Chicken Jockeys, Steve’s lava chicken, and everyone’s favorite game, the Minecraft movie has finally hit theaters. The long awaited Minecraft movie came out April 4, starring Jack Black, Jason Mamoa, Emma Myers, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, and Danielle Brooks. This movie was based off the highly-popular game Minecraft which was released on November 18, 2011. In the past 14 years, Minecraft has grown and increased in popularity, especially with young kids and teens. Seeing this movie in theaters after years playing Minecraft, I walked out of the theater disappointed.
This movie might be the most obvious cash grab I’ve ever paid to watch. The worst thing might just be the writing; this is supposed to be about a young kid finding his creativity in a life changing adventure to another world, however the story is watered down by poor writing decisions. There are so many memes in this movie it’s painful. The most glaringly obvious memes are in the lines of a piglin character named Chungus. This character’s voice is extremely annoying. He has some sort of valley girl accent and uses ‘like’ way too much in scenes that are supposed to be serious. The worst scene he’s in is when he asks the big villain, Malgosha, if she’s going to ‘unalive’ him after screwing up another one of her evil plans. This scene is supposed to demonstrate Malgoshas willingness to kill anything that gets in her way. It’s supposed to show that she’s someone to be feared, but instead its lost in TikTok slang.
The next big problem is the casting. Having very famous actors across all genres of shows and movies next to a kid who is just beginning his career is a recipe for disaster. In my opinion these actors, especially Emma Myers, are too good for what this movie turned out to be. The stars of Wednesday, Aquaman, Orange is the New Black, and the Super Mario Bros Movie all mixed into one movie doesn’t mesh. The poor kid, Sebastian Eugene Hansan, has only been in a handful of movies. This should be his breakthrough into fame and I don’t think he was right for the role. He’s amazing for his age but it’s simply not fair to place a fifteen year old kid next to professional actors. These choices seriously bring down the movie.
Not just the writing and acting, but the plot are rotted and make for a painful viewing experience. Why is “The Minecraft Movie” not about completing the game? The main point of the game Minecraft is to travel to the end and defeat the Ender Dragon, but the main point of the Minecraft movie is to defeat a random piglin witch for a dominance orb. It feels like the writers of this movie have never played, seen, or consumed any type of Minecraft content. I was hoping for a crazy adventure through the various biomes, into mysterious cave systems, making another portal and traveling to the Nether, and into ‘The End’ to win the game, ending the movie with the Minecraft poem spoken by the main character. That is the heartwarming and nostalgic movie we all wanted. This is what I thought of when I first heard of the Minecraft movie. This movie should have moved us, touched our hearts, and taken us back to a simpler time in life. Minecraft was a huge part of so many kids’ lives and deserved so much more than half assed jokes and a plot that doesn’t relate to the game.
The nostalgia we wanted is shown in little bits throughout the movie, like the awkward scene where all the classic Minecraft Youtubers are background characters. The most prominent example however, was Technoblade. After his death in 2022, millions of his fans were effected by the loss, and his cameo made me and many audience members tear up. This might seem petty, but that is not how you honor someone who has died. Not only did they just move past him but the next scene was the Steve’s lava chicken song. This movie just moves on so quickly I have no time to process what I’ve just watched before the next silly bit comes on.
When I left that movie my only thought was, why was this made? The best answer I can give is that movie studios saw an opportunity to make a lot of money by making a movie about something that so many people hold close to their heart but didn’t actually care to center the movie around the nostalgia instead going for brain rotted jokes to keep the attention of young kids. Being thrown from one scene to another reminds me more of scrolling on TikTok than watching one continuous movie, which is disappointing. I fear kids’ movies are going to continue to get worse and worse as younger and younger kids are exposed to social media and online content in general, and we can only hope that Universal’s upcoming “Roblox: the Movie” is better.
