There’s no way around it: “A Minecraft Movie” is absolutely ridiculous. Numerous packed rows of teenage boys erupted from their seats in feverish applause and rowdy whoops as Steve, the usually silent playable character from Minecraft, played by Jack Black, yelled “chicken jockey!” on the big screen. Even typing that sentence makes me feel slightly insane. What went wrong? What went … right? Many of these existential questions plagued me as I walked out of seeing “A Minecraft Movie” with my friends. There were no answers.
You may have guessed it, but “A Minecraft Movie” isn’t great. In fact, it’s bad. The CGI animation is no less than terrifying. The Macguffins plot armor are abundant while the dialogue is crude at best, brimming with cringe-worthy lines. For example, one of the characters says “unalive”, an internet term meaning “kill” originally made to get around TikTok language bans. Guys, we can say “kill.” It’s a movie.
The plot is nonexistent and worn out at the same time. Steve loses a powerful orb that allows him to go to the Overworld/Minecraft. When captured by an evil piglin wizard Malgosha (Rachel House), he hides the orb, which is later picked up by Garrett (Jason Momoa), a struggling game shop owner and past gamer champion. When Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a blossoming artist and his sister Natalie (Emma Myers) move to town, they discover the orb and enter the Overworld with Garrett and their landlord Dawn (Danielle B r o o k s ) . Unfortunately for them, the orb is recaptured by Malgosha, and they have to embark on a quest to the Nether to reclaim it. Hijinks ensue. Also, Jennifer Coolidge goes on a date with a villager. What the hell, sure.
My biggest problem with the plot isn’t necessarily that it’s overdone; okay, it’s a kids movie. Whatever. However, the quest for the orb literally erases the female characters for nearly half of the movie, as the two main women are left behind with some dumb excuse while the boys mess around, fighting mobs, mining for diamonds and singing annoyingly catchy songs about cooking chickens with lava. It’s incredibly blatant and just plain lazy. Hollywood writers make women interesting and not one-dimensional challenge: failed!
I promise I do know how to enjoy things. The easter eggs are kitschy and glaring, but albeit pretty fun. As someone who grew up playing Minecraft and watching many gaming YouTubers, I did sit up in my seat when LDShadowlady made a cameo. Sue me for falling for the big movie franchise nostalgia bait!
Still, these attempts at dangling keys in front of my face didn’t distract me from how empty the movie felt. Every minute it became more apparent that this was a hollow, Hollywood CGI slopfest with little love or care placed into it. It saddens me; Minecraft is honestly a beautiful game with endless creative options and methods of forming digital friendships.
So, “A Minecraft Movie” is bad. This has been established in detail. But what I enjoyed in my theatergoing experience wasn’t the movie itself. For that matter, I didn’t expect it to be the movie, but rather, the community built around it. For any internet user, this comes as no surprise: the pure audacity and distastefulness of this movie have gone insanely viral, especially with the release of the trailers in the past few weeks. Lines of dialogue became memes, the McDonald’s Minecraft meal became coveted (á la Grimace shake or Travis Scott meal, for those brainrot-educated), and the excitement to see this movie only grew louder and louder.
The impact was tangible. The Highland Mann Theatre was packed to the brim, rare for a 9:45 pm showing, according to my roommate who works there. The energy was electric and people were into it: cheering when characters succeeded, gasping at melodramatic moments and, of course, going insane when any internet-popular line was uttered. It was impossible not to laugh and smile at it all, an inside joke between millions of people. It’s only comparable to cult classic movie experiences like “The Room” or even “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Audience participation is not only encouraged but expected.
This speaks more to the power of community and the internet than the merit of the film itself. Ironic and campy moviegoing has become extremely popular in the last few years, from “Morbius” to “Sonic the Hedgehog” to “Minions: Rise of Gru.” As an experiencer of many of these moviegoing phenomena, it never gets old — enjoying the company of others and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, only there to have a good time. Online, it can be easy to fall into the trap of becoming an overly snobby Letterboxd cinephile pessimistic pseudo-critic, turning one’s nose up at any non-A24 endeavor. But movies like “A Minecraft Movie” rebuke this. It’s not good, but a hell of a good time to see.
Don’t go see “A Minecraft Movie” for the movie. Go for the experience, to soyjak at the screen when Steve says “THIS! Is a crafting table!”, to laugh with your friends and to reminisce on a childhood game. And the moviegoer was the universe. And the moviegoer was love. You are the moviegoer. Wake up.
