By Lucas Castillo ‘25
Well, that certainly was a Minecraft movie. A Minecraft movie that I both despised for its incompetence and a Minecraft move that I also enjoyed whole-heartedly. I have reviewed and viewed far worse movies than this one. Films that may have been better in some areas than A Minecraft Movie, but also fundamentally lacked things this movie had in spades: fun and creativity. For better or for worse.
In all honesty, I probably shouldn’t even bother crafting a serious, comprehensive, and thorough review of A Minecraft Movie, because a movie like this was not made for the sake of substantive story telling, oh no. I’ve let quite a few movies off the hook for this very reason, yet, I find that, as a Minecraft fan and as a man who has dabbled in the art of making a Minecraft movie, that the world deserves a better Minecraft movie then the one that we got. Therefore, I shall hold back no punches when lobbing fair criticism at A Minecraft Movie.
But before we get into the plethora of garbage that this movie serves up, let’s first get into what I actually liked about the movie. The realistic design and aesthetic for the Minecraft world, while baffling and disturbing conceptually, worked out quite practically. As a live-action adaptation of Minecraft goes, the visuals were actually a highlight. I really did like seeing how all of these creatures, items, and blocks translated into real life, and because of that, and the ways they were translated, the movie ended up being candy for any Minecraft player’s eyes, excluding man’s unholiest creation of course. Along with the film’s style, the references to Minecraft culture and the cameos of various Minecraft YouTubers and personalities were quite the treat for any fan of the game. I also found the nit-wit villager sub-plot to be an absolute riot, just because of its sheer and unabashed absurdity. With that, for the duration of the movie, I was never bored or felt like it was dragging on for too long. Granted, I am a proponent of movies that take their time and have a longer run time, but even then the movie really could have benefited from slowing down and giving us more time to acclimate to our characters. The third act was also pretty epic. I loved the use of the various Minecraft mechanics to create a pretty fun climax that paid off a good number of elements already established, and the two songs at the end were actually pretty good, with one of them even being a Hello, Dolly reference. I never thought I would see the day when a theatrical, live-action Minecraft movie had Jack Black’s Steve singing to his dog a spoofed song from the 1960’s play Hello, Dolly.
Alright, now I’m done with positives – let’s talk about the story and the plot. In the beginning, the audience is overloaded with quick bits of exposition, made specifically for people with gen-alpha level attention spans. It was honestly overwhelming for me, a person familiar with all the terminology and lore, so imagine how daunting it must be for a casual moviegoer who doesn’t even know what a Minecraft is. The character introductions are also rushed with Henry and Natalie’s whole backstory breezed through in just one scene of dialogue. Not only that, but their backstory never actually plays a role in their development at all. Even then, whatever development that is there lacks both nuance and subtlety. Most of the story and plot is just jammed with melodrama and action set pieces. Speaking of which, that pretty much sums up the second act – just uninteresting, trite, and inconsequential melodrama. However, the movie moves on from these “dramatic” moments fairly quickly, both undercutting whatever ounce of dramatic tension that was needed to be conveyed to the audience, and also saving the audience from having to endure a long, drawn out disagreement that quite literally nobody cares about. Then, leading into the third act, there is such a shameless bit of forced personified doubt, with each character expressing an exaggerated version of what they think is wrong with the character. His doubt was not properly developed to justify this scene, and the scene didn’t even have that big of an impact on the character or their journey, so it was just pointless to begin with! This whole film’s structure and story arcs all fall apart once you realize that the film hasn’t put in the time or substantial effort to make you care about most of the characters or their struggles.
Now, let’s move on to talk about a topic that I have already heavenly touched on: the characters. The movie has quite the mixed bag of characters – with Steve and Garrett being a fun, but very cringy duo; Henry and Natalie being decent protagonists that needed more development and screen time than they were allotted; and Dawn being an extremely underdeveloped “character” that could have been cut from the film all together. The cast did a pretty decent job, with Emma Meyers really trying to act as well as she could with what she was given. It is unfortunate, though, that the cast was given such shallow, trite, and uninteresting dialogue. It remained a sore spot in my eyes throughout the duration of the film, infecting the drama, comedy, and overall presentation of the story. Jack Black was over-the-top and cringe-worthy as expected, with the same going for Jason Momoa, but I didn’t find their characters to be as obnoxious as I had thought they would be. Not to say that they weren’t, just that they didn’t make me want to rip my eyes out as I had anticipated. With the exclusion of the very, very unnecessary elytra scene.
Most of the actually funny moments from the film stemmed from the sheer insanity of the whole experience and the juxtaposition of Minecraft elements and characters interacting with people and real world elements. Anything else that was meant to be funny, like any of Steve’s songs, the sarcastic one-liners, or the blunt attempts at situational comedy fell very short. On a different note, the music of the film was very interesting, as on one hand you have various iconic songs and tunes pulled directly from the game itself that elevated the film score-wise, and then you get “Lava Chicken” and you once again hate living. Besides serving as justification for the Hello, Dolly reference, I honestly don’t know why Steve is singing in the first place; it just feels like they’re trying to pander to the cringe-lords that only feed off of brain rot.
A Minecraft Movie was made during an unfortunate time. A time when substantive and meaningful humor, in any capacity, is dead and buried. A time when big-time Hollywood executives realized en masse that you don’t need to try to make a good kids film when you have an established franchise and a few popular actors. This movie could have been good, but I don’t believe that was ever the intention. Now, just like The Super Mario Bros. Movie before it, A Minecraft Movie will be successful and will prove that as long as you pander to fans and the basest instincts of young children, then you don’t really need to try at all.
I enjoyed A Minecraft Movie, even though it was bad. It should have probably had better writing, better characters, a better premise, and it most certainly should have been animated, but this is just a Minecraft movie. The Minecraft movie is yet to come, and we will all wait in anticipation for one brave soul to make the Minecraft movie that we all deserve. But right now, in my personal and all but factual opinion, I give A Minecraft Movie a 6.3/10, go watch Technoblade’s play through of Minecraft: Story Mode now!