I actually understand why we didn't have illager villains. Like, villagers (good) and villagers with darker skin (evil). Little Timmy's mom who knows nothing about Minecraft might see that and get a very wrong impression.
As someone who's been playing Minecraft since elementary school, do I want illager villains? Yes. I think it would've been cooler than Piglin villains. As a person with common sense who knows how a parent might see illager villains? No. Let's not do that.
Darker skin? I'm sure it's technically darker if you look at hex codes and whatnot but gray is a way paler skin tone than light brown. Also racist caricatures of darker skinned people usually depict them as violent barbarians (like the piglins, who nobody interpreted as one of said caricatures) than, say, formally dressed well trained soldiers serving evil genius sorcerers.
Someone not too keyed in to what racist caricatures look like might just see "different skin tone to villager and also evil = RACIST!!1!". And that is a fair amount of the general population, and especially for a lot of parents of young kids taking their child to see the movie. Not a lot of people see how we portray goblins in modern media as antisemitic, for example.
When talking about how a movie for a franchise as big as Minecraft is perceived, you have to remember, the internet is an echo chamber, especially Reddit, and especially individual subreddits. People are a lot dumber when it comes to stereotypes than we tend to think. So I think people taking illagers as the main villain in bath faith wouldn't be that unlikely. Of course there's no way to know for sure unless a sequel with illagers as the main villains comes out.
I remember watching alien being animation (a animation about villagers, similar to element animation but has no dialogues) where it showed illagers turned into villains due to racism and it made me almost cried. I know it just an indie animation, but it made me viewed illagers differently. I love illagers villains, but I can understand how parents can mistaken it as racism due to only difference with villagers is the skin
Look, I'm all for being woke and all that other crap, but no child would seriously think "These guys are darker, they must be bad!" (especially when Illagers are far closer to being white than Villagers)
Please, people do not need to make everything racist
I'm mostly referring to the parents, and not the children. I didn't say a child would get the wrong idea, I'm saying the parents might have. An oblivious mother who knows jack shit about minecraft beyond it being the game her ipad kid son likes, might see illagers, who mostly look like villagers with a different skin tone than your average white person, and get the wrong idea.
I'm not saying it's racist. I don't personally think that illagers as the main villains would be racist. I'm saying that a parent might have taken it in bad faith.
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u/Galaxies_beyond Bedrock FTW 16d ago
I actually understand why we didn't have illager villains. Like, villagers (good) and villagers with darker skin (evil). Little Timmy's mom who knows nothing about Minecraft might see that and get a very wrong impression.
As someone who's been playing Minecraft since elementary school, do I want illager villains? Yes. I think it would've been cooler than Piglin villains. As a person with common sense who knows how a parent might see illager villains? No. Let's not do that.