In early September, Warner Bros. released a teaser for A Minecraft moviethe studio’s new film based on Mojang’s nearly 15-year-old sandbox game. Directed by Napoleon dynamite director Jared Hess, was, frankly, very ridiculous. Jack Black was Stephen; Jason Momoa was sporting perhaps the worst hairstyle he has ever had. Everyone involved, even the animated creatures, seemed to think they were in a different movie.
But that wasn’t what the trolls latched onto. Instead, they looked at the fact that a black woman…Orange is the new blackDanielle Brooks, she was in the Overworld.
like the trailer accumulated aversionsRight-wing influencers like Elijah Schaffer and Nick Fuentes posted Brooks’ image alongside disparaging comments and made references to “forced diversity” and “woke” Hollywood. It was Gamergate 2.0, a reimagining of the decade-long harassment campaign aimed at protesting diversity, equity and inclusion, but aimed at a children’s movie, rather than a video game.
According to Wendy Via, co-founder and executive director of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which just launched published a report Looking at the far-right racist comments about the trailer, the answer comes from a new, and also quite old, manual. “Large-scale campaigns specifically against trailers are a relatively new phenomenon, but trying to frame ‘woke’ as an invisible enemy infiltrating the entertainment industry is not,” Via says.
Via notes that in spring 2023, the far-right account X End Wokeness made a similar noise about a “Protect Trans Kids” flag that briefly appeared in the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The goal of these campaigns is to target “spaces where young white men are influenced,” such as sci-fi movies and video games, which appeal to younger audiences, Via adds. “Providing racist and homophobic commentary on popular franchises through large social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube serves as an effective means of propaganda and recruiting youth for hate movements.”
Take, for example, The acolyte. Earlier this year, the Disney+ show was the target of backlash from fans, while star Amandla Stenberg was under Racist comments online. So was Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the most recent Star Wars film trilogy. The minimization of his role in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalkerperhaps it further emboldened the detractors of diversity.
Reception of The acolyte It seemed, almost, a solidification. Fan unrest in the Star Wars universe is a cousin, if not direct descendant, of Gamergate, and since former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon harnessed the energy of that movement and used it to fuel the then flourishing so-called extreme right. , influencers have used similar tactics to convince aggrieved men that their games, their shows and movies, and their country are somehow being taken away from them.
For when the minecraft movie The trailer was released, the script was already set. The influencers simply had to choose which lines to say.
