, the piglins are so iconic. The Ender Dragon may have been an obvious choice, but I just love me some piglin barbarians that dabble in cannibalism and are obsessed with gold. They've got a lot of interesting traits that make for good villains, and they just live in such a cool spot -- the Nether is pretty, pretty dope."
"A Minecraft Movie," starring Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Eugene Hansen sees regular people and Jack Black's Steve spirited away to the Minecraft world. The MacGuffin that gets them there is coveted by the piglin leader, an angry old pig who murders pig children for smiling, turning them into a pork steak with a poke of her knife. The piglin army houses everything from friendly little pigs in bad company to hulking brutes looking to hurt "roundlings," as they call the humans.
"It gave us a much broader spectrum of bad guys for our heroes," creative director Torfi Frans Ólafsson added. "We felt fighting the Ender Dragon would almost be jumping the shark, in a way."
The Minecraft movie is plenty surreal without a huge magical dragon. At one point, Jack Black rides Jason Momoa's character through the sky, holding his hair like a rein and piloting him like a muscular, human-shaped Pegasus. While filming the scene, Black remained on Momoa's back between takes to belt out a powerful rendition of NeverEnding Story.
There's a Return to Oz vibe to the whole thing. On one hand, the blocky world, made up of physical sets, is bright and colorful. On the other hand, zombies all dress like Jack Black's Steve (accurate to the video game, but unsettling in the movie), and melt in the sun in gory detail; the blocky, uncanny "villager" mobs, with their giant CGI heads and human bodies, are complete horror shows; and the main bad guy, as mentioned, isn't afraid of murdering kids. It could be Return to Oz's Wheelies in producing a whole new generation of childhood recurring nightmares -- an accidental byproduct of the visual style.
"The fun thing about bringing the villagers to life is we had practical performers in suits, so we only did CG for the heads, for the expressions," Hess explained. "So inevitably, you're getting this kind of restricted gait when they walk [which could add to that sense of unease]. But it was so much fun, the practical side of shooting this."
If they're not creepy enough just walking around, wait until you see Jennifer Coolidge enter a romantic fling with a Minecraft villager.
Although she never enters Minecraft's world, every scene with Coolidge is a complete show-stealer. The White Lotus actor brings unhinged energy to every role, and she dials it right up for Minecraft.
"She definitely had lines in a script, but she was given permission to fire freely," Ólafsson said. "It got wild very quickly, and the entire set were laughing their asses off."
Every actor in the movie comes across as if they're having a blast filming. There's an excited energy from the cast, who could have easily decided to phone in their performances, but instead lean right into the weird.
You might know Jason Momoa as Aquaman or a musclebound Dothraki, but Minecraft sees him completely out of his depth and more than a little pathetic.
"When Jason came on board as an actor and producer, we knew we wanted him to do something different," Hess explained. "He goes into this world a total fish out of water, so you get to see him get knocked around by piglins, creepers, and zombies. He's got a real iconic scream."
You can hear it for yourself when "A Minecraft Movie" launches on April 4.