Minecraft, one of the most famous video games ever, was released in the early 2000s. Many Gen-Z kids grew up with this creative video game, establishing itself as a staple in many people’s childhoods. So what better way to profit off of this nostalgia than a movie? With a budget of 150 million dollars, A Minecraft Movie profited greatly from the release of this live-action video-game movie adaptation, earning around 313 million dollars from the global release. However, this children’s movie has incredibly mixed reviews. But that raises the question, is this movie bad, or just made for children?
The movie begins with a bunch of exposition about the character Steve. He explains how he found the overworld and how an evil Piglin Sorcerer, Malgosha, wants to destroy the overworld. The exposition shares many plot points quickly and almost lazily, just spitting facts at the audience. Then, we are introduced to the other main characters in the real world. An outcast boy struggles on his first day of school in his new town with his older sister. Eventually, the pair of siblings, their realtor, and a middle-aged gamer get trapped in the overworld where they meet Steve and work together to save the place.
A Minecraft Movie instantly became popular among Gen-Z due to its many cringey one-liners. The movie is an incredibly easy target because of famous moments like “Chicken Jockey” and “Steve’s Lava Chicken.” But many moments in the movie weren’t famous, but equally as cringe. The movie tried too hard to be funny but sometimes would take itself too seriously by adding “sad” moments that just seemed out of place. The movie didn’t know whether to cater more to Gen-Z or kids, and that was its downfall.
Other than how easy to make fun of the movie was, there were some major flaws as well. Children nowadays have a very short attention span, and to account for this, the movie was very fast-paced. But this meant that nothing was fully fleshed out because it was just one quick thing after another. This also made every character’s relationship not believable or as sweet as it could have been. The siblings were meant to have a cute relationship, but there was really no development and they didn’t even interact much. With Steve and Garret, their turn from enemies to friends seemed sudden and also not very well developed. Because of these underdeveloped relationships, the audience couldn’t really care much about most of these characters or relationships.
The plot also suffered because of its fast pacing. The plot was put to the side for most of the movie so that Jack Black could deliver a bunch of random one-liners. Another major complaint was how the female characters were horribly written. The two female characters served only to show more reactions to the three main boys. The only major things the female characters did the entire movie were get lost and make a house. When the two girls were alone, all they talked about were the boy characters. They added little to the plot or story and seemed to just be there for diversity points.
Fans of the game complained that the movie was very inaccurate to the game and that the entire movie was just a cash grab. The jokes were not funny and the writing made the movie hard to watch or enjoy. The movie was over-stimulating and fast, and even with so many things happening, nothing interesting ever happened. There were a couple of funny jokes, but the rest of the movie’s corny lines overshadowed this. Even if the movie was solely made for children, it was not well made. There are plenty of children’s movies that are able to be enjoyable to multiple age groups, funny, and also have meaning. A Minecraft Movie does none of these. Still, this movie is bound to find its target audience, even if that audience is small. A Minecraft Movie is for people who simply want a good and dumb time. If you just want a fun movie with little substance, then A Minecraft Movie is calling for you.
