It is not every day you watch a trailer for a blockbuster that asks you to turn off your brain. And, if you theoretically did, you would expect a movie that disappoints more than anything else. It still baffles me that “A Minecraft Movie” took that direction without much compromise and somehow succeeded, even financially reaching number one at the box office. I am not going to sit here and tell you this movie is good, because it is not. Even the childhood nostalgia of being raised on Minecraft cannot make me say that. But growing up in that era and community does inform me to say that maybe quality nor excellence were not priorities for the film. Maybe fun and stupid is not what “A Minecraft Movie” is by accident—I think it is by design.
To quickly summarize, “A Minecraft Movie” follows Steve, played by Jack Black. After yearning for the mines as a child, he discovers the Minecraft overworld and abandons our cruel Earth to mine and craft to his heart’s content. However, his conflict with the netherite piglins, led by the evil Queen Malgosha, played by Rachel House, soon spills back over to Earth. A group of human characters, who are all fairly boring apart from Jason Momoa as washed-up pro gamer Garrett Garrison, become wrapped up in Steve’s war against Malgosha. From this plot description alone, I really hope everyone understands that this is not fine art. It suffices, and does not have any major plot holes or unneeded complexities, but it truly is a case of it is what it is.
The film has already become infamous for the audience interactions it evokes. From throwing around beverages and popcorn to setting off fireworks, the movie is bringing out unparalleled levels of hooliganry in the general population. Most of this comes from Jack Black enthusiastically pointing out things from Minecraft—like using a flint and steel or, most evocatively, the chicken jockey mob. This reaction has become one of the wildest social trends in recent memory, actively disrupting the normal movie-going experience and even involving law enforcement to help break up the commotion. I saw the film down in Beacon, and a group of obviously intoxicated 20-something-year-olds at the back of the theater led this effort, including after the movie ended, with a collective yelling of “Together… we are Minecraft!”
All of this is to say, the mediocrity of the movie itself, combined with this encouraged culture of dumb fun, makes “A Minecraft Movie” quite possibly the most symbolically accurate video game movie. When I think of playing Minecraft and engaging with the online community back when I was younger, I do not think of it as being cool at all. It was a bunch of losers playing a strange block-oriented indie game from a Swedish developer, not too different from something that would have landed on Xbox Game Pass. I do not think of epic moments or popular people; I think of the kid at Minecon who asked the developers a still somewhat incomprehensible question surrounding “dedicated ram.” I think of a YouTuber I used to watch named PopularMMOs who proposed to his girlfriend in Minecraft and then got dramatically divorced a few years later.
I did not want “A Minecraft Movie” to be a good or well-put-together film. This is not “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” or the comedic trilogy of “Sonic the Hedgehog.” This film, like Minecraft, is a bit of a ramshackle mess that is elevated by cringy passion. It takes place in rural Idaho? Why not? Steve and Garrett have strange homoerotic scenes? Awesome. There is a romantic subplot between Jennifer Coolidge’s side character and a literal Minecraft villager that implies they have a child together? I’m there. Maybe turning off your brain is the solution sometimes.