Image from Minecraft Movie Trailer. Photo from Mojang.
Many months ago, I remember seeing the first trailer of the Minecraft movie and being disappointed. There was nothing notable about it that interested me, and the tone of the trailer simply felt cheesy and low quality. Regardless, as a Minecraft player since early childhood, I was going to watch it anyway, good or bad. Unfortunately, it probably would have been better had the movie been good.
What did surprise me was in the following trailers, specifically why the directors would choose Jack Black to play Steve, the main character, because he did not necessarily look or sound like Steve from Minecraft, and there was an extreme awkwardness when he was revealed as Steve because of his simple costume: jeans and a blue t-shirt. I wish that they had at least given him his legendary smile-shaped beard. However, I realized that Black was a good fit for the role, as he had the personality to be cast as the main character in a video game movie; he’s funny, he can sing, and he is quite good at acting in deeper voices, a characteristic Steve has.
But, my low expectations — as well as the Minecraft Fandom’s — continued to change as more trailers were released. The trailers repetitively showed Jack Black saying funny/silly/surprising Minecraft phrases such as: “Flint and STEEEL …” and “CHICKEN JOCKEY!” The excitement Jack Black had in saying these iconic Minecraft phrases that we fans adore led the movie’s popularity to explode across the internet, and memes of the trailer came out in the thousands. I will refer to these as “Jack Black-isms.”
Despite the outpouring of memes, I wanted to experience the movie for what it was, not as a joke. I did not want the humor surrounding Jack Black’s funny words to be the reason why I enjoyed it. It was time to see the Minecraft movie for what it truly was.
In a nutshell, the movie’s plot is about a man named Steve who travels into a portal to a dimension known as “Minecraft.” He abandons real life for Minecraft and lives his life mining and crafting, until he enters “THE NETHER,” a hell-inspired land of monsters, fire, and lava. There, he finds Malgosha, the Piglin dictator of The Nether, who has tried to destroy Steve’s builds and creations.
Steve meets other notable characters such as Henry, Henry’s sister Natalie, Garett “The Garbage Man,” and Dawn, who all stumble their way into Minecraft and find Steve. Together, they work to defeat Malgosa and General Chungus, named after the legendary “Big Chungus” meme of an enlarged version of Bugs Bunny from Looney Toons, which was popular in 2018. I was pleasantly surprised to see at least some nostalgic references to memes targeted at teens my age.
On that note, one of the clear strengths of the movie was its appeal to all ages and humor. Whether you’re a seven–year-old Minecraft fan or one of their parents, you’re probably going to laugh more than once during the movie. I usually find clever ironies to be the funniest, and I was happy to see that there were plenty of these in the movie. For example, the “Cube-shaped-orb” was particularly ironic, as everything is blocky in Minecraft.
Then there are the Jack Black-isms. I remember seeing clips of movie theaters having insane reactions to these, especially the “Chicken Jockey” scene, where there are some instances of popcorn spilling everywhere, and some even went as far as bringing a live chicken into a theater.
My movie theater adored the Jack Black-isms, though I was spared the chaos seen on the internet. There was only the occasional clapping or “CHICKEN JOCKEY!” in the middle of the movie. Honestly, my favorite Jack Black-ism was when he said, “First we mine, then we craft. Let’s Minecraft!” I caught myself almost bursting into laughter at what is arguably Hollywood’s most corny line of the decade. That was undoubtedly horrible writing, but the fact that Jack Black said it made the crowd roar in applause. I can’t help but be reminded of the Bee Movie (2007), particularly its line “Ya like Jazz?” asked by Barry B. Benson, a honeybee, while speaking to Vanessa Bloome, Barry’s human love interest, or the line “What are you talking about?!” asked by her husband after finding out about Bloome’s relationship with a bee. Then, it was entertaining to think about how professional scriptwriters had come up with that piece of garbage, devoid of any skillful writing or interesting not-ridiculous content, sounding like it had come straight out of my seventh-grade story workshops.
Overall, in the context of the Minecraft movie, a film that I had high hopes for since it was supposed to accurately represent the best video game ever created, I felt like I was left hanging.
Poorly written script aside, the plot of the movie itself was all over the place and did not fit. It was trying to do too much in too little time, so the pace of the scenes subsequently felt far too short for me. While it is a kids’ movie, I still can’t understand why the movie needed to have a plot that was so chaotic. Learning about the backstory of four different characters for half the movie made me forget it was even about Minecraft. In fact, half of the movie didn’t even take place in Minecraft: it was in the real world.
But what disappointed me most were the missed opportunities the movie had to create a blocky, fully animated movie, one that truly feels like the Minecraft Dimension. I was left with so many questions that I did not think I would have to ask myself. Why would the movie be an awkward Hybrid of Blocks and Humans? Where was the Ender Dragon, the true supervillain of the Minecraft video game? The Elytra scene implies that Steve had already defeated the Ender Dragon, the main villain of Minecraft, so could the main villain in the movie have at least been anything other than a Piglin, a neutral, passive mob? And where was Alex, the female version of Steve? Why was her only appearance in the post-credit scene? She should have been a supporting character.
The Minecraft Movie had almost too much potential. It could have been about the true meaning of Minecraft — overcoming evil by using creativity to build, mine, craft, and think of clever solutions to unprecedented situations. Sure, there is an aspect of that, but it’s a little more than a subtheme.
The movie was so committed to being a kids’ movie that it forgot that fifteen-year-old veteran players are its primary audience, not five-year-olds. Yes, there were a number of references targeted at older fans that I adored, as well as some decent humor, but movies cannot be considered good solely based on some occasional funny references. I wanted to see the Minecraft movie, not a movie about Minecraft. So, while the Minecraft movie found its mark for my demographic through Jack Black’s funny exclamation of Minecraft terms, that didn’t satisfy me. I do not think it truly satisfied anyone of my age, either. I would not recommend the Minecraft movie for teens or anyone over 10.