Villagers and Pillagers (film)

Villagers and Pillagers is a 2024 American animated comedy-drama musical action-adventure film produced by Mojang Studios and was released by Warner Bros Picture. It is directed, produced and written by Charlie. S and based on the popular video game, Minecraft. It stars the voices of; Antony Star as the villain, alongside Kyrena Dudley, Matt P Fox, Ed Marques and Kevin Mayberry. Alex Paul was hired to work on the film's songs. The film's story follows a hard-working villager named Dr. Alex who becomes evil after drinking a special potion and ended up starting a war between the Villagers and Pillagers.

Villagers and Pillagers was pitch by Charlie. S as a non-musical film and was more darker than the final version, with a screenplay shortly after the release of the Village and Pillage Update and the failed attempt to make a story about Minecraft in late-2019. However, the director, Matthew. R thought it wasn't working and decided to fix up the film into a musical and remove the idea of the darker tone. It later entered early-development with the working titles of, The Pillagers and The Villagers and the Pillagers. It marked as the first official Minecraft film ever to be released.

Villagers and Pillagers was released for a limited release to theaters on May 19, 2024 before going worldwide a couple of weeks later on June 6, 2024. Upon its release, it was praised for its action, screenplay, voice acting, musical score, cinematograph and themes and was a huge success at the box office, bringing in more than $400 million dollars and received acclaim from critics, audiences and fans of the video game with praise aiming to its screenplay, voice acting, musical score, action, editing, cinematograph, themes and faithful to the source material.

Plot
Set in a small village, a hard-working villager named Dr. Alex who is working on a special potion in which was a healing potion, in a bit of red and purple. After finishing it, he randomly goes up to a villager and instead of asking if he is trying something with him, he straight-up throw it. The villagers sees the flying potion, coming to him and quickly dodges it at the last second, missing it and the potion crash and breaks, making the test a failure. Alex groans and walks back to his lab where he start to work on a different potion, this time way dangerous and deadly. As he working on it, the president of the village comes in and tells him that he have a choice to leave the village or stop working on the test due to the crazy things he did with the potions in the past before, especially the time he ended up breaking one of the house's window and injuring the villager inside, almost causing him to be kick out.

The president leaves and Alex is left there in shock. He thinks of the potion and secretly decided to continue to works on it, but try to be careful not to get caught. Weeks goes by and Alex is finally at last, finishes the potion and drinking it, hoping on what will happened to him. The next day, he bumped head on with a stressed, mean villager and get punched at. His face turns red and fights back, slabbing him with a knife. One of the villagers try to stop him by pulling him away from the scene, but Alex punches him to the ground, knocking him out. In shocked, sadness on what he have done, He runs back to the lab, grabs all of his stuff and goes as far away from the village. But as days passed, he becomes more and more evil and wants to get revenge on the peaceful village.

So, he build a small snow house in the middle of the land, but underground there is a lab where he tests the new potions he makes. One day, after finishing hard on a new purple/blue potion and wants to get a test subject. So in the middle of the night, He walks slowly back to the village and kidnap a farmer who was sleeping at the time. The farmer is scared and Alex throw the potion at him, turning the subject into a new mob, the Pillager. After that, he keep on kidnapping the villagers one by one to make his army for the upcoming war. While preparing, the army build a huge wooden building in the middle of the forest and lives there with the others mob. Weeks later, the pillagers goes to the village and attacks the poor villagers, while burning their house, farms and exploding the iron golem into parts. Alex later kidnap the president who was there the time of the attack. The villagers is dragged into their cell while the president visited Alex, now an evil villain. The president tells him on why he changed ever since the fight and Alex explained, but singing (Cool with Me). He shoots an arrow at him, nearly hitting him into the heart.

Days later, Alex invited the villagers into a battle with the Pillagers and everyone of them dies. The president is up next and beat the first pillager, making everyone in shock. Alex then decided to join in. The president and Alex fights and the villain is sending flying out of the ring and into the window, falling to the ground. The pillagers are now scared and confused on what to do next. The president walks if he owns the place, however it turns out that Alex ended up surviving as he had a half a heart.

The pillagers keep on attacking every village.

Conception
The development of Villagers and Pillagers all started shortly after the release of the Village and Pillage update in early-2019 when Matthew. R was inspired to write a page-treatment for a film on the history of the Pillagers.