‘A Minecraft Movie’ is a cynical cash grab

As someone who pays their bills by watching and then writing about movies, I don’t really get to differentiate between movies that are “for me” or aimed at a completely different demographic. I have to watch it all. And I take that seriously. I go into every movie genuinely hoping for the best and don’t critique the film based on what I would have done, but whether the filmmaker achieved his or her intention.

Every time I read a review where the critic says, “I would have done this,” or “They should have done that,” I’m embarrassed at what amounts to a blatant stab at public masturbation. Most people just want to know whether a critic thinks the movie is worth their time and money. They don’t care about our version of the movie.

So believe me when I say I went into A Minecraft Movie hoping for the best, but was also intensely aware that the movie wasn’t going to be for me. I love video games, but have always been drawn to more narrative-driven stories like Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last of Us more than sandboxes like Minecraft or Fortnite. That is to say, I’ve probably played an hour of Minecraft in my lifetime. Also, kids (teens?) all over the country have been following a new TikTok trend where they scream, cheer, and throw their popcorn around the theater during the movie, and that sounds like an absolute shitshow I want to avoid at all costs.

And while the screening I attended for A Minecraft Movie didn’t have screaming, popcorn-heaving kids, it still managed to be one of the worst movies I’ve sat through in a very long time. Just look at how cynical even the title is: A Minecraft Movie. I get that the point of Minecraft, for many people, represents the freedom to create anything they want and to build entire worlds where they are the architects of every little thing. The game is what the player makes it.

But for filmmaker Jared Hess and team to not even give the film the respect of a definitive article (by calling it The Minecraft Movie), it feels like they were either so self-aware that they figured this would be the beginning of a massive franchise of movies (which it will be) or they wanted to pander to audiences that wouldn’t accept anyone telling them what “THE” Minecraft Movie would involve.

I’m not recounting the plot here because it makes my head hurt, but it involves Jack Black being Steve, the original default skin of your avatar in the game. He teams up with Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, and two precocious and annoying teenagers to protect the Overworld from Malgosha, a pig witch that rules Overworld’s Underworld, known as the Nether. That’s all I got. The story only exists to plop viewers into the Overworld and get them excited about making blocks of things into other blocks of things.

While Momoa manages to successfully tap into his bottomless well of charisma to play a genuinely goofy and endearing character, Black instead doubles down on his sing-songy, man-child persona and becomes the screechiest, most profoundly annoying character I’ve seen in years. Every moment Black is onscreen, he’s yelling, growling, or doing his patented schtick, and for the first time in my life, I found him to be completely insufferable. I’ve loved Jack Black since he showed up in 2000s High Fidelity, but A Minecraft Movie still managed to make me want to sell my copy of School of Rock. (Nacho Libre remains safe for now.)

I don’t like feeling cynical about film, but A Minecraft Movie inspires nothing but images of synergistic board meetings where corporate suits decide how to make a cash grab with mass appeal to kids, their parents, gamers, non-gamers, domesticated pets, and anyone else whose pockets are reachable. Minecraft is ostensibly a game about the limitless possibilities of creation, and, while I respect that A Minecraft Movie pays respect to the freedom our imaginations can gift us, the film remains ugly to look at while the FIVE credited writers fail to craft a single moment that authentically captures the wonder of making something exist in reality that wholly captures what you saw in your head.

But also… A Minecraft Movie wasn’t made for me and that’s fine, I guess. If this is wholly just aimed at kids and Minecraft obsessives, then maybe it’s an unparalleled success. I have no idea. The movie doesn’t need to be for me. Barbie and The Lego Movie weren’t, either, but I was still deeply moved by both. Maybe kids deserve better than the bare minimum. But with so much of the movie focused on ’80s and ’90s nostalgia-porn video game culture, I found myself pandered to, anyway, while still feeling like an old man yelling at the Cloud.

A Minecraft Movie isn’t funny or charming. And it treats human imagination more like a commodity to be exploited than as one of the most incandescently important things about being alive. I found myself amused by the irony of so much of the plot being centered around characters turning their wildest ideas and fantasies into nearly identical square blocks. It made me wonder whether, subliminally, the filmmakers were trying to say that no matter how potent or profound your imagination, someone will always be there to try and sand down the edges and make sure that your vision fits properly as another indistinguishable brick in an endless wall of identical content.

A Minecraft Movie
Grade: F