A Minecraft Film’s Dreamlike World Isn’t Just Computer-Generated

If you’ve seen the trailers for A Minecraft Movie, you might be wondering exactly what filming was like. After all, the massive cubic world looks too good to be true live-action. However, for the most part, that’s exactly what it is.

Speaking to GameSpot, director Jared Hess revealed that they actually built the massive sets that make up the Overworld. That made it so the actors weren’t just acting against green screens.

“We built life-size Minecraft forests,” he said. “The Minecraft village was all built, practically. These were ginormous sets.” While some digital set extensions were used to build out the backgrounds, the majority of the world the cast worked in was fully visualized.

“We built the mines. We built the Woodland Mansion,” he continued. “So all of those sets were practical. I mean, that that was a huge part. And one of the biggest undertakings of the whole film was like, how do we bring this world to life? And again, we had an amazing production designer [Grant Major].”

It’s not just the sets that were practical, though. “Nobody was playing against the tennis ball,” movie producer and Minecraft senior director Torfi Frans Olafsson revealed. “All the villagers were people in villager costumes.” He jokingly added, ” We just did head replacements because it was illegal to do the DNA modifications required.”

Additionally, the piglins were performed by stunt people. And what of Dennis, Steve’s trusty wolf sidekick? He was actually a large puppet used on set.

All of this was pulled together by VFX supervisor Dan Lemon, who previously worked on movies like The Batman, Disney’s live-action Jungle Book, the last the Planet of the Apes films, and Avatar. And according to Olafsson, that experience was invaluable.

“He has a lot of experience on things like humans and creatures [on] sets and having them interact in a realistic way,” the producer explained.

The end result is a lush world, filled with colors, strangely familiar cubic landscapes, and hordes of creatures and villagers that bring the world to life for the human characters adventuring their way across the Overworld.

While it would have been easy to rely on an entirely CGI environment for a movie like this, it’s better for not having gone in that direction. We’ve seen the live-action Disney films and the uncanny valley look they can bring to the forefront. Thankfully, the Overworld feels lived in–and that’s because it was.

A Minecraft Movie arrives in theaters on Friday. GameSpot’s review of the film gave it a 7, noting, “A Minecraft Movie is exactly what you think it is based on its trailers. It’s a big, cartoony live-action movie, filled with silly jokes, Minecraft references, and an oddly surreal Minecraft world, complete with the game’s various creatures and our human heroes.”