Content warning: Spoilers for “A Minecraft Movie” ahead.
“A Minecraft Movie” was the best comedy I have seen in a long time.
There were many times that I completely lost the plot – and so did the movie – but the most important thing is that nothing was taken too seriously. For a movie about Minecraft, a game where anything is possible, I was surprised they managed to find a plot to begin with. When I played Minecraft as a kid, I collected every single mob I could and made them my pets until their house was bigger than mine.
I was initially hesitant about the choice to have normal humans enter the world of Minecraft, but it put a new spin on how I view the game that I’d never thought about before.
The Magical Theatre Experience
Before the movie’s release, various trailers gave audiences plenty of content to create memes. Like how Jack Black’s Steve introduced different aspects of Minecraft, which spawned hundreds of TikToks rating Black’s iconic lines.
My personal favorite is “chicken jockey.”
Going to the Bohm, a theatre in a small town, I was expecting a silent audience. While not as rowdy as others, there were still a good number of people – kids and adults – who chanted and cheered along with Steve at many points during the movie (including me). There are several TikToks of the reactions to these iconic lines in theatres, and my experience was similar.
I can’t remember the last time I saw so many people in a theatre, let alone enthusiastic movie-goers. The experience of the movie itself absolutely added to my enjoyment.
The Actors: Two Winners and Three… Other Guys
While the main cast consisted of five characters, the two standouts were Jack Black as Steve and Jason Momoa as Garrett “The Garbageman” Garrison. They worked very well as a comedic duo throughout what can only be described as a bromance for the ages.
One scene in particular of theirs that stood out was when Steve and Garrett escape the piglins using elytra wings, an item in Minecraft that allows the player to fly. However, they only have one, so Steve has to ride on Garrett, sporting an awed expression and holding Garrett’s long hair like reins.
Of course, the internet went wild over their interactions, leading to the creation of many romantic edits of the two.
The rest of the main cast were honestly forgettable. The movie tried to establish conflict between Sebastian Hansen’s Henry, the younger brother of Emma Myers’ Natalie, who wanted to protect him. When their relationship was focused on, it felt forced and artificial, and I found myself wanting to get back to the silliness.
There was a fifth member to this group: Danielle Brooks’ Dawn. At one point in the movie, Dawn and Natalie get separated from the others, and they immediately become forgettable. Honestly, the movie would be better without them.
This makes me wonder about the female representation in this movie. Minecraft and video games are more associated with younger boys, and this might be why the writers didn’t pay as much attention to the women.
I wonder what the movie would be like if Henry were a girl instead. I think it could have helped the main cast feel more balanced and reach younger girls who might also be interested in Minecraft.
The Music: Nostalgic and Comedic
I was very pleased when the movie opened with the most iconic music disc in the game, simply titled “Minecraft” by C418. For long-time players like me, it helped bring back all my memories of playing Minecraft for hours as a kid, getting lost in caves and having obscene amounts of chickens as pets.
Speaking of chickens, Jack Black charms audiences with an original song called “Steve’s Lava Chicken.” It came out of nowhere but was so catchy that I still can’t get it out of my head.
There were many moments like this one where I was caught off guard, but it worked in this movie because nothing else makes sense, so I was willing to believe that Steve is just a great singer.
The Often Unsettling CGI
I was very impressed by the overall scenery in the Minecraft world; each biome was easily recognizable with great attention to detail, down to the bees floating all around in the forest.
The nether also looked really accurate to the game with its nether brick bridges and ghasts all around the lava falls.
However, when it came to the mobs, I was deeply disturbed. The worst offenders were the villagers with their fleshy heads and tiny ears that gave me full body shivers.
I was able to get past my disgust when a random villager found his way through the portal to the real world and fell in love with Jennifer Coolidge’s Vice Principal Marlene, the most iconic subplot that I’ve seen in a long time.
The piglins were also very disturbing. I never wanted to imagine Minecraft mobs with human-looking chests instead of pixels. Seriously, why do all the piglins have boobs?
Final Thoughts
The marketing team for this movie understood the impact that “brain rot” has had on the latest generation, and used it to create interest around the movie.
It worked on me. Honestly, it felt nice to forget about the deterioration of the quality of movies and laugh through the concerning CGI and bad jokes.
Walking into the theatre, I wasn’t expecting some show stopping piece of cinema that would break the boundaries of the movie experience, and that is okay. Sometimes I just need to turn my brain off and laugh at Jack Black for an hour and forty minutes.
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